


I lack the patience to haunt / Instead, I hunt

by dwellingondreams



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Animal Death, Animal Sacrifice, Arranged Marriage, Bad Parenting, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Dark, Dark Fantasy, Domeric Bolton Lives, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Female Domeric Bolton, Horror Elements, House Bolton, House Stark, House Tully, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Menstruation, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Not A Fix-It, POV Female Character, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Period-Typical Underage, Postpartum Depression, Pregnancy, Present Tense, Ramsay is His Own Warning, Riverlands (ASoIaF), Riverrun, Roose Bolton is His Own Warning, Roose Bolton's A+ Parenting, The Brotherhood Without Banners (ASoIaF), The Dreadfort, The North (ASOIAF), The Old Gods (ASoIaF), The Vale of Arryn, War of the Five Kings, Winterfell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2020-07-11 15:15:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 82
Words: 502,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwellingondreams/pseuds/dwellingondreams
Summary: "I dance in dangerous fables, walk a woods with trees white as bone. It's always winter and I'm always pressing my face against something warm with blood." - Yasmin Belkhyr, 'Blizzard'.“Men die,” Barbrey tells her, bone-white with anger, eyes flashing. “Men die, Donella. Should Stark’s boy not sire a son on you, and if the Bastard has the Dreadfort-,”“You speak as if Robb Stark were in fragile health,” Nell rolls her eyes. “You’re being paranoid.”“Willam was in excellent health until he rode off to his death at Ned Stark’s side,” Barbrey hisses. “Do you think he did not promise me we would have children and a long life together before he left? Do you think he did not promise to come back to me? You cannot know what the future might bring. My lord husband survived a war only to die in Dorne. Men and their promises are not your safety nor your refuge. Land is. Power is. Never forget that.”(In which Nell Bolton contends with both her mother's bloodstained legacy and her father's bloodthirsty bastard, and along the way claims a beast for a bridegroom.)





	1. Donella I

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will (ideally) be updating on a Tuesday/Friday schedule. Update as of 4/14/20: we're just Fridays now, folks.
> 
> This is not an 'OC gets with Robb and single-handedly wins the war against the Lannisters and saves House Stark' fic. Please be advised of the tags; the story-line concerns people in positions of power who often abuse that power in horrific ways.
> 
> My intent with this fic is to explore both an AU in which Roose Bolton has a sole true-born daughter, not a son, and the ripple effects of that, and an AU in which Robb Stark begins the series already betrothed to a young woman from a powerful Northern house. This fic is going to revolve primarily around the North and the War of the Five Kings as it pertains to House Stark and company, not necessarily the greater overarching plot of ASOIAF.

289 AC - THE DREADFORT

Donella will only have a mother for eight more days, but of course she does not know that yet. What she does know is that no one calls her by her full name save her lord father, that he is off fighting the Ironborn, and that Mother, who she loves with all the passion and zeal of a girl of eight, prays daily for his death. Sometimes Nell prays as well, but part of her is frightened he may somehow know, even thousands of leagues away and perhaps wounded or dying or drowned, so often she only pretends to, and closes her eyes so as not to look at the heart tree’s accusing face.

A man cannot lie before a weirwood, but it may be that a child can pretend to pray before one, and Nell hopes desperately and fervently that the gods are not angry with her for this. She only wants to please Mother and not anger Father and not to be condemned to molder in a tomb, rather than join all who came before and after her in the earth and trees and snow and wind. It is summer and has been summer for over a year now, although Nell was born in winter. Mother says it is always summer for little children, they just do not realize it until they are old and grey.

Mother isn’t old and grey; she is beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the world, all because Nell wills it so, makes all her mother’s ordinary features extraordinary in her own mind, her long, thin chestnut brown hair that will not curl, her small mouth, her dark brown eyes and pale, prominent brow. She builds her up stronger and haler in her mind, hearty and long-lasting. It is not all imagination. Bethany Bolton, called Beth by those who love her, is not a frail or delicate woman. She was born a Ryswell of the Rills, and the Ryswells do not produce weak stock. She is tall and wiry, long-limbed, long-faced as well, and like all Ryswells, learned to ride before she could walk.

When Lady Beth prays, she does not kneel but crouches on the leaves-covered moss instead, one palm flat on the ground, her pale fingers digging into the earth as if hoping to pry something loose. She closes her eyes and lets her breathing slow and her brow furrow and her mouth pucker slightly, lips pressed firmly together as if in distaste or begrudging tolerance of something profoundly unpleasant, and makes her silent bargains with gods who she has judged to be both deaf and blind since girlhood. Sometimes Nell tries to imagine what she might be saying:

 _Take him. Take him from me and I will give you whatever you desire. I will spend all my nights sleeping among your roots and all my days glorifying you. I will fast for thirteen days and nights, I will give you my tongue and never speak again, I will spend the rest of my widow’s life tending to your trees and this wood, I will never leave your sight again, only take him from me. Take him from me and I will give you blood and bone and the best of the meat, so you might grow strong and your leaves might grow redder._

Mother is well-equipped to bargain with the gods, for she made one to bring about Nell. The tale has been told many times, although never in Father’s hearing, and since he has ears everywhere, that means it has only ever been told on horseback, with Nell fighting to listen over the wind and hoofbeats in her ears. Mother takes her out riding at least once a week, if not more, and hunts with her just as often. She calls Nell her good luck charm, says any mother creature fares better on a hunt when she can see her child’s face in the distance, hungry and impatiently waiting. It’s true for bears and lions and wolves and it’s true for women too, they’ve just forgotten it. “You make me sharper,” she tells Nell, “as a whetstone does a sword, my Nell. I only have to look at you once and I could go to war, I think.” Sometimes she laughs when she says it, and Nell laughs too, but other times she is not laughing at all.

After Mother lost the second son, once the bleeding had stopped and she was fit to walk again, and knew Father would call her back to his bed every night, she went to the godswood to pray, to ask what she’d done so wrong that the gods would deny her this reprieve. “All women want sons”, Mother had said, “but I wanted a son the way a fox wants loose from a snare. I wanted a son the way dying men want water. I wanted a son or I was going to go mad and walk out into the wood and never return.” She prayed and prayed one day, from sunrise to sundown, and when the sun had disappeared and the dark of night came, she knew what must be done.

Three days later Mother had her favorite steed slaughtered, a fine young stallion in his prime. She might have sent a man to do it and gone away so she would not see it buck and neigh and smell the blood, all that blood spilling out in a sheet across the snowy ground, but she watched instead, and when it was done she took the entrails in a sack to the godswood and hung them on the tree, and sat there and watched them sway in the wind and the crows come to peck at them, and when they had all been eaten, by the birds or the animals or the weirwood itself, she knew she would not lose the next babe. 

She did not. But the gods played her false, or else they must have preferred the entrails of a man, not a horse, because when Nell slipped into the world she was no son at all. “I raved and cursed you then”, Mother would recall almost fondly, “and your father had you taken and given to a wet-nurse with orders not to leave you alone with me, for I might have smothered you in a heartbeat. But once I’d calmed and I saw you in another woman’s arms I loved you all at once, and had I the strength I would have clawed her eyes out to get you back at my breast, looking into my eyes. And that is how you know I love you, else I would never have told you the tale.”

A bargain with anyone, be they god or mortal, is only good the once, Mother taught Nell then. None of the babes who came after her had lived. “It’s your father’s seed,” she told her once, “he leeched all its strength out years ago. It’s why he only has the one bastard boy.” Whenever she spoke of the Bastard, Mother’s mouth gave a bitter, savage little twist, as if she were about to laugh, but the look in her eyes was anything but amused. 

All Nell knew of the Bastard in those days was that he was a year her elder and his mother had been a miller’s wife. She did not know what had happened to the miller. She had once asked Mother how Father came to know a miller’s wife, if he had already been wed to her, and Mother had simply said that he met many women on his hunts. Nell could not see why that would be. When she and Mother hunted, they never saw any women save themselves. Her parents both liked to hunt, but never went together. She never asked why. When she was out riding with Mother, be it on the road or in the wood, it felt special. Sacred. It would not be like that if Father were there. Mother would shrink back into the shell she became in his presence, the woman who did not speak or smile, the woman who could have been a doll, she sat there so still and silent and unchanging. When they were alone, that woman seemed like a mere ghost, and Mother was shockingly, alarmingly alive, smiling and laughing and talking in that husky voice of hers. 

Nell had asked to meet the Bastard once, or one of those hunts, thinking she should quite like a living, breathing boy for a brother, rather than the dead husks underneath the Dreadfort, and Mother had carried on as if she had not heard her. When she’d insistently repeated the question, Mother had turned and struck her so hard her bottom lip split and welled up fat and pink, like a very plump worm. She’d cringed at her own reflection for the next two days. “Keep that boy’s name out of your mouth,” Mother had said, “or you’ll have no supper until you can hold your tongue.” But her voice had shaken like a branch in the wind.

Nell loves Mother dearly and is sometimes dearly frightened, either of or for her, but it is more than she has ever felt for Father. She feels guilty about it still at eight, feels that a daughter should love her father, and told Mother as much once. “Don’t,” Mother had said flatly. “Most men would tell you they would rather their daughters obey them than love them, and your father is chief among them.” Nell knows Mother does not love her own father, Lord Rodrik. She can see it on her face whenever they visit. He embraces her stiffly and she presses a dry kiss to his cheek and very few words ever pass directly between them. Aunt Barbrey once told her Mother has never forgiven him. For what, Nell is too afraid to ask.

But on this summer’s day she is not thinking of the Bastard or her grandfather. She is only thinking of Mother and her silent prayer and how she must every day prove she is worthy of that horse’s entrails on the tree. Nell loves horses, as anyone with a drop of Ryswell blood in them must, and she cannot comprehend ever killing one for the sake of a squalling babe. Horses are beautiful and strong and fast and they can take you as far away as you’d like. Babes are small and weak and ugly and make Mother bleed when they come too early or too late or not at all. They never go anywhere but under the earth. 

Finally, Mother rises, brushing off her skirt, and Nell springs up at her side like a particularly eager weed. “Should your father fall in battle, I will take you, and we will go to Barrow Hall to live with your aunt, and one day when you are a woman wed, your second son will come and claim the Dreadfort and be its lord,” she tells Nell, taking her hand in her own. Her palms are hard and calloused from years of gripping reins and whips and bows. Nell’s soft child-fingers slip and stutter against them. Nell loves Barrow Hall and its bustling wooden town, loves Barbrey, although she smiles even less than Mother. Part of her loves the Dreadfort too, but only because she knows it so well, and she thinks if you know something by heart, you can’t help but love it a little. 

They exit the godswood, and to Nell’s delight, head for the stables. She likes the stables best. It is quiet and peaceful there, unless a stableboy is being punished for something or a horse is injured. All of the Dreadfort is quiet, usually, but it is seldom peaceful. Her bedchamber, perhaps, and Mother’s rooms, and maybe the great hall when she is the only one in it- she likes to watch the shadows dance on the wall and make shapes with her fingers. Mother showed her. She also taught her that if you stood in the empty hall and screamed, the sound would be swallowed up by the blackened rafters, as if you were never really there at all.

In the stables Mother orders her second favorite stallion, Harlon, saddled for her, and the grey filly they call Wisp for Nell. It is clear and bright as they ride out with the usual guards, the ones Mother favors because she says they are nearly as frightened of her as they are of Father. Nell is never sure if she is jesting or not. The men are silent aside from the occasional murmur about the fair weather, and for the most part Mother behaves as if they were mere shadows, not there at all, and once they are on the open road she urges Harlon to a canter and Nell does the same with her filly, almost ashamed of the fact that Mother is holding back so as not to leave her behind. The guards as well-trained by now to not stay too close, although they keep them within their sight, and one of them lets loose the dogs. 

Mother never hunts with more than three or four dogs, and they are all sleek, slender animals that sometimes fade right into the bushes and trees, invisible and oh so quiet until they smell or hear something, and then they are off, barking and snapping and howling, black streaks vanishing through the wood only to reappear moments later, the pink of their mouths and the red of their lolling tongues vibrant against all the green and brown and grey. Sometimes Mother stands right up in the stirrups, notching another arrow to her bow, her hair flung out behind her, and Nell watches, cradling the knife she’s been allowed to carry like a precious gem. An arrow looses, then another, and a deer comes stumbling out, bleeding and baying, before the first dog is upon it, then the second, then the third. 

They draw back, whining, at Mother’s sharp command, and Nell scrambles down from the saddle and offers her the knife. The deer is still alive, although not for much longer. “It’s cruel to let them suffer,” says Mother, but she does not move, nor take the blade. The deer is panting and trembling on the ground, eyes dark and glossy. “You are old enough now,” Mother tells her. “Go on.” The dogs are slavering behind them, shaking with excitement. Nell has never been very fond of dogs; sometimes they spook a horse and make it stumble and break a leg.

She takes the knife with both hands, and kneels down beside the deer, and puts a gloved hand on its hot flank. 

“You can do it,” Mother urges and her tone says, _You must do it, or you are no child of mine_ , so she sets the blade to the throat and drags it quickly across it. It does not take long at all. The deer is still and silent, and her gloves are wet with blood, and a hopeful smile catches at her mouth when she glances up at Mother, who leans down and kisses her sweaty scalp and says hoarsely, “I knew you could be strong, sweetling.”, and Nell has never felt so loved, she thinks wildly, in all her short life. 

Mother does not say much on the ride back, complaining of a sore throat, which develops into a hard cough by the time they sup together that night. Then comes the headache which keeps her abed for the next two days, and the aches and pains. Nell is not allowed to sit by her bedside, lest she sicken as well. The days stretch into a week, and by the end of that Beth Bolton is feverish and will not take any food or water, nor keep it down for long. The maester says they should write to Barrow Hall, and Nell knows it is very serious then. 

Mother is dying when they receive word that the Ironborn have been defeated and Father is returning to the North. She is dying for a day and a half until finally Nell’s screeching, sobbing tantrums triumph and she is allowed to sit with her and hold her hot hands. She tries to tell Mother that it will be alright, because Aunt Barbrey will be here soon, but Mother will not listen. Delirious with fever, she is not Roose’s silent wife nor Nell’s defiant mother at all, but a frightened girl who cries out for her own long dead mother, for her beloved younger sister.

Then she looks at Nell clearly and seems to realize she is not anyone who can help her, and closes her eyes and tries to turn away. She never opens them again. 

Barbrey arrives four days later, and refuses to leave until Father returns home, more than a fortnight after his second wife has been laid to rest in the crypts. He receives the news with no more than a slight, almost disappointed sigh, has Nell examined for signs of illness herself, and sends her to her room while he and her aunt disappear into his solar. Several hours later, he pushes open her bedchamber door, and Nell scrambles up from the red-eyed, puffy-faced, tangled-hair heap of a child she had been mere moments ago, and stands before him, barely restraining her tears. He regards her for a few moments, says, “She always hated that you had my eyes,” and then tells her that she is going to foster with her aunt.

“I have very little use for grieving children,” he tells her. “Were you a son, I would keep you on, but you would go to serve as a page eventually. You will go with Barbrey and if I call you back, she will send you back to me. Perhaps when you have flowered.” His gaze roves over her plump little face. “Your mother indulged you often. Barbrey may as well, but when you return to my household you will not expect any more than you are given.”

“Yes Father,” says Nell, but it blurs into a muddy jumble. She wants Mother. She wants Mother back so much it hurts. They shouldn’t have put her in the crypts. She never wanted that. She wanted to be buried somewhere the sun could find. She never wanted to be with the dead boys down in the dark. They frightened her. “I dream of them sometimes,” she’d told Nell once, while they visited their remains, the lantern shaking badly in her hands. “I sit down to feast and the boys are sitting with me, and they all have blood in their hair and your father’s eyes.” Nell’s eyes. But Mother loved her. She loved her in spite of everything else. She sent a stallion to slaughter for her. The gods played her false, but she loved her still.

“See to it that you do not waste your time in the company of women,” he goes on, and she feels as though she could melt into the floor and he would not even notice at all. Nothing would change for him. He would go on as he always has, and the Dreadfort would forget her with as much ease as it has his wives. “Your mother neglected your education beyond reading and writing. Out of spite, I assume. You will learn all that is expected of a lady, and when you return to me I will not be disappointed.” 

“Yes, Father.”

For most of Nell’s eight years of life, she has known that the only thing she should ever be saying to Father is ‘yes’. _Yes, I will. Yes, I swear. Yes, I won’t disappoint you. Yes, I can do as you command. Yes, please don’t know I sat with Mother while she prayed for you to never come back._ Yes, Mother is gone. No, you don’t care, she thinks, and a sob leaps up in her throat, but she bites her tongue and holds it in until he leaves her. Then she sinks back onto the bed, and a few minutes later her aunt hurries in, takes one look at her, and opens her arms. “Come here, child.” She looks quite a bit like Mother, and sounds similar to her as well, so that if Nell closes her eyes tightly and does not think about anything save the ringing in her ears, she can pretend Barbrey is her. 

She leaves the Dreadfort a week later on Wisp the filly, a few sheared locks of her dead mother’s hair braided tightly around her wrist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/).


	2. Donella II

298 AC - THE BARROWLANDS

Nell has nearly made it to the top of the hill when he catches her. Two hands snag at her waist, just before a strong arm wraps round her struggling form and nearly lifts her off her feet. Her boots slip in the long, windswept grass, and they both go tumbling back down the slope, rolling and sliding. She lands flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her, and the pale blue sky full of thin clouds drifting by overhead, until it is blocked out by a very familiar face. Panting for breath, Nell pretends at shocked upset for a moment longer before she yanks him down by the scruff of the neck to kiss him.

Denys, son of Beron, her aunt’s favored serjeant, is a very good kisser. She knows it is likely because he worked his way through the maids and half the girls in town before he ever dared so much as glance her way, but Nell does not feel slighted by it. He is not her first, either. She smiles against his mouth, before jerking away when one of his hands moves up towards her chest. “You are a wicked, awful boy, treating a highborn lady so,” she tells him in mock disgust. Denys grins lazily back at her, propped up on his elbows, and then slumps down beside her in the grass, the hillside at their backs. 

The plains stretch out around them, a sea of gold and brown and green, as far as the eye can see. To the north is Torrhen’s Square and the mountains where most of the northern clans dwell, to the south is the inlet of the Saltspear and below that the uppermost part of the Neck, to the east lies the Kingsroad and beyond that, White Harbor, and to the west is the Rills, and then the edge of the Blazewater Bay. Nell knows her surroundings better than she knows herself, better than she knows bold Denys, who she has been sneaking out to ride and kiss with for near three weeks now. 

Denys is tall but slight, a pretty sort of boy with dusty light brown hair and a clean shaven face, although Nell prefers beards. He is not much bigger or stronger than her, and is just sixteen, a year younger. Barrow Hall is the only home he has ever known; he has never been any further than White Harbor. He is the sort of boy who thinks he knows everything, but who is really innocent in such a way that Nell feels a bit wicked herself. Denys may have taken more maidenheads than he can count in the last few years, but he was born here and will likely die here, and so in the ways of the world, he is still just a lad. 

“I see no highborn lady,” he says comfortably, daringly, from his position beside her. She rolls over so her head is on his chest; his heart is pounding still, and she smiles to herself to feel its frantic pulse through his jerkin. With Denys there has never been any question as to which one of them is in control. She’s been running him ragged since the first forward smile and lingering stare. “Only a wild girl, tempting poor boys to ruin.” He wraps a lanky arm around her and squeezes until she gasps and vengefully kisses the underside of his chin.

“Am I?” Nell challenges. “I should think you’d want to teach me a lesson, then-,”

She shrieks when he grabs her by the waist and rolls over so he is sprawled atop her, and then they are quite preoccupied. At least until they hear the sound of approaching hoofbeats over the dull whistling of the wind. Nell is too caught up to be immediately concerned, but Denys has a healthy dose of fear to him, as any boy not a lord’s son might, and he hurriedly clambers off her, cursing under his breath. “Your bodice-,”

“Help me, then,” she’s caught between panicked whispers and hysterical giggles, and swears herself when he pulls her stays too tight. “Not like that, damn you!” The hoofbeats are louder now, and they both struggle to their feet, pulling one another up, tugging at clothes and hair, just as two riders come into view. One is Sara Snow, bastard daughter to the long-dead Mark Ryswell, who has served as her governess since she came to Barrow Hall, and the other is Danelle Flint, whose great-aunt Barba married Rodrik Ryswell and gave birth to Bethany, Barbrey, and all of Nell’s uncles. 

Sara’s expression is set in an unforgiving, formidable stare that has always made her seem far older than her twenty five years. She was a maiden of sixteen when she first began to instruct Nell, and now she has firmly declared herself a content spinster, and her poor sense of humor remains as unchanged as her virtue. Dana Flint, in contrast, is bright pink with the effort she is making to contain her cackles of amusement at Nell and Denys’ blatant distress.

“Mistress Snow,” Denys rasps out, and then inclines his head at the sight of Dana. “Milady.”

“It’s really very fortunate that you found us just now,” Nell begins with a very convincing look, or so she hopes. She considers herself a very capable liar, although she will admit this is perhaps not among her greatest deceptions. “Denys just saved me from twisting an ankle; I fell down the hill,” she gestures for emphasis, “and had he not scrambled after me, I should hate to think of how I might have been injured- why, that could have put me off riding for weeks!”

Denys has enough sense to say nothing at all; he studies the ground with great interest instead.

“Our clumsy Nell,” Dana finally gasps out, and then squawks with a combination of laughter and fear when Sara Snow glances at her coldly. 

“How very fortunate,” she says. “I am sure Denys will not object to bringing over your horses.”

Denys shoots her a panicked look. Nell’s chagrined smile twitches a little. “Well- you see, dear Sara-,”

“I only see one horse grazing nearby,” Dana points out, grinning with all her teeth. The bitch, Nell thinks, equal parts infuriated and fond, for she’d do the same were it Dana caught out in the open like this.

“Then fetch it,” Sara grits out, and Denys bolts off in that direction, brushing grass off his clothes as he goes. “Were I your aunt,” she tells Nell as soon as he is out of earshot, “I would drag you back to Barrow Hall by the hair and belt you until you could not sit a saddle.”

“Please don’t tell Aunt,” Nell bursts out, shifting from faux-earnestness to plaintive pleading with great ease, “Sara, please- it was only a bit of fun, we were hardly gone an hour, I swear-,”

“Of all the idiocy- you left on the same horse!” Sara snaps. “Do you have any idea how many might have seen you? What they might say, to see Lady Dustin’s niece- Lord Bolton’s daughter- riding off with the son of a serjeant! Do you imagine they thought you off to pick some flowers?”

Dana is not laughing anymore, and instead staring off into the distance uncomfortably, out of pity, Nell supposes, as she flushes bright red, more so for being caught than the act itself. “No one of note saw us, I promise you. We did not ride through the town-,”

“That is not the point, you foolish girl,” Sara retorts fiercely. “Who do you think you are? Some innkeeper’s daughter, neglecting your chores to roll around the barrows? You are a high lord’s daughter, a young noblewoman. Would you have people think of you as some common slattern before you see twenty years?”

“I shall be wed before I see twenty years,” Nell mutters darkly, but now Denys has returned with the sole horse, and dutifully holds the reins as she mounts it. Only then does he chance another look at Sara Snow, who raises her chin and says crisply, “I imagine the walk back to town will do you some good, Master Denys. The summer air is very invigorating on a day such as this.”

“Yes,” he mutters, cheeks flaring scarlet, and Nell knows now, to her dismay, that he will never lay so much as a finger on her again, no matter how she coaxes or cajoles. This entire debacle has mortified his boyish pride beyond any repair. To be so thoroughly reprimanded by a governess, and a natural one at that- she will be lucky if he ever speaks to her again, never mind thinks to kiss her. She is not heartbroken; Nell is not dim, she knows well enough that there could never be anything beyond stolen kisses and some eager fondling for her and Denys, and he knew it too, but she is still put out. Upset. Irritated. She leaves for the Dreadfort in six days time, and Denys was one of her few distractions until then.

Their ride back is silent, aside from the wind and the horses. Nell sits up straight and proud in the saddle, refusing to so much as look at either Sara or Dana. She knows she ought to be shamefaced and horrified at her behavior, but finds it difficult to summon up much remorse. The one part of her life she has any control over, and they mean to strip that away as well. She has always felt safe here, free to do as she pleased so long as she did not dishonor House Dustin or Ryswell. Were she a man of seventeen, and not a woman, they’d turn away in amused exasperation and let her do as she liked, so long as she avoided siring any bastards.

Nell knows nothing will ever be fair for her, but will not blame herself for wanting more anyways. It’s in her nature. They’ve always said the Boltons were a greedy, hungry lot, always grasping and clawing, willing to commit the foulest deeds just so they might have a better seat at the table and a larger helping of the meal. There was a time when even the Starks would not tangle with the Red Kings. Nell is no more ashamed of her ancestors than she is of her own desires. She will not waste her time feeling sorry for dead men. Every house in the North has partaken in its own share of savagery and dark deeds. House Bolton is merely one of the few who proudly admit to it.

When they reach Barrow Hall she thinks to tarry by the stables, harassing the grooms over their care of her horses or waiting around to see if Wisp might have her foal this evening, but all Sara has to say is, “Donella, I will await you in your bedchamber,” and she knows she is not going to be easily rid of her tutor. By all rights, she could demand her aunt dismiss Sara Snow, send her back to the Rills or to her smallfolk kin- her mother was a blacksmith’s daughter, hailing from a village along the White Knife, who sought out service with House Cerwyn and met Mark Ryswell at a feast. 

Nell is seventeen now, of age and more than ready for marriage. There is very little Sara has left to teach her. But in truth, she is not just a bastard governess, stern and humorless and honest to a fault. She has also been an elder sister of sorts and a dear friend for years now, and Nell would not be parted with her if she can help it. Even when Sara is furious with her, as she is now. So she does not pout or drag her feet and instead makes her way up the wide wooden steps to the interior of the blocky keep.

Barrow Hall is quiet but always busy; her aunt keeps an efficient, active household, and punishes indolence severely; no one dares lounge about gossiping or playing cards in her presence. Nell knows nearly all the servants by name; it is a small castle, and murmurs the usual greetings and polite smiles as she passes them in the corridors and on the creaking stairs. It is a foolish lady who makes enemies of her maids and washerwomen, and a very stupid one who scorns the cooks and bakers, lest she find maggots in her meat and flies in her bread.

Her bedchamber is small but airy enough, the windows open and her drapes fluttering in the stiff breeze. Horses race across her carved oaken bedframe, and axes clash along the black pine outline of her looking glass. In many ways it is still a child’s bedroom, and Nell oftens feel vaguely bemused of late when she steps inside, wondering at how quickly the past few years seem to have flown by. It seems as if just yesterday she were agonizing over spots on her face and waiting for anything at all to happen to her breasts. 

There are two women in her looking-glass; one is Nell herself, tall and shapely- she inherited her mother’s height and prominent brow but not her leanness- she is rounded where Bethany was bordering on slender, and her face is much fuller, her chin and cheekbones softer. Roose Bolton’s pale eyes stare back at her, then flicker over to Sara’s shape- Sara is a small, skinny woman, the kind who seems like to splinter into pieces if you hugged her too hard, but her severely plaited hair is so dark a brown it verges on black, and her face has a pleasing heart-shaped point to it.

“Sit down,” says Sara sharply, and Nell steps away from the looking glass and reclines on her bed as if they were about to have a leisurely conversation about the latest court fashions, head tilted to one side. Sara narrows her eyes even further, if that is possible, then gives a tight shake of her head, before sitting down by the cold hearth. When she does speak again, her voice is more despairing than anything else. “Donella, what would you have me say? Lecture you about propriety? Chastise you for your blatant defiance of years of instruction-,”

“It is not as if I have neglected my needlework or my readings,” Nell replies hotly. “I am nearly through with the Sons of Winter, and it was your suggestion that we not finish the maiden cloak until I am at Winterfell, so that Lady Catelyn might see how fair my work is-,”

“You and I both know I will not be accompanying you to Winterfell,” Sara says simply. “You will have no further need of me then. Nell, you have no further need of me now- you insist to me every day that you are no longer a child in need of correction and refinement, and you are right. You are seventeen, you will be wed by this time next year, and you are your own woman. I will not pretend otherwise.”

Nell recoils slightly as if slapped, true as the words are. Wives do not need governesses. That is true enough. But the thought of leaving Sara behind, along with her aunt, with Barrow Hall, even though Dana will go on with her as a companion until her marriage...It will still not be the same, it will still not be this hall, these people, this little room, those plains outside her window, the Dustin banners rippling in the wind, the faint sounds of the lively town. 

The last time she visited Winterfell, when the betrothal was announced, was two years past, when she was fifteen and ruddy-haired Robb thirteen. She remembers a stocky, freckled boy who was shorter than his bastard half-brother and who could not have hoped to so much as lift his father’s great-sword. He blushed pink as a maid when they danced and for the most part left her with his sisters, who she only recalls at all because of their incessant squabbling. The Stark children as a whole favored their graceful mother’s Tully looks, which she took at the time to mean that the Stark seed was weak, and that her and Robb’s children might very well look more Ryswell and Bolton than anything else. It would likely please her aunt and father, at least.

She is not too proud to admit that there are far worse matches that could have been made for her. Robb seemed the conscientious, honorable sort, even for the boy that he was- is. She’s met many lads of fourteen going on fifteen. Not one is anything approaching a man. She does not think she will be mistreated, dishonored, or otherwise slighted by the household at Winterfell, beyond the leering smirks of their cocky Greyjoy ward and the occasional whispering about her family’s gruesome history. But it is not what she would have chosen for herself. 

Being Lady of Winterfell holds no particular allure for her. Marriage itself does not enthuse her. She saw what it brought to her mother. Part of her is convinced she is tainted the same, that she will know nothing but sorrow in the birthing bed, and even bashful little Robb Stark might turn wary and suspicious of her womb. His sisters will be married off, his younger brothers will prowl around like dogs begging for scraps, resentful of his heirs, Ned Stark and his steely honor will wither and fade away, their vassals will begin to chafe and rustle around once more as all memory of the Rebellion that bound them together in outrage and fury against the Iron Throne, against the South itself, disappears, and then they will find themselves struggling to keep a grip on the reins of the mount that is carrying them to their graves. 

Perhaps she is being pessimistic. Nell prefers it to wide-eyed hopes that can never be fulfilled.

“I’m sorry,” she says instead, to get it over with. “You’re right. It was foolish of me to go off with Denys like that. If word had got out-,”

“I am trying to shield you from yourself,” Sara tells her in a more subdued manner. “You are a bold, clever girl, Nell. I have yet to see you intimidated by anything or anyone. But you must begin to act more sensibly. It does not matter that you are still a maid,” she pauses meaningfully, and adds, “I pray you are still a maid-,”

“As if my aunt were not twice as wild in her own youth,” Nell retorts, though she reddens. “We have all heard tell of how Brandon Stark deflowered her-,”

“No one with their wits about them says as much in front of Lady Barbrey,” Sara continues evenly. “She has been a widow and a ruler in her own right for many years now. The people here respect her, even admire her. They would die for her honor. You are not so secure, Nell. You are still unwed, and still at the mercy of men like your lord father, pardon my honest tongue.”

“You are pardoned,” Nell mutters balefully.

“Were he to hear men laughing around the fire about Bolton having a wanton girl for a daughter- whether they were exaggerations or not- what do you think he would do?” Sara presses. “Speak to you gently about your conduct? Reprove you? Forbid you from riding? Does he seem a man who suffers mockery?”

Nell presses her lips together and glances away.

“No,” says Sara. “I may not know Lord Bolton as well as you do. But do not think yourself out of his power just because you are of age and betrothed to the future Warden of the North. Until your wedding day, you belong to the Dreadfort, even before you do to Barrow Hall and your aunt.”

“I belong to myself too,” Nell murmurs spitefully under her breath, but catches Sara’s almost pained look all the same.

“I wish it were so,” she says, rising from her seat, “but you know my opinions on wishes, Donella.”

She hesitates at the door. “It may be that I might travel with you to the Dreadfort, however. I should like to see my mother’s people on the White Knife again, and I have an offer to instruct some daughters of Lady Hornwood’s bannermen.”

Nell does perk up at that. “I should like that very much, Mistress Snow.”

“Very good, my lady,” Sara offers her a rare smile, and takes her leave.

She dines with her aunt that night, as she has nearly every night since she first came to Barrow Hall as a weepy girl of eight. Barbrey is not a kind woman, nor a soft-hearted one, but then again, neither was Bethany. It is not in a Ryswell’s nature to be warm and tender. Her uncles are a temperamental, argumentative lot, and their children, her little cousins, resemble an unruly pack of wildlings. Nell supposes she cares for them, if not loves them, because they are still her kin and have been good to her, but when she thinks of true family, it is Barbrey who comes first. 

Her aunt has been in a foul mood as of late, no doubt because of the impending visit to the Dreadfort, and then onto Winterfell, a place she has not set foot in since Rickard Stark was still alive. Nell knows all the stories. Barbrey will never forgive Ned Stark for not returning her husband’s remains to her, and she will never forgive his long-dead father for not agreeing to betroth her to Brandon. For all the good that would have done her, Nell thinks. She would have wound up a widow all the same, and they would never have allowed her to rule the North alone. 

When Roose Bolton informed Barbrey of his intent to secure a betrothal to Robb Stark, her fury was palpable, but in time, it has turned to some sort of bitter triumph. Nell knows her aunt considers her a daughter in all but birth. To see her treasured niece as Lady Stark must seem like some sort of belated victory, surely. Once they have finished their meal she sips at her wine and watches Nell with hooded, intelligent eyes. “I will ask you just the once- do I have need to send Denys from Barrowton? Torrhen’s Square is always looking for able young men.”

“No,” says Nell, with a peevish note, pushing back her empty cup. “I am through with him. Sara made certain of that.”

“Good,” Barbrey replies with a humorless smile. “I knew I had not made a mistake when I chose her for you. Catelyn Stark’s girls may have a plump little septa to teach them to chirp about the Seven and flit about a feasting hall, but you were raised a Northern lady, not some southern flower. You will remind the boy of that. Do not let him lead you about as a farmer does a cow to market.”

Robb Stark is always ‘the boy’ just as her father’s bastard is always ‘the Bastard’. Barbrey considers both as stones in the road to be dug out and tossed into the nearest stream, lest Nell stumble over them and scrape a knee. She has always admired her aunt’s quiet, cold self-assurance. No meek or mild-mannered woman could have maintained her grip on House Dustin for so long. She will likely name some nephew her heir eventually. Perhaps little Robb, named to curry favor with Ned Stark, although the thought of Barbrey handing over her niece to one Robb and Barrow Hall to the other nearly makes Nell chuckle aloud. 

All of her humor dissipates when Barbrey says, “Your father has taken the Bastard into his household. He had enough sense to mention it in his last letter.”

Either sense or a general desire to not hear Barbrey scream the Dreadfort down, Nell decides. Had Father had his way, her aunt might have remained ignorant of the boy’s existence from the very beginning, but little went unsaid between the Ryswell sisters when Mother still lived. 

“What of it?” she gives a small shrug, forcing back the sudden surge of dread. Was it too much to ask for, a quiet, peaceful, and brief visit? “If he wishes to play father to some ignorant lout, it is of no consequence to me. Let him have his amusements.”

“Don’t play the fool with me, girl,” Barbrey snaps. “You know as well I do the threat it could pose. You are your father’s heir. If you do not wish to see your claim to the Dreadfort and rest of your father’s lands slip through your fingers-,”

“If he wants to bring House Bolton to ruin by appealing the king to name some peasant’s son his heir, I say let him try,” Nell curls a lip in disdain. “I will have Winterfell and all the North when I am at my husband’s side.”

“Men die,” Barbrey tells her, bone-white with anger, eyes flashing. “Men die, Donella. Should Stark’s boy not sire a son on you, and if the Bastard has the Dreadfort-,”

“You speak as if Robb Stark were in fragile health,” Nell rolls her eyes. “You’re being paranoid.”

“Willam was in excellent health until he rode off to his death at Ned Stark’s side,” Barbrey hisses. “Do you think he did not promise me we would have children and a long life together before he left? Do you think he did not promise to come back to me? You cannot know what the future might bring. My lord husband survived a war only to die in Dorne. Men and their promises are not your safety nor your refuge. Land is. Power is. Never forget that.”

Nell sulks, feeling like a chastened child; she glances down at the table and away from her aunt’s piercing stare. Barbrey exhales, then leans back in her seat. “Know that I only ever have your best interests at heart, child.”

“I am not a child,” Nell glances up, scowling only because part of her thinks Barbrey has the right of it, as she always has. “I do not see why everyone still insists on treating me as such. You need not worry for me so. I am more than capable of handling a green boy and an illiterate bastard.”

“You sound as your mother did when she was a girl,” Barbrey tells her, pouring herself some more wine. Her eyes are no longer gleaming with anger but with something like sadness, if that is possible for a woman like her. “More stubbornness than sense to her. Until she married your father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The main issue with this chapter naturally became 'who instructs young Northern ladies' since the majority of them are not followers of the Faith/Seven. That, and I've always been interested in the other Northern bastards (beyond the obvious Jon and Ramsay). As far as I know, the only other one mentioned in the books is young Larence Snow, the late Lord Hornwood's bastard son. In terms of timeline, the next few chapters will establish roughly where we are in regards to the larger plot of the series.


	3. Donella III

298 AC - THE DREADFORT

Nell had thought it might have looked smaller. She has not been ‘home’ in three years, after all. Her father’s keep seemed massive to her as a child, a constant looming presence. She’d always found herself playing in the shadow of one tower or another, and the glimpses of pale sky she’d gotten over the high walls had been fleeting. She is no longer a little girl, but the fortress appears just as large as it did when she was eight, when she was ten, when she was fourteen. If anything, part of her seems to register it as being even bigger, likely because she’s so unused to the sight of it. Barrow Hall seems small and almost laughably fragile in comparison, like a bundle of sticks set beside a stone block. 

It’s a dreary, overcast morning, and the Weeping Water behind them continues its dull rush up towards the mountains. She knows she should feel relieved, after twelve days on the road. It is not that the Dreadfort has never felt like a home. It does. It feels very much like her home. That is what unsettles her. This nagging suspicion that her years at Barrow Hall were all a mummer’s farce, a children’s game allowed to go on for far too long. It is not as if she is staying forever, she tells herself, as the gates open. A fortnight, no more, and then she will be off to Winterfell.

But the sense of inevitably is hard to shake. Her aunt has adopted her usual expression of grim endurance, as if settling in for a bitterly cold night in the woods, and Dana is looking around wide-eyed. A Flint of Flint’s Finger, this is the furthest east she has ever been. Perhaps the furthest she has ever traveled at all. “Charming,” she says under her breath as they ride in. “Not ones for greenery, your folk, are they Nellie?” Barren would be one word to describe it. An abundance of cold grey stone and jagged edges. The only green place Nell knows of in the Dreadfort is the godswood. 

And as usual, the swarm of men. It is not as though there are no women in the Dreadfort. It is just, Nell thinks as she dismounts, that they make themselves scarce, and with good reason. So do the children. And really anyone that might be perceived as vulnerable or easy prey. This is not a household overflowing with trust and good feelings towards one other. The serving girls are terrified of the guards, the guards are suspicious of each other, the cooks mistrust the washerwomen, and so on it goes, and endless knot of unspoken accusations and simmering grudges and coating over all of it, a primal fear of doing anything at all that might provoke their lord to ‘chastisement’. 

Beyond the familiar, such as lanky Steelshanks, her father’s captain, and craven Maester Uthor, who Mother referred to as ‘a worming pink maggot’ after her last pregnancy, she takes note of several new faces, although it may just be that they are men who were scrawny boys when she was last here. Father appears as unchanged as ever. Some men age well, and some terribly, but Nell would be willing to wager that Roose Bolton looks exactly the same at forty two as he did at twenty two. It is not a credit to his looks- he’s not a handsome man, no more than he is an ugly one. He would not be the sort of man anyone remembered at all, were it not for his pale eyes and his position. She suspects he prefers it that way. 

“Welcome home, daughter,” he says mildly. He says nearly everything mildly. Nell vaguely recalls him ordering a man’s tongue cut out, very mildly, while her mother heaped more mutton onto her plate. “I trust your travel was pleasant. Lady Barbrey. Mistress Snow.” Barbrey and Sara both murmur the customary greetings while Father pauses at Dana, who has enough sense to stow the japes away and bob into a passable curtsy. Dana is tall and gawky, all sharp cheekbones and a long neck and knobby arms and legs. Her hair is a thick mane of dark curls that puts Nell’s to shame.

“Danelle Flint, my lord,” she says politely enough. “Of Flint’s Finger. My father is Artos. Lyam’s third son,” she adds belatedly. There are so many Flints roaming the North that is often necessary to specify which branch, and whose offspring. Dana had the misfortune to be born the unwanted third daughter of a perpetually drunken third son. ‘They leapt at the chance to be rid of me,’ she often jests, with a grin that never meets her flinty blue eyes. She was named after the miserable song. Brave, dead Danny Flint. Men were singing it in the feasting hall when she came screaming into the world.

“Very pleasant,” Nell cuts in quickly, mindful of her father’s lack of humor- he knows how to amuse himself, to be sure, but she’s never heard him laugh and thinks she might throw herself out the nearest window if she ever did- combined with Dana’s general disregard for authority. Brazen. That is the word for it. “The nights have been nearly warm these past few days, it almost seems a shame to sleep indoors again.”

“Then I pray your childhood bedchamber will live up to your standards,” Father says with a slight, bland smile of some feigned attempt at kindly paternalism. She wonders if he approves of the fact that she is willing to play along. Mother never was. Not that he ever bothered; she has no memory of her parents ever having a conversation in her presence at all. She remembers listening to them quarrel a few times- or more accurately, listening to Mother scream and shout and his low, calm tones- and then the sudden absence of any shouting at all. 

Her mother had two states in her father’s presence. Most of the time she was a hollow figurine, and the look in her eyes was that of a crippled animal watching the predator approach with dull acceptance of its fate. Rarely she was an unhinged tempest, spitting and snarling and only settled by what some men might call ‘a firm hand and a quiet word’. She imagines Mother had other names for it. She imagines they had different names for many things. 

Father proves correct. Her childhood bedchamber does live up to her standards. It is just as cavernous as she recalls it being as a little girl. She suspects it has something to do with the positions of the narrow windows, but even with a small fire crackling in the hearth, the room seems dark and encroaching. “Let’s share a bed,” she suggests lightly to Dana, trying to mask her unease at the flood of memories that come rushing back. “The guest rooms are always too cold.” Sometimes Mother would come in here and sleep beside her, although she was always gone by morning. She can still smell her perfume, if she concentrates. The braid of hair around her wrist itches suddenly.

“You’ll get no complaints with me, so long as I can endure your snoring.” Dana dodges the pillow Nell heaves at her, collapsing in an array of spindly limbs in the high-backed chair by the hearth. “Will you tell me all the ghost stories later?” Dana responds to anything that makes her uncomfortable, or angry, or sad, by mocking it incessantly. Nell is oddly grateful to her for agreeing to come here at all. Some ladies, whether they hail from savage Flints or not, would have been far more hesitant to accompany a Bolton anywhere. But Dana has been her steadfast friend since the age of fourteen.

“Watch what you say,” Nell advises coolly as she lays out her gown for the evening. “My father always has someone listening.”

Dana flaps a hand at her. “Bah- I’m more interested in finding the bastard boy. Your aunt carries on as if he were a witch plotting some curse to steal your inheritance.”

“Bastards don’t need curses to steal inheritances,” Nell is now rifling through her old writing desk, trying to see if there are any forgotten trinkets from her childhood left. Some pieces of colored glass, a bit of twine, a few pretty pebbles, and a small collection of animal bones- mostly rabbits- she thinks Mother likely salvaged for her, are all she finds. “Just a weak lord and cold steel.” Fortunately Father is not the former, and as for the latter- well, she can only hope no one was fool enough to let a miller’s boy go armed.

“That’s the problem when you’ve only the one,” Dana muses tiredly. “My father’s gotten a whelp on half the whores he’s ever been with. Bet you six silvers I’ve got natural brothers and sisters as far south as King’s Landing.” She closes her eyes and grins at the thought. “And none of us, true or not, expect a damn thing from him. There’s a model for a household.”

Within a few minutes she has, for all intents and purposes, managed to doze off in said chair. Nell knows she’ll be hearing plenty of complaints about a stiff neck and aching back tonight. She decides to leave her to it. She’s sore enough herself after half a day spent in the saddle, and she summons two maids to draw up a bath for her. The last time she bathed was in the White Knife, cringing and squealing with Dana at the cold between gritted teeth, toes deep in the thick mud.

Somewhere in between nodding off in the tub herself, one of the near-mute maids comes hastening over to murmur in her ear that Lord Roose wishes to speak with her in his solar before dinner tonight. Nell considers ignoring the order and pretending there’d been some mistake later, but she’s not cruel enough to drag the servants into it, and perhaps it’s for the best that they get this out of the way now, rather than later. _You are a woman grown_ , she reminds herself harshly as she wrings out her thick hair. _Soon enough you will be a woman wed and part of another household entirely. He knows he is losing another plaything._

When they held her mother's vigil in the godswood, she remember standing wrapped in Barbrey’s thick cloak, watching his face. He’d most closely resembled a petulant child, disappointed over a broken toy. He certainly had ample time and opportunity to remarry. Nell is still not sure why he did not. Perhaps after two wives he’d tired of the old game of trying to bleed them dry for a son. And he’s always had his pick of the small crofters' wives and daughters. Maybe a third marriage seemed more trouble than it was worth, when Roose Bolton could simply go out hunting and always be assured of his success.

She is wearing one of her new gowns, a rich wine-burgundy, trimmed with ermine round the collar, when she reaches the solar. The door is closed, and she hesitates before it, that childish anxiety of opening it without knocking clawing at her. Instead she makes a fist and raps on the stained wood, only to jump back when it slams open with enough force to bring up a cloud of dust from the stone wall behind it. Nell has never met the enraged young man who’s just stalked out into the corridor, but she knows him the instant she gets a glimpse of his face.

It would be very hard to mistake the eyes they both share with their lord father, after all. 

Ramsay Snow is big, is her first, dismayed thought. She’d been hoping for some sallow, callow, sunken-chested youth who’d inspire very little confidence in terms of physical prowess. It’d make him easier to manage. He stands a good four inches taller than Roose and is nearly twice as wide; she takes in the sloped shoulders and meatiness of his face and limbs. He wears his dark hair long and has obviously taken to dressing above his station- the earring is proof enough of that, glinting redly in the torchlight. 

_Turn around and walk away_ , now, a very small and sharp voice in her head says. _Go fetch your aunt. Don’t let this one remember your face, your voice_. Instead Nell draws herself up, adopts the disinterested gaze of the trueborn daughter she is, and says to her father, who she knows must be just behind the still trembling door, “This is your natural son, then? I hadn’t thought millers could afford garnets, Father.”

Ramsay’s snarl shifts into a truly ugly smile that shows none of his teeth. They must be terrible, she thinks triumphantly. Good. You can dress a pig in silks and parade it about. It does not make it any less destined for the butcher’s knife. “And this must be my sweet sister. I’ve been asking after you for some time.” Oh, she’s sure he has. Asking after the lucky little bitch who slipped into the world a year after him, just in time to claim a title and a hold on the Dreadfort.

“Soften your tongue, Donella,” Father chides her patiently, stepping into view. “I have taken your brother into my household, and should he desire to dress well-,”

“Altogether too well, perhaps,” Nell cuts in sweetly, hackles raised. This is very bad. Very. Had he been skulking about in hand-me-downs and stammering over his words, she’d have been satisfied. This one is altogether too confident for a boy raised among the smallfolk. He should not even have said a word to her before a proper introduction. She’d been willing to begrudgingly tolerate Father putting the Bastard on a lead. Now she sees that it is a very long one indeed. 

Still Ramsay smiles, but his eyes say otherwise. They are smaller and closer together than Father’s, than her own. She tries to reassure herself with every deformity or flaw she can detect on his person. No. It should be clear enough which one of them is legitimate, and which one of them was sired on a riverbank. “I am a Bolton in all but name.”

At that Father gives him a warning glance, and he presses his wet lips together.

“You would do well to remember your place,” Nell smiles thinly at him. She is not afraid. She cannot be afraid. He is nothing to her. He is utterly insignificant when she will soon have Ned Stark’s son eating out of the palm of her hand. “I am here because it is my right. You are here at our generous lord father’s pleasure.” At that the snarl all but returns and he nearly takes a step towards her, but Father says quietly, “Be on your way, Ramsay. There are things I must discuss with Donella.”

“Her manners, I hope,” he sneers, but walks away all the same, casting one last hard glance over his shoulder at her. Nell fights the urge to recoil.

The solar is the same as it always has been; richly decorated and cloyingly stuffy. She peers disinterestedly at the stag’s skull mounted over the hearth. When she was young Nell often imagined its eyeless sockets could still see her. The antlers are more yellowed than she remembers. Father sits; she stands. She imagines some men would prefer to project their authority by towering over her, but he is not that much taller than her, and he has always enjoyed being able to give orders without having to so much as move a muscule. She is vaguely aware that she is pouting and biting her lower lip like a distraught child. Oddly helpless and squirming under his gaze. Like a leech.

“I imagine your aunt has put many ideas about your ‘rights’ into your head,” he says once the door has shut with a note of dismayed finality behind her.

Nell imagines she is walking across a frozen pond, the ice as delicate as an eggshell under her feet. “She only wants what’s best for me, Father. You know how she worries.”

He makes a faint noise of assent. “And what do you imagine I want for you?”

The ice is heaving slightly underneath her feet. Her heart begins to pound and she does not take her eyes off the stag’s skull. She is terrified of him and she hates herself for being terrified and she hates him for still having this effect on her. Roose Bolton could be a shriveled old man of eighty, liable to break a bone with every step, and she would still respond like this to him, still stand here rigid with fear and anxiety. She could be a woman wed and bedded with a horde of brats and she would still grow pale and clammy before him, avert her gaze like a guilty dog, and listen to her voice go shrill and girlish and frightened. 

“You want me to make a good marriage,” she murmurs.

“And how does one make a good marriage, Donella?” If she was a son, she would have killed him years ago. She likes to imagine that sometimes. She wonders if his blood is the same milky not-white-not-grey as their eyes. Foul and diseased. If she was a son she’d have put an arrow through his throat on some hunt, and she’d be sliding a knife through the Bastard’s ribs at this very moment, and then she’d be well rid of both of them. 

“With a good dowry,” she recites, “and a fertile womb.”

“Your aunt assures me that you will not have your mother’s difficulties in the birthing bed.”

At that she tears her dry eyes away from the skull and looks at him, opens her mouth to say something, do something, how dare he, how dare he how dare he- But nothing comes out at all. Her tongue is heavy and still. Like a wet, dead leaf suck to the bottom of her mouth. She gives a jerky little nod. “I am very healthy, Father. I will give Robb Stark many sons.”

“Not too many, I hope. That often causes a great deal of strife.”

Roose Bolton was never an only child. But he was the only child of his parents to see manhood. 

“I won’t disappoint you,” she says, in reply to his expectant look. “I promise, Father. Aunt says I will make a fine lady of Winterfell.”

“Let us hope so. Do you think your brother would make a fine lord of the Dreadfort?”

“You can’t,” it bursts out of her not as an angry declaration or a horrified plea, but a little girl’s sniveling whine. Obnoxious and grating and spoiled. “Father-,”

“I agree,” he tells her. “A very poor lord. He is a regrettably slow learner, your brother.”

“He is no brother of mine,” the words slide out of her before she can stop them.

Roose Bolton smiles slightly at that, but there is no warmth or affection to it. “You sound like Bethany. When he was first brought here, as a babe, she was… displeased with me. She needn’t have worried. I had no intention of bringing the boy under my roof. I provided for him, to be sure, but he was never to know who had sired him. I should have had his mother’s tongue out.”

“He’s been here longer than a year,” Nell notes, cautiously. That must be so. The Bastard is altogether far too comfortable. Father does not have moods, because he does not know joy or anger or sorrow. But there are times when he is more… amenable, and she thinks this is one of them. “Barbrey said-,”

“I do not answer to Lady Dustin, much to her regret. Your brother is here because I have no sons, and he serves me better than no son would at all. You will try to forgive his coarser habits. He is not used to being in the presence of ladies.”

Dinner is a sullen, miserable affair. Father does not insist on the Bastard dining with them at the high table, to her relief. Ramsay eats with his group of sneering, poxy admirers. She suspects half or more of them likely report directly back to Father. It is what she would do, were she fool enough to let a brute like that into her household. They eat like wild dogs and spend much of their time around the kennels, from what she has heard. 

“You are never to be alone while you are here.” Barbrey tells her later that night, and Nell does not need to ask why. She is never alone. Her aunt or Dana or Sara are always by her side, whether she is sleeping or bathing or walking through the corridors or out riding along the Weeping Water. But for most of the fortnight of their stay, the weather is poor and rainy, and she spends much of her time indoors. 

She reads and writes and practices her needlework and sits in the godswood and prays to Mother. She never feels her beneath the weirwood. In a sense it is relieving. Mother would have hated to have been chained to the Dreadfort even in death. She is out running with wild things in the forest, most likely. Two days before they are due to depart for Winterfell, she walks the battlements with Sara. 

“You are certain you must go to teach some whinging little whelps reading and writing and sums?” Nell links her arm with Sara, who just barely avoids smiling.

“Education is every highborn child’s right. I consider myself very fortunate that my father sought me out and placed me in his own household before his death.” Had it not been for Mark Ryswell’s generous nature, Sara Snow might have lived an ordinary, ignorant life in some ramshackle village before marrying a woodcutter at sixteen. But it might have been happier, Nell sometimes thinks. She was never one of the Ryswells, not really. Always the bastard girl. Tolerated and educated but never really loved or welcomed.

“I could be with child by this time next year,” Nell begins hopefully, and not for the first time. “If you were to come to Winterfell-,”

“Your children will have far more learned and wise tutors than me,” but Sara dares to press a sisterly kiss to her cheek. “You will be fine. I wish you every happiness in the world. Perhaps I may visit you, when you are settled.”

Nell feels a strange lump in her throat, and blinks hard. “I thought you always said wishes were for little children and dying men.”

“So you were listening to me all these years.” Sara gives a breathy laugh, and it trembles in the cool, damp air as they come carefully down the stone steps. “Very well. I pray you seize every happiness in the world. You have never been one to wait for things to come to you, so I know you will take them without fear.”

They are still chuckling when they come across the yard, and Nell later thinks that was her mistake. She should have warned Sara. No one laughs like that in the Dreadfort. The stones themselves will not tolerate it. It was her fault, what came afterwards. Her fault. Mother would be ashamed of her. 

Two of the dogs are snarling and fighting over some scrap outside the kennel. Nell pauses, laughter abruptly dying, and realizes a moment too late that it is a half-dead cat, still yowling in pain. Sara’s cold hand stiffly clutches her own as a few of the Bastard’s boys leer their way. She can smell the one they call Reek from here, more creature than man. One of them, Dane or Damon, she thinks, gives a low whistle in their direction, as if trying to get a dog or horse’s attention. Then he is back to egging on the dogs- Jez and Helicent. Odd names for hunting hounds.

“Don’t stop,” Sara mutters in her ear, and for the first and only time that Nell can recall, her governess sounds genuinely afraid. She can feel Ramsay’s ugly grin on the back of her neck.

Sara relaxes once they’re indoors once more, but Nell does not. _The day after tomorrow, we will all be gone away from here_ , she tells herself. _Stop this nonsense. You are not going to be menaced by some half-mad dogs and some half-savage boys_. The rest of the day passes without much excitement, to her relief. But she does not sleep well that night at all, even as she listens to Dana’s soft breathing and the faint crackle of the fire. 

She has just finished changing that morning when her aunt steps inside her room, the maids hurrying past her. Nell finishes adjusting the scarlet ribbon in her hair, and glances up from the clouded looking glass. At the expression on Barbrey’s pinched face, her heart drops through the ice and into the cold depths of her stomach. “What is it?” She stands up too quickly, blood pounding in her head. 

“Sara is missing. One of the guards at the gate swears to me she set off at dawn for Hornwood.”

He swears to Nell as well, but he cannot meet her pale Bolton eyes so easily as he could her aunt’s. She knows, then. She does not want to believe it, but she knows. Sara Snow did not wake before dawn, pack her meager possessions, saddle a horse, and ride off into the gathering daylight. Nell wishes it were so, wishes Sara were the sort to leave without a goodbye and so suddenly, but wishing will not make it true. 

The truth is in the laughter and sniggers of Ramsay’s boys at breakfast. The truth is in the broad smile he gives her when she rushes into the great hall to speak with Father, breathless and bedraggled, the ribbon sagging in her hair, Dana pale and tense at her side, Barbrey’s lips drawn into a thin, furious line. This time, her brother shows his teeth when he grins, and Nell believes him then.

“I see no reason to disbelieve my own men,” Roose says, so very mildly, as Nell struggles not to scream and shout and snatch up a knife. “Perhaps you assumed too much of the woman’s fondness for you, Donella. She was a servant, nothing more. It may be she had some man waiting for her, now that her duty to you was done. It pains me to say it, but these natural daughters are often careless by nature, as any lord will tell you.”

 _You will try to forgive his coarser habits._ Bile creeps up her throat. Barbrey is speaking now to her father, low and outraged, but nothing will come of it. Nothing ever comes of anything here. She feels as though the hall were spinning very slowly around her. Dana takes her by the hand, gently, and leads her out. As soon as they are out of Father’s sight- the Bastard’s sight- her supper from the night before comes roiling back up her throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, please be aware of the tags for this fic, as this is going to take on a fairly darker tone compared to some of my other works. I have very little to no experience writing Roose or Ramsay, and what I was trying to get across in this chapter is the general affect Roose's 'parenting' has already had on both of his children, who are both eager to 'prove themselves' in very different ways. Nell because she sees her future marriage as a final separation from her father and her miserable childhood memories of the Dreadfort, Ramsay because he wants more than anything to be recognized as a legitimate son and heir that others will be forced to respect and obey.


	4. Donella IV

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell tastes bile in her mouth all the way to Winterfell, even with Barbrey promising her justice upon her marriage- “When you are Stark’s good-daughter, inquiries can be opened, accusations made, and we will all see the Bastard hang,” Barbrey tells her, her long fingers digging into Nell’s spine as she embraces her tightly. “He will not get away with this.” Perhaps she even believes it, for all her blunt nature. Her aunt has never ventured to lie to her before, considering a sour truth better than a sweet falsehood. 

But Nell knows better. Even once she is wed to Robb, nothing will happen to Ramsay so long as he proves useful to Father. Unless the Bastard commits a crime in full view of House Stark, he will see no punishment. Roose Bolton has found himself a prize fighting dog in his sole son, and is very loathe to give him up: “A peaceful land, a quiet people.” Nell suspects nothing quiets the people and their woes like the sight of Ramsay Snow and his boys riding through their village or town. 

Dana has other ideas. “They don’t dare whisper them in front of you, but I’ve heard stories,” she tells Nell on their first night back on the road, bundled in furs inside their tent, far away from Father’s. “There’s more girls missing. Or found before the animals got to them. All lowborn. When you are a Stark, you could offer their families protection, should they agree to testify.” 

Nell does not answer, curled up on her side and staring into the darkness. She feels as though all the rage and grief has hardened in her bones, making her body feel heavy and unwieldy to move or manage. It’s her fault. She may never be able to admit such a thing aloud, but it is. She provoked him, humiliated him in front of Father. Had she simply held her tongue and played the timid daughter, all of this might have been avoided. Instead she goaded the Bastard, the way a boy might a wounded dog, losing a few fingers for his trouble. 

Sara is dead because of the both of them. Her for taunting the beast and thinking to dance away unscathed, and him for realizing he might not get the chance to carve that superior smile off her face, and settling for the most available target instead. No one cares. Oh, Barbrey cares and Nell cares and Dana cares, the people who knew Sara best, who claimed her as their own, but no one else. She was a bastard daughter. Baseborn. Insignificant. Discarded. There would be a great outcry, an investigation, had she been a highborn lady, even from a minor house. A slaughtered maiden fair. 

But a Snow? They will never sing songs of her beauty or mourn her loss the way the North did Lyanna Stark’s or Danny Flint’s. She will be forgotten as carelessly as she was sired, leaving behind no mother, no father, no husband nor children. Nell will remember, and the memories will die with her. Sara reading to her. Singing to her. Correcting her posture and having her recite the correct greetings and farewells. Teaching her history and geography, looking over maps by candlelight, scratching numbers and letters on her slate. 

When she flowered at thirteen her aunt was out seeing to some matter in Barrowton, and it was Sara she went to, pale and queasy and more than a bit frightened of what it meant. It was Sara who rubbed slow circles in her back and brushed back her hair and fetched her tea to settle the pain and cramping. Sara who taught her how to use a needle so deftly, Sara who showed her how to dance, Sara who endured her tantrums and sullen moods and snappish retorts and willful ways. 

My fault, she thinks angrily, and has to ball her fist up and bite down on her knuckles so as not to cry. 

“He’ll pay,” Dana tells her fiercely in the night. “He won’t get away with it, Nell. None of them will. When you come back as Lady Stark, I’ll help you tear that damned kennel down.” 

Her dreams are full of snapping teeth and low growls, shapes rustling through the trees. A woman is screaming in the distance. She cannot bring herself to follow the sounds, knowing what she will find. In her waking hours, with nothing to do but sit in the saddle and stare at the horizon, she sometimes concentrates on her father’s form up ahead, thinks about how she would kill him. How she would make him suffer. He knew. And did nothing. She thinks she would kill him first, then the Bastard. Thinks about slipping into his tent and opening up his throat in his sleep. Thinks about him falling from the saddle and cracking open his skull on the hard, rocky ground.

News travels slowly in the North, and it is not until they’ve crossed the White Knife that they hear the first rumors. Jon Arryn is dead, and travelers are flocking to the usually desolate winter town in anticipation of a royal visit. It is all anyone can speak of, suddenly. Robert Baratheon has not come north in years. Five or more, Nell thinks. She has never met the king, nor the queen, but every soul in Westeros must know by now that Ned Stark was his boyhood friend. It should come as no surprise that they would wish to grieve the death of their foster father together.

“Do you imagine the king comes to Winterfell for a mourning visit?” Barbrey challenges her when they are just two days out from the winter town. “Think, Donella. Arryn is dead, and suddenly, at that. The man already shocked many, to not only survive the war but near fifteen years as Hand, old as he already was when it began. Who do you think Robert Baratheon might name now?”

Nell scowls at the chiding, but answers all the same, “You believe he means to offer Lord Eddard the position. Why not Tywin Lannister? He has already served under Aerys-,”

“Perhaps the king is sick of being surrounded by lions,” Dana ventures with a flippant little smile.

“Or perhaps he is the sort of man who values friendship over experience,” Barbrey says pointedly.

“So a fool, then,” Nell mutters, earning a approving look from her aunt and a bark of laughter from Dana.

“We have all been heartsick as of late,” Barbrey nudges her fine grey stallion up the hillside, looking straight ahead with something like pride on her long face, “but this may be an unexpected boon. Should Stark agree and go south, he will leave Winterfell and the North in the boy’s hands.” Without glancing back at Nell, she adds, “Your hands.”

From the little she recalls of Catelyn Stark during her last visit, Nell does not think the woman the sort to passively step aside and allow her young son and his scheming wife-to-be to manage not only Winterfell but all the North in her husband’s absence. But she declines to mention it to Barbrey, knowing it will just annoy her aunt. Let her have this, then. At present, Nell cannot bring herself to care about much of anything beyond Sara and her own guilt and rage.

Besides, Nell truly cannot see Ned Stark accepting such an offer, if it is even made. He is not an old man yet, with children married off and settled. Why, the youngest boy is but three, and Lady Catelyn is still young enough that she might have more children. And even were he older, after the fates of his father and brother… Why would any Stark wish to set foot in the Red Keep, least of all the man who fought a war to wrench it away from the Mad King? Nell has never had any particular desires to go south herself. She imagines the court is lively and exciting enough, but to be so far from the North, from the old gods and the weirwoods and Mother… It’s never seemed very enticing.

No, she does not think Ned Stark will be leaving Winterfell, nor the North, anytime soon. It is likely for the best. Robb may be near a man grown, turning fifteen later this year, but she doubts he has any real experience ruling beyond sitting in on meetings with his father and watching him mete out a lord’s justice to criminals. Her own father came into his seat at fifteen, but- she doesn’t think he was ever a child, not really. She will admit that she in truth barely knows her betrothed, but unless he is an accomplished actor, he is no Roose Bolton.

She prays not, at least.

Even had they not heard of the impending royal visit, the unusually active winter town should have been a forewarning. In the midst of the longest summer anyone call recall, it ought to be near deserted beyond the tavern and the small market square. Instead there are children running in the streets and dogs barking and traders and merchants setting up shop in anticipation of doing more business soon than they have in years. It reminds her of Barrowton, although the buildings are not nearly as neat and the streets are wider and full of mud and holes. 

Winterfell stands tall and strong and foreboding behind the small town. Nell is struck by the sheer scale of the castle. The Dreadfort is not small, but Winterfell is easily twice its size, if not thrice. Barrow Hall is minuscule in comparison. She feels the same brief shudder of trepidation that she did when she first rode through the gates. She remembers telling Sara- telling Sara- Nell blinks hard and then shakes the thought away. No. No sense in torturing herself in every waking moment. She will save that for the long, lonely nights ahead of her. Instead she makes eye contact with Barbrey, who raises her head high as they pass the gatehouse, and feels the weight of Father’s stare upon her. For once, Dana is well and truly rendered speechless.

Nell composes herself, straightens up in the saddle, gripping the reins of her favorite stallion, Roddy, named for Roddy the Ruin by Dana when they were drunk on some smuggled ale, and carefully arranges her expression into a pleasing smile. They will not say Donella Bolton came here cold and angry. They will say she appeared every bit the pliant, hopeful young bride to be. Once inside the Great Keep, she brings Roddy to a halt and waits patiently. Father appears, gloved hand outstretched to let her daintily dismount, while Walton assists Barbrey, and Dana vaults down before any man can reach for her. 

And there are the Starks, waiting with varying degrees of welcoming smiles on their somber faces. It has only been two years, perhaps a little less, and Nell takes a close look now, to see what may have changed. Unsurprisingly, what is most obvious is that little Rickon, who had just started walking (and screaming) when she last saw him, is now an apple-cheeked boy of three, with long coppery curls and a suspicious, pouting scowl, clutching his mother’s hand. Brandon looks older as well, with what seems a recent haircut and a restless air to him, fidgeting in place and constantly glancing up and away, as if waiting for something exciting to happen. 

The girls are perhaps less overtly changed, although Arya’s face seems even longer and Sansa appears even taller. Nell is certain the older girl will easily be her height within a few years, and her hair is longer as well; thick and lustrous auburn curls and high, elegant cheekbones. That one will be a great beauty, she thinks, without much jealousy. There is more to life than striking looks, and her own eyes are all the ‘striking’ that she has any need or wish for. Arya, the poor thing, is the only child of Catelyn Stark’s to take after her lord husband, and stands skinny and slouching beside Sansa, as if being prickled and prodded by her prettiness. 

Her betrothed is shoulder to shoulder with his bastard brother; their difference in height is less pronounced than it was two years ago, but Jon Snow is still slightly taller, and leaner, Ned Stark’s son in every sense of the word. It is even more evident now that he is nearing manhood. His hair is a darker brown than even little Arya’s or his father’s, and he holds himself like a man years older, sober and reserved and perhaps a little proud. In contrast, Robb seems open and unguarded, although his bearing is stiff- she wonders if he is nervous.

He is handsome, at least. One could call Jon Snow lithe and fine, but Robb is traditionally handsome in the way that makes girls blush and fidget. He may not be the tallest or the brawniest, but he has the suggestion of broad shoulders to come, an unmarked, reasonably freckled face, and auburn hair somewhere in between Rickon’s wild curls and Brandon’s straight locks in both texture and color. His eyes are blue and not too small nor too big, his nose and chin are well-proportioned, his brows are even, he carries himself well, not slumped or timid at all. Unlike the last time he saw her, he does not blush fiercely now, although when their eyes meet he does seem to tense a little and glance away, uncomfortable. 

She must change that, Nell thinks. They have exchanged the odd letter over the past few years, but she had no real passion for it, nor did he. He does not know her. He may distrust her, even, based on her family’s history. He may have feelings for another lady, or a castle servant, or even some tavern whore. Men are fickle, folly creatures. He must be comfortable around her. She must set him at ease, must convince him that she is half in love with him already, must tread the line between besotted girl and confident woman carefully. Play the innocent fool, it may put him off. Play the coy and knowing flirt, it may put him off. She will have to determine what sort of girl might rouse his interest.

She needs to get to know him, specifically to keep him from knowing her. He would not like the real her. Nell is a spiteful, vindictive, and sometimes terribly sad beast. He would not like that at all. He would not like to know that she most truly feels alive when she is hunting something, when she has some sense of being able to win, to triumph, to take a trophy. He would not like to know that she has kissed more boys than she has fingers to count with. He would not like to know that she is a reckless rider who was once thrown into the Saltspear while racing horses. He would not like to know that her aunt will not rest until Nell holds the North in her pale fist, not him. He would not like to know that Sara is dead because of her pride.

So he won’t know, she tells herself briskly, as Father bows before Ned Stark and presses a kiss to the back of Catelyn Stark’s hand, and Barbrey curtsies, head lowered so as to hide the aggravation at having to pay open respect and fealty, and Nell and Dana curtsy as well, low and humble. “Lord Eddard, Lady Catelyn, thank you again for welcoming me into your home,” Nell says graciously, and then turns to Robb. “My lord, I cannot tell you how pleased I am to begin the preparations for our marriage. I pray I will make you a good and able wife.”

He seems taken aback for a moment, before nodding and smiling politely. “The pleasure is mine, Lady Donella.”

“You must call me Nell, my lord,” she assures him, daring to take a slight step closer, so he might smell her perfume, see how thick and dark her hair gleams in the summer sunlight, watch that same light catch at the garnets at her white throat. She smiles, revealing her good, fairly straight teeth, and she hopes, the contrast of her reddened and only slightly chapped lips. “I hope we shall be good friends in the months to come.”

Soon after that, her father and aunt have retired to their respective corners of the guest house, the children have scattered, and Lady Catelyn has agreed to give her a tour of the castle once more. Nell is much more reserved in the older woman’s presence, sensing charm will only so far in her Tully blue eyes, and does her best to seem every bit the motherless daughter, eager to please and careful with her words. “I am afraid I will be terribly lost these first few weeks,” she ventures to say, as they walk through the ancient First Keep. “I remember the last time I was here, my lady- I was completely turned around on the bridge to the bell tower, and I kept walking past the armory.”

“Winterfell seems massive to anyone,” Catelyn says, not unkindly. She is still a very pretty woman, Nell thinks, with her long hair and her unlined face. Confident as well, and eloquent. She and Barbrey might have been friends, once, had she not been betrothed the only man her aunt ever loved. “I was very overwhelmed when I first arrived, and with a babe in arms as well. But I learned. Maester Luwin will be happy to assist when it comes to any part of our home. He knows Winterfell better than anyone, save my lord husband and Bran, I think.” She smiles a bit wider at that. All mothers have their favorites, and her second son is plainly hers. Nell likes to think Mother still would have favored her, even had her brothers lived.

“Bran?” Nell questions. “How came he to know Winterfell better than all his siblings?”

“He is quite the climber,” Catelyn’s smile turns rueful, and she shakes her head. “No matter how many times I have tried to dissuade him- our Bran might as well be a cat. Or a squirrel.” She pauses and cranes her neck up to peer around the nearest walls and rooftops. “Thankfully, I see no sign of him now. He must be with his pup.”

“He keeps a dog of his own?” Nell’s smile wavers at the thought of the last dogs she saw at the Dreadfort, but she fights to keep her tone light and even. “That’s very sweet-,”

There is a sudden explosion of noise, barks and growls, and she clamps her mouth shut in shock just as two small, furry, snarling shapes come tearing around the corner, footfall echoing after them. “Nymeria! Let Shaggy have it!” A girl is yelling, and Nell recoils in shock as Arya and Rickon appear, panting and red-faced with exertion on the heels of their dogs- no, not dogs, their fur is long and their ears stand erect, their tails bushy-

“Direwolves,” says Catelyn Stark, apologetically, before she turns on her shouting children and the snarling- wolves-

She must have misheard her future good-mother, because direwolves aren’t real, or at least, haven’t been seen south of the Wall in centuries, so they can’t be direwolves, and who in their right mind would let a child raise up a wolf pup-

The Starks, evidently, because that is what she sees, as the pups, already the size of smaller dogs, are wrestled apart, their growls turning into more playful yelps and whines. The one Arya holds close and nestles her long face against is grey-furred and golden eyed, and the one Rickon clutches is licking at his laughing face, pitch black with eyes of forest green. Nell stands perfectly still and horrified, until Catelyn says more sharply, “Children, please take the wolves into the godswood. You’re frightening your good-sister- yes, Arya, run along now, and do change, won’t you? Let’s not ruin another dress- Rickon, don’t pull his tail so, remember what your father said-,”

“Direwolves,” repeats Nell hoarsely as they rush off again, and Catelyn turns back to her, looking more than a little concerned at her pallor. “They… how did they come by two direwolf pups, my lady?”

“Six,” Catelyn corrects her, and she feels quite faint. “And growing quickly, too. I already know will come to regret allowing them indoors, but the children are already very attached, as you can see. And tomorrow is Arya’s name day- I haven’t the heart to forbid her much of anything this week.”

“Six?” Dana’s eyes when Nell tells her as much, late that evening. They should both be abed by now, but are far past the age of Barbrey coming in to scold them to sleep, and are instead huddled up in the window seat, watching their breath mist on the pane. “They have six bloody wolves running around? Gods, how long until they group up and start picking off the servants?”

Nell wants to laugh at that, but all that comes out is an unnerved exhale. “Can you imagine? And no one seems to find it a bit strange- Sansa was feeding hers under the table at dinner!”

“And she’s the delicate one,” Dana observes. “Are you certain they’re really a Tully’s children? Perchance Stark took a wildling mistress. Direwolves in the wolfswood?” She shakes her head. “I’d call that an omen for sure. Six for six.”

“An omen of what?” Nell rests her flushed face against the cold glass, letting her eyes shut for a moment. She saw Robb’s pup, or a glimpse of it at least, a grey blur with wicked yellow eyes. She’s never seen eyes that yellow before. She imagines when it’s bigger they’ll look like twin lanterns in the dark. 

“The gods are with them,” Dana says matter of factly. The Flints of the Finger are a superstitious lot, raised on that lonely, craggy stretch of land. They were raided so often by the Ironborn, shrieking demons from the sea, that they had to come to revere the gods of the North all the more. For protection and comfort when the Kraken was sighted off the cliffs. Dana took one look at Theon Greyjoy and hated him on sight. “Good luck for your marriage, then, so long as his wolf likes the smell of you.”

“You don’t think he lets it sleep with him, do you?” Nell tries to imagine waking in the night to find a full grown direwolf curled up beside her in bed. It’d have her head cracked off in its jaws before she had time to scream. 

Dana smirks at that. “Your children will have full heads of hair.”

“It’s not funny,” Nell hisses, although it is a little funny. At least, it would be were this not her home. A godsforsaken (or six times blessed, if you asked Dana) wolf’s den. Direwolves are animals, she reminds herself. Just beasts, no different from a dog or wolf- only bigger. Far bigger. In a few months’ time, these ones would make the hounds of the Dreadfort look like mewling kittens. She’s not sure if she should be heartened or terrified by that knowledge.

The next day is young Arya Stark’s ninth name day, and as such, little Arya Underfoot, as Nell has heard the servants and men at arms fondly addressing her, is given leave to do as she pleases, rather than a regular day’s worth of lessons with her old shrew of a septa. The entire family rides out to the wolfswood, a bizarre outing that Nell finds herself and Dana forced to accompany, while Barbrey and her father shrewdly cite a headache and a bad knee, respectively. Nell keeps good pace with the boys, and does not miss the surprised glances that Robb and Jon exchange when Roddy gallops past them. 

Arya is too small by her mother’s estimation for a horse, but she pushes her pony hard all the same and looks after Nell with wide grey eyes, sidling over to her at one point to say, somewhat accusingly, “You don’t ride like a lady.”

Nell thinks she’s lucky Dana did not hear that, but Dana is nearby pretending (poorly) to listen to some long tale of Theon Greyjoy’s, as he valiantly strives to get so much as a smile out of her. Thus far, his efforts seem to only be digging a deeper and deeper grave for himself. Dana looks liable to go after him with a riding crop.

“What do ladies ride like?” Nell doesn’t particularly like children. She assumes she will like her own, someday, but she doesn’t have Dana’s patience or indulgence of high-pitched voices, sticky hands, and grating questions. Arya in particular is a chatty little thing, particularly if her septa and sister are both out of earshot. Sansa is nearby, looking for flowers to pick with the steward’s daughter and her direwolf pup, who’s decked out in silk ribbons like a pampered lap dog. 

“Slowly,” Arya scrunches up her sharp nose. She has Catelyn Tully’s nose, but it looks sharper on Ned Stark’s long, thin face. “Like Mother and Sansa.” 

“I imagine your mother rides slowly because she has your little brother in front of her,” Nell says, removing her cloak. The weather has improved, and it’s nearly warm out. Her gown is a deep forest green that she hopes makes her pale eyes a bit more appealing and less startling. Arya is wearing what looks to be a new blue dress at her mother’s insistence, but her muddy boots and already mussed hair more than make up for the semblance of formality. 

Catelyn is being helped down by her lord husband, little Rickon squirming in her arms. They love each other, Lord and Lady Stark. Nell was always aware that theirs was a happy marriage, but they do love each other. Ned Stark’s face does not seem quite so long and solemn when he is smiling at his wife, who still blushes like a girl when he looks at her. 

“And I seem to remember horses making your sister nervous,” Nell continues. “Your lady mother should have her spend more time practicing her riding. If she makes a northern marriage, there’s not like to be a wheelhouse for her use. It’s important to have good control in the saddle.”

“Master Hullen says I’m a fine rider,” Arya informs her, following her over to the stream where blankets and quilts are being spread out, children are shouting and splashing, maids are giggling- Nell has never known an entire household to celebrate a child’s name day like this. It seems rather excessive. Arya is not even their firstborn daughter. There was always a fine celebration for Nell at Barrow Hall, but it was always small, just herself, her aunt, perhaps Dana and Sara as well-

“You are a fine rider for a girl of nine,” Nell forces herself to stop thinking about Sara by speaking more harshly than she intended. Arya’s long face falls immediately, and she bites her lower lip, hard. “But you are reckless in the saddle, and you don’t have the muscle yet to make up for it. Keep riding like that, and you won’t be able to keep your seat if your mount is startled or veers off course.”

She feels guilty as soon as the girl has wandered off, although she assures herself that a child’s crestfallen mood won’t last long, and it doesn’t- within minutes Arya Underfoot is running around, shrieking, with little Bran and a few of the servants’ children. To Nell’s bemusement, Dana even joins in, tying up her skirts on one side to allow herself to run and jump, much to the onlooking Septa Mordane’s visible horror. 

Steeling herself, Nell approaches Robb and his bastard brother; Greyjoy is a ways down-stream, apparently having stripped to swim. Several girls are staring after him with open mouthed infatuation. Never was there a more fortunate hostage in all of Westeros, Nell thinks sarcastically. Sansa appears to be sketching under a willow tree, head bent in concentration, while Jeyne Poole lies on her back beside her in the long grass, weaving a crown of daisies and bluebells for herself.

“Lady Donella.” To his credit, Robb all but launches himself to his feet when Jon sees her coming and elbows him. To his further credit, he keeps his balance, at that. He inclines his head, and Nell decides for amity over flattery, and smiles instead of curtsying. 

“I hope you wouldn’t mind my company, my lord, although I do mind that you refuse to call me Nell.”

“Nell,” he corrects himself, but then smiles slightly, and says, “Then you should call me Robb, Nell.”

“Of course.” She lets herself take his outstretched hand, as if she truly needed his help to take a seat on the ground, and adjusts her skirts. 

Jon Snow appears to be considering the merits of drowning himself in the stream. She can understand his aggravation; he has been Robb’s friend and brother for all these years, and now he is being replaced by a wife. A Bolton wife, at that, and one who pays him no more mind than one might an irritating gnat. Nell does not hate poor, motherless Jon Snow. But she will not allow herself to come to like him, either. Barbrey did not raise a fool. Ned Stark was a bold one, to bring up his bastard seed alongside his trueborn children. Most women would have come to loathe him for it. That he and Catelyn still enjoy such a fond relationship is surprising. Even Barbrey has said as much to her, and she cannot stand Lady Catelyn.

Nell certainly hopes he does not intend to insinuate himself into their household even after Robb’s marriage. She will not have it. Had Ned Stark the sense the gods gifted a louse, he would have been reasonable, and sent the boy to foster at an early age. It is hardly a great cruelty. Lord Hornwood did so with his bastard son, so as not to shame his wife, whose name Nell shares. Jon Snow could have enjoyed a reasonably contented life in some other prominent lord’s household. Instead the boy remained here, watching and wanting and waiting for an acceptance that will never come to him. That is far crueler, Nell thinks.

She prays Robb fears his mother’s wroth enough to never so much as think of siring a bastard of his own. She will have no little Snows drifting about Winterfell when she is Lady Stark. 

“Your sister seems to be having a fine name day,” she says, to break through the terribly awkward silence that has befallen the three of them. “It was very kind of your parents, to permit so much of the household a day like this as well. Many lords would not even consider such a thing.”

Her father wouldn’t. Her aunt wouldn’t. Nell is not sure that she would. At Winterfell, at times the lines between the high and lowborn seem almost blurred. None of the servants are overly familiar or disrespectful, to be sure, but they are… close. Even haughty Sansa seems to know them all by name, and the cooks and the washers and the maids, none of them so much as hesitate to bark a reprimand at Arya or Bran for running over a freshly cleaned floor or putting grubby hands on table tops.

They’re not afraid. That’s what surprises her. That they are not afraid of their lord and lady, nor their children. In fact, they almost seem to love them, in a way. 

“Arya wouldn’t have it any other way,” Robb says. “She makes friends everywhere she goes, and Father could never refuse her. Least of all on her name day. She was born while he was off fighting the Ironborn, and he’s still trying to make it up to her.”

Nell smiles in spite of her nerves, and Jon exhales in amusement. “Arya’s always been his favorite.”

“It’s true,” Robb agrees. “Mother thinks she reminds him of-,” he pauses, then trails off as a grey shape comes loping over. Nell draws back, tense, as his direwolf drops something wet and flopping onto the blanket. A fish, she realizes a moment later, as the boys begin to chuckle. Jon Snow is watching her closely, as if expecting her to pick up her skirts and flee, screaming for help, or faint dead away. 

“My apologies,” Robb belatedly says, cheeks reddening slightly, even as he ruffles the wolf’s shaggy neck, “Grey Wind, we’re not hungry-,”

“I am,” Nell says, forcing a smile, and what’s more, forcing herself to outstretch a bare hand to the drooling pup. “But I’ve never been fond of fish, I’m afraid. Could he find us some pigeons?”

Grey Wind, fur damp and yellow eyes gleaming, sniffs her fingers, then drags a wet tongue across her knuckles. She fights back a grimace, and laughs instead, as it were endearing and not disturbing in the slightest. Robb looks somewhat relieved. For her sake or the wolf’s, she can’t be sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter was a bit contradictory in that we see Nell's grief over the loss of Sara, which she feels compelled to repress, both so she can be 'strong' in front of her father, aunt, and the Starks, and because she feels guilty and blames herself. But we also see the relative 'lightness' or what seems to Nell like lightness, of the Starks- Nell immediately begins to note the ways in which their family dynamics and household differ from her own, and it startles her. If this chapter seems overly critical of the Starks, it's due to Nell's habit of picking people and places apart- she assumes immediately that Robb won't like any version of her but a manufactured one designed to appeal to his pride or ego, she assumes the worst intentions (or potential for the worst intentions) with Jon due to being a bastard and brought up alongside his half-siblings, and she assumes that she's never going to be very close with Sansa or Arya, dismissing one as haughty and the other as unruly. (I also found the idea of someone seeing direwolves for the first time to be pretty amusing; for Nell it's as if she showed up and they were all riding velociraptors or something).


	5. Donella V

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell sees her father depart a fortnight after their arrival at Winterfell, but her aunt stays on a week longer. No words pass between her and Roose; Nell has barely spoken to him since they left the Dreadfort. She has nothing for him, and he nothing for her. If she forces herself to look and smile obediently at him for more than a few minutes, she will do something rash, she’s sure of it. It is for the best. The quicker he goes, the less time the Starks have to consider that there may be more than the ordinary tension of a cold widower and his heiress between them. She does not think Ned Stark knows what her father does out of his sight, anymore than a child knows what wild animals do in the wood. 

If she were better, she might go running to her future good-family the moment Father leaves and confess that she knows him to be a monster, that he has broken the law, that he has let crimes go unpunished and uses his bastard the way a butcher uses a cleaver. But House Bolton is not the only house to go on practicing a lord’s rights to the first night. What good would it accomplish? She has no proof of it, and her claims could easily be derided as a scheming girl’s attempt to see her father removed from power so she might claim her inheritance all the sooner.

And in truth, she does not want justice. She does not want to see Father down on his knees before Ned Stark’s greatsword. She wants revenge. She wants to cut his tongue out and feed it to him. She wants him to feel as helpless and trapped and terrified as she has felt, as all those women have felt. It is selfish. It is more about her than anyone else. Nell doesn’t care. When he pays for what he’s done, he will pay it to her, the most deserving, not to Ned Stark. He will look at her before he dies and he’ll know that he sowed his own reaper. It will be Bethany’s victory. 

She says none of this to Barbrey, of course. Her aunt may despise her father, but she does not hate him the way she does the Starks. For her, Roose is an unpleasant but necessary element. Like worms writhing in the ground beneath their feet. Or a bout of miserable weather. Part of Nell is furious with her for not hating him more. Her sister. Her own sister suffered at his hands, and her aunt can still tolerate him. She knows it is for her sake. Were Barbrey vicious and scathing with Roose, he could have easily snatched Nell back from her household as easily as he gave her. 

“You are so close,” Barbrey tells her, as evening gathers around the guest house and the servants begin lighting the torches and lanterns outside. “Do not falter now. When the king leaves, Stark will go with him, and by the time you are wed at the year’s end, Winterfell will already know you for its lady.”

“You cannot know that the offer will even be made, nor that Lord Eddard should accept it,” Nell mutters crossly, yanking out an errant stitch from her pattern, needle deftly twisting in her fingers. She enjoys sewing and knitting; it’s something useful to do with her hands, and it goes overlooked by men. If you want a man out of your sight, as her aunt would say, pick up a needle and thread. A lord may encourage his daughters to practice their handicraft, but he will never linger near a gaggle of women sitting by the fire or a window, heads bent over their work. Better to exchange opinions in a sewing circle than anywhere else. Even the comforting sounds of a weaving loom can drown out much. 

“I know that Stark is loyal,” says Barbrey. “I know that Stark considers himself a good man. I know that Stark fought a war at the king’s side, fought a war for the sake of Robert’s lost love,” here her tone takes on a brutal twist, and Nell murmurs almost abashedly, “She was still his sister, Aunt.”

“Lyanna Stark no more desired a rescue from Rhaegar than a whore desires the pox,” Barbrey tells her in a low, sharp tone. “They venerate the girl here as if she died throwing herself before an invading army, but I was not much older than her. There was no love between her and Robert. Nor her and her father, I’ll wager, after he made that match. But Rickard Stark had ambitions that could not be met in the North,” she sniffs. 

“Just because she did not want Robert does not mean she wanted Rhaegar,” Nell mutters, but lets it go. Now is hardly the time to engage in a heated debate with her aunt over the subject of Lyanna Stark’s virtues or lack thereof. Among the walls of Winterfell, she is beloved. Nell has seen her statue down in the crypts, the sole stone woman. House Bolton keeps no statues of its past lords or ladies, just their names engraved into the stone, and she’s glad of it. She would not want to see her father’s face staring down at her from the darkness long after he is dead.

“Stark will go,” Barbrey continues as if she had not heard her; the light from the hearth mottles her face, making her briefly look years older. “He may take the younger children, he may take none of them, but he will never bring his heir south. The boy is untested; you have seen him in the training yard, haven’t you?”

Nell blushes in spite of herself; she and Dana had made a game of it, to watch the boys and men spar. “He uses blunted steel,” she admits. 

“He is a child in a young man’s body,” Barbrey says with no little satisfaction. “He has never seen so much a skirmish, nevermind battle. Brandon Stark was blooded by fifteen. Willam came to me fresh from war; you could smell it on him. Yours will wed you still half a boy. You’ve seen more blood than that one.”

“What of it?” Nell retorts. “Shall I go seek out some wildlings for him to fight?”

“What you fail to see is the advantage this presents,” Barbrey scolds her, gripping her wrist. “Listen to me. What does Robb Stark want?”

Nell grimaces. “I barely know him- how could I, we’re never left alone together, he’s always running off somewhere with his wolf and Snow-,”

“What does he want?” Barbrey snaps. “You know this much, Donella.”

Nell hesitates, then yanks her wrist away, scowling. “He wants to make his father proud. He wants to prove himself. He worries they see him as weak for his southern heritage. His own bastard brother has the Stark look, but not him.” She pauses, then says, “Friends come easy to him. Girls too. He is not spoiled but he is comfortable. He has been comfortable all his life.”

“And has the boy told you all of this? Have you won his confidence already?”

“No,” says Nell through her teeth. “But I know what he wants all the same. He wants to like me. He would like any girl they gave him, so long as she was not unpleasant to look at or listen to. He admires my riding, thinks I am well-spoken and clever.”

“But…”

“But my family name gives him pause, I think- I know,” she corrects herself. “I know it does. My father makes him nervous. You make him wary. And I…”

“Now you have it,” Barbrey says approvingly. “He wants to prove himself, but you have spent these past three weeks striving to prove yourself worthy of him? You, unworthy of a Stark?” She exhales. “Do you truly think his lineage so special, so blessed, that our gods elected them to lead us all? They won the title of king by conquering those who stood in their way, and sheltering those who would fight beside them. And none gave them such trouble as the Red Kings. So tell me, my Bolton of a niece, why are you doing a coddled little boy’s work for him?”

In a rare display of open affection, she grips Nell by the shoulder and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Let him prove himself worthy of you. Let him be uncomfortable. Let him fight for it. It will serve you better than being at his beck and call. Why should it be easy for him?”

“But if I am cold with him-,”

“You need not be haughty and vain,” Barbrey cautions. “Don’t loose all your arrows at once, child. But a little aloofness is oft a good thing. Especially when it comes to men.”

 _Did you learn that from Brandon Stark_ , Nell wants to ask, but she is not that stupid. Mayhaps it is true, that Barbrey thinks she could have snared him for a husband had she played coy and modest, had she not given up her maidenhead so freely. This is different. Nell already has Robb Stark brought to bay. But the hunt is not over yet. Barbrey may be correct in advising her to reserve her strength and keep her distance, rather than trying to ambush him at every turn, smiling and laughing and flattering him.

It is the last token of advice her aunt leaves her with, and Nell feels suddenly and unexpectedly bereft upon watching her ride out with her guardsmen and small group of servants. None could call Barbrey Dustin a warm or tender-hearted woman, but Nell loves her all the same, and she was all she had for so long. Her and Sara Snow. She stands beside Dana, watching her go, and then turns away before a hard lump can form in her throat. It is not as if they will never see each other again. Barbrey will return for her wedding, and once they are wed she will surely be able to convince Robb that a visit to Barrowton is only proper. She almost likes the thought of it, returning like a victorious warrior with her husband at her side, all that ambition finally realized.

Fortunately, there is not much time to dwell on it with the anticipation of the royal household visiting. Nell is willingly swept up into the preparations, shadowing Catelyn with a very distractible Dana, trying to take note of how she speaks to the steward, the maester, the servants. The choices in menu, the seating for every prominent guest, the strict instructions to the servants as to who will serve what, and who, and when, and how to address the king and queen and their children.

There is no life of leisure when a castle of Winterfell’s size is entertaining guests for near a month. And certainly not when Winterfell has not seen guests of such magnitude in years. The Starks seem to seldom entertain as it is, which is not uncommon in the North, where holdfasts are far more spread out and distant from one another, but the tension and strain of living up to the expectations of Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister is palpable. A lord may show every courtesy, but it is his lady wife who is expected to guide the entertainments and the feasting, the pace of each and every day, the one who must see it all run smoothly from dawn to dusk.

So when the first of the riders come streaming in through the gates, when the yard is hush with excitement and awe, and those gold banners are flapping in the breeze- well, Nell thinks she could be forgiven for her first feelings towards House Baratheon of King’s Landing. That is, complete and abject disappointment. As Robert embraces Ned with a shout of delight, and the queen steps forward, lifting her skirts in a doomed effort to keep them from dragging through the three inches of snow and mud on the ground, and the crown prince dismounts from his white horse, she stares. Openly.

“But he is _fat_ ,” Dana hisses to her in shock; they are standing slightly behind the Starks, alongside Theon Greyjoy and the Pooles. Theon appears torn between admiration for the queen’s admittedly beautiful looks- the singers did not exaggerate about her golden locks nor her tall, regal countenance- and sullen scorn for the king. Somewhat understandably, given it is Robert Baratheon who is responsible for him being a hostage of Winterfell’s in the first place. Jeyne Poole is up on her tiptoes, craning her neck to try to get a better glimpse of Prince Joffrey.

“Well spotted,” Nell hisses back. “Tell me, is the sky also blue today?”

But she can understand the mutual feelings of shock and dismay all the same. It is not that the king is a fat man who looks years older than he should. There are plenty of fat men who’ve held a throne. It is that they have spent their entire lives being fed tales and songs of the Rebellion, of the North’s bravery, of how bold and powerful Robert Baratheon was, of how he never faltered, of how their lord, the Stark, was at their king’s side all the while, it was his family the king was fighting for, not just himself, but for the North, their honor and pride, all of them- Well, some shock and dismay seems justified, in that case. This is what the North helped sit on the Iron Throne? A fat oaf and his Lannister wife, who looks about as happy to be in the blustery North as a goose is happy to be on a spit over a fire.

This is not her first feast as a betrothed woman, but it is her first feast as a maid of seventeen at Winterfell, and since they will have singers from the south and real dancing and at least seven courses, Nell feels some sense of import is bestowed upon the night, however disappointing the king and queen might have been. She has been careful to display her newer and finer gowns until now, to show the Starks how wealthy and well-made she is, how much care she has put into her appearance, but tonight she practically bathes in perfume and has her hair brushed out until it gleams darkly in the torchlight. 

She leaves it down and flowing, glad for its length- it comes just to the small of her back- and dresses in a deep, raw shade of magenta. As far as her house colors go, she prefers how she looks in red over pink, but with Lannisters in attendance it is perhaps best to let them have their treasured shades of scarlet and crimson. Her bodice is a mass of sewed silken flowers, dotted with garnets- this is her very best gown, shy of her wedding dress, and she does not wear it idly. The neckline is cut for a woman, not a child, and she admires the swell and fall of her figure in the looking glass for several moments. Nell knows a lady dresses to project power and beauty and grace, that she dresses to secure the appreciation and admiration of others, not herself, but she still feels that she has never looked lovelier, never looked stronger. 

“It looks like someone was murdered in a patch of roses,” Dana declares upon viewing it, “but it was worth all the scabby fingers and botched thimbles, I think.” Nell reckons they have both constructed and sewn more than half of their clothing, and the bodice for this dress alone took six weeks of work. It was not ill-spent, to her relief. This is not a little girl’s haphazard fumbling with a needle and thread. Together they sewed Dana’s dress, which alternates grey and black for her house’s colors, with silver ribbons down the sleeves that make her blue eyes glimmer. She has looped her hair up into two bound braids on either side of her head, and rests said head on Nell’s shoulder as they look at their reflections.

“Well, we’re no southern flowers,” Dana says. “But we do clean up nicely for a pair of northern savages.”

“Did the prince-,”

“If Joffrey Baratheon keeps up at this pace, he’ll have insulted three quarters of the castle by midnight,” Dana scoffs, patting her on the shoulder. “I can’t say I envy you your seat at the high table tonight, Nellie. If that one was any more loose with his tongue, it’d be flopping out between those worm-lips of his.”

“He’s handsome enough,” Nell shrugs, “tall, blonde-,”

“You never minded boyish blondes,” Dana sighs with a taunting grin. “Poor, sweet Denys-,” she yelps when Nell swats at her, “but I think you were far fonder of Timotty- remember, the free rider who stayed a sennight- oh, but he was dark-haired, bearded, and short!”

“He had lovely lips,” Nell admits, with a small smirk at the memory. He had made her laugh so often, something not altogether easy for a man to do.

“He had a lovely time trying to feel his way under your skirts, he did!”

She keeps Barbrey’s words in mind when it comes time to enter the hall, and spares no more than a brief smile for Robb, whose blue-eyed gaze appears riveted by the lush colors of her gown, at least until he manages to focus on her face instead. “You look beautiful,” he tells her, and she feels almost sorry about it, because she thinks him honest, and some girlish part of her does so want to be courted and wooed. 

“You must mind your tongue,” she tells him instead of a tittering ‘thank you’. “Have you not heard? No other woman can be counted as beautiful when there is a queen in our midst.” 

For all her nerve, Nell only dares say such a thing because she saw his face when the queen rather boredly asked his mother to be shown to the guesthouse, and because the queen and king and Lord and Lady Stark are well ahead of them, entering the feasting hall to the hushed murmurs and dull chatter of the waiting crowds, with a few cheers slicing through. Robb stares at her as if she’d begun to speak High Valyrian for a few moments, then says under his breath, “No other woman can be counted as proud when the queen is in our midst.”

He takes her arm in his and Nell has to glance away to fight the smirk from brimming across her face. So there is some bite to this one after all; he is not all gallant words and boyish smiles. Had he taken offense or merely stared at her, befuddled and dim, she would have been most disappointed. Nell thinks she could tolerate many things in a man before stupidity. Better an honor-less rogue than a thick-headed imbecile. Although of course Robb Stark would likely rather be dead and buried than go without his honor. The Starks tend to theirs so carefully, the way a farmer does his crops.

When they enter she holds her head up high and feels briefly all the eyes upon her; she catches a glimpse of Dana in the crowd; afforded a place of honor close to the high table, but not at it. For a split second Nell wishes she were there as well, part of the crowd, where no one would care what she spoke of or how she ate her food or what she looked like. Then she dismisses it; this is her right. She is betrothed to a high lord; she is already considered a high lady. It is a great honor to dine with the royal household, even if their ranks include a Kingslayer and an Imp. 

She searches the hall once more, looking for Snow. She finds him sequestered towards the back, likely placed as carefully out of sight of the royal family as possible. Nell does not know how they treat their bastards in the south; perhaps it is easier- a wealthy lord could simply send his natural sons to squire. Some might even shed ‘Rivers’ or ‘Waters’ or ‘Flowers’ for a forged name of their own after attaining a knighthood and being awarded lands for their valor. But she doubts they sit them at the table with their trueborn siblings for meals, as Ned Stark has always done until now. Jon Snow looks ill-pleased at this development; his expression is near a glower, at least until Rickon stops to chatter to him.

As the child is blocking their path, it takes the combined efforts of Robb and Jon to get him moving again. Nell continues on her way smoothly until Robb escorts her to her seat. The feast itself is full of toasts and speeches and the constant clatter and thuds of courses being served and removed from the table. Something is wrong with the elder Starks; Lord Eddard seems tenser than usual, and Lady Catelyn conducts herself as one might when confronted with a wild animal, all quiet words and cautious movements, due to being seated beside the queen, whose anger over her husband’s insistence on a mourning a long-dead girl has yet to abate. 

Robert is drunk by the end of the second hour, despite his seemingly impressive endurance for mead and ale, and Cersei appears to be debating the merits of excusing herself early from the meal. The Kingslayer’s smiles never reach his pretty eyes, the Imp excuses himself to wander the feasting hall at some point, Robb’s uncle, Benjen Stark, makes an appearance and then heads off to console Jon Snow, Theon Greyjoy lasts all of three hours before being tempted away by the sight of some wench or another, and Joffrey keeps up a steady and unceasing litany of complaints about the food, the seating, the smells, and everything else that comes to mind.

Nell will give credit where it is due; Sansa shows an impressive amount of commitment already, hanging on the boy’s every word. But she has some sympathy; he is very tall and very handsome, and much can be forgiven when a girl is eleven and infatuated and has never danced with a boy at a feast before. Arya spends more time playing with her food than eating it, while the princess Myrcella looks on in horrified fascination, and Bran and Tommen seem to have struck up something approaching a friendship, talking about cats and dogs and direwolves and birds. Rickon nods off into his stew near the fourth hour, and is rescued by Robb, who yanks him back into his seat with one hand, then sends him off to bed with a maid.

Her legs are going stiff and numb by the time they begin to push back the tables and benches for dancing, but Nell is tired of sitting, and her appetite finally gave out an hour and a half ago. Besides, she does enjoy dancing, even if it will make her think of Sara and her careful measures of every step. Yet she can hardly ask Robb to dance herself, and so she straightens a bit and sighs a bit, and is well-rewarded when he at last asks, “Would you like to-,”

“Very much so,” Nell does not even wait for him to finish speaking; her hand is already in his. And he does look handsome tonight; the crown prince may be taller, but Joffrey takes after his mother in every sense, and is almost too pretty as a result. He is very much a boy, but in this hazy feasting hall Robb Stark could nearly be a man. When he leads her out onto the floor, she knows she is flushed and smiling, despite all of Barbrey’s warnings and Dana’s teasing. He is a good dancer, not a splendid one, but good enough that she is not frustrated with tripping over both their feet. They dance two rounds before the call to change partners goes up, and she spins into Greyjoy’s arms.

“Don’t worry,” he assures her with a crooked grin, “I keep much better pace than Robb.”

Nell has no doubt that Theon would quite like to bed Robb’s wife before him, friends that they may be, but she could do without the frequent reminders. “Yet I still find myself waiting for you to catch up, my lord,” she retorts, and slams the heel of her boot down onto his toes before his hands can wander even lower. She dances with Cley Cerwyn next, then Benfred Tallhart, then Prince Joffrey, who looks as though he expects some sort of reward for deigning to dance at all. His hands don’t wander as much as Greyjoy’s, but she dislikes the way his green eyes immediately narrow in on her breasts. Cley and Benny, buffoons that they both can be, suddenly seem the height of chivalry.

“Will you be coming south to court?” He is five years her junior but speaks as if trying to communicate with a small, stupid child. “My mother tells me Lady Sansa may be my wife, and she must have ladies in waiting.” Joffrey must take after his father, who already has some girl in his lap. Poor Sansa. This one is the sort who, given a few years, will spend half his time with whores, and the other half of his time trying to coax his wife’s ladies into the profession themselves. 

“You are too kind, my prince,” Nell says as patronizingly as she dares. Lucky that he seems as slow-witted as the king, even without all the mead. “But I’m afraid the royal court is no place for me. I’m promised to Winterfell and Lord Eddard’s heir.”

“When I am king, Robb Stark will swear fealty to me as his father did mine,” Joffrey boasts, then adds in a voice he likely considers alluring, “I’ll insist he bring his wife south with him.”

Nell has to fight hard not to laugh aloud at that, and manages to scrape out, “So very thoughtful of you, my prince.” Mercifully they switch partners then, before he realizes she’s far more amused than she is awed by his childish bragging. Swear fealty indeed. From the way Robb has been looking at Joffrey, the only thing he’ll be swearing to do is break a practice sword across his slender kneecaps. Uncharitably, she hopes Robert Baratheon is the sort who beats his sons. This one could use a good belting to the royal arse. 

By the fifth hour, Cersei has left with her younger two children. Bran and Rickon have been ushered off to bed. Catelyn prowls the feasting hall on the lookout for Arya, who is currently hiding under a table, eating a leg of chicken and insisting she is not tired in the slightest. Robert has vanished, along with several women. And the singers turn to bawdier songs. Nell has sat the last two out, but claps and stomps along when the opening strains of ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’ begin.

Improper as it is, she almost hopes Robb asks her to dance to this one, but as he approaches he instead asks if she has seen Jon Snow. “No, should I have?” asks Nell incredulously, but regrets her dismissive tone at the look that crosses his face. It is something between disappointment and anger. Is he truly so upset, that she professes no fondness for his bastard brother? What did he expect? Her to embrace him as family? 

He turns away from her, but she impulsively catches at his elbow. “I meant nothing by it, only your brother did not seem the sort for drinking- or whoring,” she adds flatly, with a nod to several of the nearby men groping anyone lowborn and in a skirt that passes them by. 

“I thought to have a drink with him before the night was over,” Robb says coolly, but his expression softens somewhat. 

“Then might we dance this last one? Women of gentle birth should retire soon,” Nell tucks a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear, and straightens her shoulders.

He hesitates. “This is not-,”

“Oh come, they said, oh come to the fair! The fair? Said he, but I’m a bear!” the men (and a few women) around them roar along with the singers, and she laces her fingers with his.

Music is a chief passion of very few in the North, but while Nell never did learn to play the high harp, as Sara was proficient in the bells and nothing more, she sings along gamely under her breath as he, reluctantly or not, leads her back into the dance. “And down the road from here to there. From here! To there! Three boys, a goat and a dancing bear!”

“They danced and spun, all the way to the fair! The fair! The fair!” Dana has caught Jeyne Poole by the hand, seeing her bereft of a partner, and they are both dancing the lady’s part while gasping with laughter as they evade Daryn Hornwood, who is near as tall and ungainly as his house’s sigil, a moose.

“Oh, sweet she was, and pure and fair!” Nell sings, and for a moment locks eyes with Robb, and the rest of the verses muddle on her tongue. It may be the wine or the smoke from the fires or the joyful, ribald chaos around them, but for that moment she sees the boy and not the Stark, and thinks he may have briefly glimpsed the girl and not the Bolton. Fear thuds in her chest suddenly, and she falters, almost stumbling as she loses her rhythm, but he catches her by the waist, and his hands are too hot, burning through the thick fabric of her gown.

“The bear smelled the scent on the summer air. The bear! The bear! All black and brown and covered with hair!”

Breathless, they step off to the side.

“Are you alright? I thought you might faint." He is kinder than he should be. That too is disturbing.

Nell has never fainted in her life and resents the suggestion that she is even capable of such a thing, but simply shakes her head. “Just more tired than I realized, I think. I should excuse myself. You wanted to find your brother-,”

“I’ll escort you and Dana to your rooms,” Robb says instead, and she feels an almost guilty tinge of victory. “You’re not used to the keep yet, and men can take liberties at a feast like this.” It sounds more as though he’s justifying this to himself than to her.

“They can,” Nell agrees, and only then do they both realize that he is still holding onto her waist, and she to his shoulders. He lets go as if scalded by water, while she busies herself with dragging a giggly, teetering-on-drunken Dana away from the dancing. The walk to her chambers is far too short, and punctuated by periodic throat-clearing and Dana’s tuneless humming: “Oh, I'm a maid, and I'm pure and fair! I'll never dance with a hairy bear!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have any particular desire to 'rewrite' multiple chapters from AGoT, but I thought the feast was a good opportunity to show events from a different perspective, since Jon memorably bails out after arguing with Benjen about joining the Night's Watch. Naturally, Nell is not very impressed with the Baratheons/Lannisters and their collective family drama. I sometimes struggle with Robb- he's not a POV character in the books and we only ever see him through his mother/younger siblings, and due to this I've seen his characterization in fanfiction vary wildly. (Even the ASOIAF wiki has very little to say about his personality). So I am hopeful that I will be able to maintain a consistent characterization for him that doesn't seem too out of left field or stagnant.


	6. Donella VI

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell knows she is being childish, but she cannot help her pinched mouth as she huddles in her furs in the yard, watching the men prepare for their hunt. Were it not for the royal company, she is certain she could convince or otherwise charm her way into joining them. It is hardly uncommon for ladies to ride out with their lords hunting or hawking, even in the south. But the king is here and it is the day before Lord Stark is due to depart for King’s Landing alongside Sansa, Arya, and Bran. Furthermore, she knows by now that it is not Ned Stark’s custom to take even his sons hunting with him; he has no real passion for it, and seems to think a hunt is no place for children. 

Nell was hunting with her mother at six, but Robb has only been out tracking deer or boars a few times. It is a small party that leaves this morning; no more than twenty men, and six dogs. They are well-trained hounds, but their furtive eyes and low whines and yelps repel her all the same. She could easily have slept in, as Dana is doing at this very moment, and avoided all this fuss, but as irritated and tired as she may be, one should see their betrothed off on a hunt. Lady Catelyn is here, speaking quietly and soberly with Lord Eddard, presumably about the last-minute preparations for the departure on the morrow, or about the final feast tonight. 

Their guests have been here for near three weeks, and while it is a short and altogether uneventful visit, aside from Robb and Joffrey’s bickering and posturing in the training yard, Nell feels as exhausted as the Starks themselves. The servants are dead on their feet from the strain of three hundred extra bodies, to feed, house, and tend to, sleep is hard to come by with men up drinking and singing every night, and the long lines for the privies and the lack of privacy has taken its toll. Nell has found it difficult to continue to get a sense for Winterfell when there is a constant stream of people coming down this stairwell or that, lounging about in corridors, sitting in courtyards. 

But Barbrey proved correct, as she often does. By now it is common knowledge that Ned Stark has accepted Robert’s offer to come south as his hand. How long the appointment may last is anyone’s guess- Dana wagers he will be able to endure the capitol for no longer than a few years- but neither she nor Nell have ever been to court. Perhaps it truly is some golden summer oasis, full of lovely balls and grand tourneys. The Stark children are certainly envied around Winterfell for this opportunity. Jeyne Poole shrieked in delight and nearly fainted when she was told she would accompany her father south with them. Hoping to make a good marriage to a minor lord, no doubt, or perhaps an eager young knight.

Nell imagines that is why the Stark girls are going- Sansa, of course, because her betrothal to Joffrey is to be formally announced tonight, and Arya because Ned Stark likely hopes to cultivate something approaching grace in his younger daughter, and seek a match for her with a prominent southern family. Perhaps one from the Riverlands- the Blackwoods share northern heritage. Or the mighty Mallisters, steadfast allies to the Tullys. The wealthy Mootons control Maidenpool, a thriving port and an enviable seat. Or even either of the powerful Vance lines. Nell may not know most of their colors or sigils, but she was educated on all the prominent houses in Westeros, not just the high lords. Sansa can identify even more than her- the girl may seem silly at first glance, but she has a keen eye for detail and a good grasp of lineages. 

Or perhaps Ned Stark will wed young Arya to her cousin, Robert Arryn, although ‘Arya Arryn’ sounds a bit absurd, and Nell has heard rumors among the southerners that Lady Lysa is eccentric and strange and the boy weak and sickly. Either way, a southern marriage for both girls is all but assured. Bran and Rickon will marry northern girls and rule fledgling holdfasts of their own someday- perhaps one will be given Moat Cailin to restore. And in fifty years, they may speak of the Karstarks, the Branstarks, and the Rickstarks. 

Trying to picture Bran and Rickon as grown men is almost humorous enough to break her out of her mood. She may not be fond of children, but Bran is not easy to dislike, quietly earnest and curious of any and all animals. She’s caught him peering up at Roddy many times now. Perhaps she will let Bran ride him this afternoon, just briefly. He must get used to controlling a horse and not a pony, after all. Rickon is always in trouble of some sort, and half-wild at that, running servants and siblings alike ragged. Perhaps he is Brandon Stark come again. What would her aunt think of that? She nearly smiles.

“Something funny?” Robb has appeared before her while she was busy shivering and brooding on the Starks’ marital prospects. Nell blinks in surprise and adjusts her grip on her furs as the wind cuts through the courtyard. The summer snow may have melted, but it’s still been bitterly cold these past few mornings, although it will likely be much warmer by the time the sun is all the way up. She wonders what the weather is like in King’s Landing. Hot and muggy, she imagines. What do the women wear? Surely they would all be dropping like flies in voluminous skirts or tightly laced stays.

“Only the thought of Theon and Joffrey trying to wrangle a boar while the king drinks himself senseless,” she says, although she is careful to keep her voice down. Not that anyone is bothering to listen; men are either complaining of the cold or raring to ride out, already in the saddle. “Were I to accompany you, I promise you we would have the boar well in hand and be back here before noon.”

Robb does chuckle at that. “Next time,” he suggests. “Father has no appetite for hunts, but perhaps you could show me the best deer trails. It will be quiet enough around here, with all of them gone.” Some of his amusement fades then, and she can hear the slight sadness in his tone; he is genuinely sorry to see his father, brother, and sisters go. Robb is not the sort of boy who will leap at the chance to rule Winterfell and the North in all but name. It makes her feel almost guilty, before she brushes it aside. He will need her to guide him in this. He is just a boy.

“I would be glad to.” Nell hesitates, uncertain of how to see him off. His is not her husband, so she cannot kiss him, and even to embrace him would seem presumptuous. But he is not ‘just’ her lord, either, and a curtsy would be odd at a time like this. Instead she clears her throat slightly, and says more formally, “I wish you good fortune on your hunt.” Robb smiles broadly, inclines his head to her, and goes to mount his courser. His auburn hair is gleaming in the pale, emerging sunlight, and as she watches, Grey Wind comes loping over to join him. The wolf keeps its distance from her, as if it can sense her discomfort and unease. But it is never far. The hair on the back of her neck prickles as Grey Wind’s yellow eyes meet her own for a moment, before she looks away, frowning.

Lady Catelyn sees her husband off with a kiss, then comes to stand beside Nell as they smile and wave and see the men off. Nell has half a mind to crawl back into her warm bed, but is duty-bound to ask her future good-mother if she has any need of her. Assisting Catelyn may be better than yet another few hours spent in some cramped tower room with the younger girls, after all. It is hardly the needlework Nell objects to, but she can never speak freely, with a princess and the septa in earshot, and Sansa and Arya’s fights have been even more frequent since the announcement they would both be taken south.

Sansa protests that Arya will ruin court for her, and Arya protests that she doesn’t want to go at all. The girl would likely be happy to spend the rest of her days scurrying about Winterfell with her wolf on her heels, playing with her brothers in the godswood. Nell has come to realize, without much shame, that she dislikes Robb’s sisters because their childhood offends her. She was not miserable, after she came to Barrow Hall- she was happy, at times, but she did not have the joy they have. She did not have a kind father, a warm mother, siblings to squabble and play with, friends a-plenty. Even on their worst days, the sisters Stark still smile and laugh more than she ever did as a girl.

“I could use your help getting the girls organized,” Catelyn says dryly, and Nell fights the urge to scream and instead nods. She supposes this will be useful for when she is organizing her own family’s travels. She certainly doesn’t intend to spend the next fifty years shut up in this castle, massive fortress that it may be. It was folly not to send the Stark boys- or even the bastard- to foster. Folly not to give their daughters frequent visits to White Harbor or Torrhen’s Square. The Manderly sisters might have softened Arya’s sharp edges, and spirited Eddara Tallhart might have swept away some of Sansa’s haughty ways. Her own children will be more worldly, she thinks. She will send a son to the Dreadfort to remake it in her image and a son to the Vale, to her long dead grandmother, Jocelyn Redfort’s, people.

Then she is confronted with the reality of helping an eleven and nine year old finish up the last of their packing, and suddenly understands why the Starks have never let either girl roam very far. Gods be good, it is like herding chickens with their heads lopped off. Neither are careless with their possessions, but Sansa wishes to bring every article of clothing she has ever possessed, and Arya apparently intends to ride south naked, for all that she rejects every dress before her. Catelyn Stark is a reasonably patient woman, and Nell a reasonably impatient one, and even the added assistance of Dana, Septa Mordane, and several exasperated maids is not enough to settle things.

Sansa’s direwolf, the smallest of them all, looks like Grey Wind in miniature, albeit with grey fur so pale it is more akin to off-white, and flecks of green in her yellow eyes. But she is so quiet and unobtrusive that even Nell forgets she is there after a little while. Lady wants nothing more than to lie down silently in a patch of sunlight, closing her eyes in pleasure, like a cat, whenever Sansa crouches down to stroke her mane. Nymeria, on the other hand, is as energetic as Arya, racing between the two girls’ rooms and up and down the corridors, startling the maids and vexing Septa Mordane.

Arya’s attempts to train the wolf to bring her various items are having limited success. Sometimes Nymeria does bring the scarf or shoe, and other times she seems to take it for a toy. Arya’s laughter and shouts are not doing much to rectify matters, until Nymeria snatches up one of Sansa’s combs by mistake. “Nymeria, bring it here!” Sansa exclaims, holding out a hand expectantly. The wolf does nothing. Lady raises her head sleepily to glower at her sibling, just as Sansa glares at Arya, who is trying to restrain her snickers. 

“Girls, really, this is ridiculous,” Septa Mordane scolds waspishly, while Catelyn gives Arya a warning look. 

Dana makes a bold attempt to take the comb, and Nymeria jumps back and darts out the door. Sansa huffs in disbelief, folding her arms across her chest. 

“I’ll get her!” Arya says gaily, brightening at the excuse to be out of the stuffy room.

“Mother, she’s just going to run off and hide somewhere,” Sansa accuses. “And my comb will be covered with teeth marks! Nymeria chews on everything!”

“I wish she’d chew on you,” Arya retorts under her breath.

Nell is not about to let this opportunity go to waste. She deposits half the clothes in her arms into each of her future good-sisters’ arms.

“Better for you to finish your folding, girls.” She then grabs Dana’s elbow as they rush out after the wolf pup. 

“I’m shocked,” Dana snorts as they hurry down the nearest stairwell. “You, willingly spending time around a direwolf?”

“We’re not actually going to find it,” Nell rolls her eyes. “What do you take me for? Their errand girl? We’ll just go for a short walk and come back once things have calmed down a little.” It was as good an excuse as any. A few minutes longer, and she was going to start tearing gowns to shreds and throwing them into the fire. She used to wish for sisters as a girl of nine or ten. Younger ones who she could order to play with her. Now she sees how fortunate she was. 

“I’m going to miss them,” Dana says ruefully as they cross a covered bridge. “There were never many children around Barrow Hall.”

“What about Flint’s Finger?” Nell smirks.

Dana’s smile fades some. “None who wanted much to do with me. You’re lucky. They could be little beasts.”

“They _are_ little beasts. I’d much rather spend my married days around the boys than them.”

“They’re far more tolerable when they’re not being forced to spend time together,” Dana points out. “The septa favors Sansa, so Arya thinks everyone favors Sansa.”

“Mayhaps they do,” Nell shrugs, ducking under a low archway, “but the things that girl gets away with- if Sara had ever caught me wrestling around with boys-,” she catches herself, and falls painfully silent, stomach twisting. 

Dana exhales slowly, and touches her shoulder. “It’s alright to grieve her, Nell. I do.” She hesitates. “If you told Robb, perhaps-,”

Nell twists away from her. “Stop it. Robb Stark doesn’t care to hear about a dead bastard woman.” The words feel mangled on her lips, and the sick churning returns. 

“Must you spit at every good thing given to you?’ Dana snaps, temper roused even as Nell flushes in guilt. “Gods, Nell- will you not even give any of them a chance? They are good people. They’ve welcomed us, they treat you like one of them already-,”

“They do not!” Nell recoils at the thought. “How could you- we barely know them. They’ve paid their proper courtesies and nothing more. Do you truly think- I am not their kin,” she says in a low, forceful tone. “I will never be their kin. I will be Robb’s wife, and nothing more. They may come to like me, but they will not love me. Nor should they. Don’t be such a child. This isn’t some silly love song where the lord takes his lady out riding in the wood.”

Dana’s angular face has anger and shock writ all over it, and underneath that, contempt. She has never looked at Nell with contempt before. It lands like a blow to the gut. “You’re afraid,” she says, frankly and coldly. “You’ve always been afraid. You’re afraid of them, for all you play high and mighty with me. You’re afraid you might begin to care, but you can’t let yourself, can you? Never, because your aunt’s convinced you that you’ve got to wage a bloody war against your own husband in order to achieve anything!”

“At least I’ll have a husband,” Nell sneers, before she can stop herself. “You haven’t had an offer since you were thirteen, is that it? Shall we switch places, and you can roll around with the wolves-,”

The last time they fought like this, they were fourteen and quarreling over who was more deserving of a belting for racing horses through a farmer’s fields and scattering his sheep. It had eventually devolved into hair pulling and slaps. This time Dana just stares at her, hard, then shakes her head and walks quickly away. Nell’s mouth opens slightly, to call her back, to demand she return, to break down and cry and apologize as if they were little girls once more, but no words escape her. 

After a few loathsome moments she collects herself and comes out near the sept. The small building is empty at the moment, but its stained glass windows seem to gleam at her accusingly in the bright sunlight. She turns away from it, and stalks forward purposefully, only to jerk to a halt when confronted with a mass of white fur and two queer red eyes. Of all the direwolves roaming Winterfell, it is Snow’s that frightens and unnerves her the most. He looks as though he came out of a heart tree. That should be comforting, but it is anything but. Dana may think these creatures a sign from the gods, but Nell takes them for a warning.

Ghost regards her for a moment, and when Nell stares fiercely and shakily back, bares his teeth in a silent snarl. She tenses, ready scream for help if need be, but then his master is there, albeit not much more welcoming. “Ghost, to me,” says Jon Snow gruffly, and the wolf slinks over to his side, silent as his name. Nell thanks the gods, and not for the first time, that Jon Snow will be leaving for the Night’s Watch in a fortnight. She was not shocked when she heard, but she was relieved. He will take no wife, sire no sons, and most importantly, be well away from Robb and any claim on Winterfell. It is for the best. So why does the boy look as if he’s recently be sentenced to hang? She’s heard it sworn up and down that it was his idea to join up, not some wicked scheme on Catelyn Stark’s part.

“Does your beast bare his teeth at all the ladies?” she asks archly when he does not immediately say anything to her. “Or am I simply special in that regard?”

“My apologies, my lady.” Jon manages to make it sound like a curse. 

“Were he to greet the queen thusly, your apologies would not keep her from taking his pelt for a bedspread.” Nell knows she is being cruel. She knows it is not his fault. Just as it was not Dana’s fault. It is her fault. It is still her fault. It is her fault Sara is dead and it is her fault she was not a son for Mother and it is her fault that Robb will never love her because she is Roose Bolton’s seed and she is wicked and jealous and bitter. But she just can’t stop herself. She looks at his dark hair and pale eyes and the furious scowl and although they look nothing alike in truth, Ramsay grins at her in the back of her mind. 

“Then I suppose I am lucky I am only a bastard,” Jon replies coldly, “and that Ghost and I are far beneath her notice. As we should be yours. Good day, my lady.” With severe formality, he moves around her, keeping himself in between her and his wolf. He smells of the godswood. Has he been praying all morning? For what? The Wall to collapse overnight and free him from his intentions? There is still time. They can only force a criminal to the Wall. He could ride off tomorrow and forge his own path, had he the gall. 

“Wait,” she calls sharply after him, and for a moment it seems as though he will just keep going, but Jon Snow was still raised a lordling, and so he halts. Ghost sniffs at his hand questioningly, as if urging him forward. “What did Robb say, when you told him you were to take the black?” His lean form goes rigid with fury, although that was not entirely her intent, and she almost takes a step backward when he whirls around, white with anger. 

“He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, is that what you want to hear? That he told me to leave with all haste? That he declared me no brother of his?” Jon demands. “Would that satisfy you, my lady? Bring you comfort? No. He did not. He pleaded with me to stay. He called me mad to think of it. He promised me-,” he breaks off, shaking his head. “But that is none of your concern, is it?”

“Robb is my concern now,” she says, more shrilly than she’d like. “You may not like it-,”

“No,” Jon snaps. “I don’t. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll be gone, and you’ll be here.” He takes a step forward, and she is afraid, for a moment, although he is just a boy like all the rest. But he has a man’s anger to him, black as night. A bastard’s anger. “You think him a blind fool you can use as you please. But you’re wrong. Robb sees through you. As do I.”

“And what do you see?” Her voice does not shake, to her relief.

Jon Snow smiles at her, but there is no lightness to it, only a bitter sort of triumph. “A frightened little girl hiding under her father's flayed man. But you’re no Bolton, are you?” His smile vanishes. “No more than I’m a Stark.”

Nell sees red at that, and strides forward- to slap him, to punch him, to call for Lady Catelyn and have him whipped for speaking so impudently to her, a highborn lady, a trueborn daughter- but then Ghost surges forward and opens his mouth. A howl tears out, spilling into the air, and Nell jumps back in shock and fright, just as Jon Snow blanches- before they realize- it is not Ghost howling at all. He is imitating the action, but no sound comes from him. The howl is from another source entirely. It goes on and on, high and keening and mournful, and then there is the distant, responding chorus of barks and howls from the nearby kennels. 

“What’s going on?” Nell nearly stammers, to her disgust.

“I- I don’t know,” Jon says hoarsely. The howling continues, ragged and pained. “It’s coming from the first keep. Wait here.” He starts forward, but Ghost runs ahead, a white streak racing towards the howls. There’s the distant beat of wings, and Nell feels her blood run cold as a murder of ravens wings overhead, pitch black against the pale blue sky. Jon runs after his wolf, just as there is a faint scream, then another. “Find Maester Luwin!” he calls over his shoulder to her. “Someone must be hurt!”

But her legs refuse to move, and it is nearly a minute before she can even think to start in the direction of the maester’s turret. By then, there is not just one wolf howling, and she finds Nymeria near the Hunter’s Gate, Sansa’s wooden comb on the ground nearby, as the direwolf paces back and forth, howling and tossing her head as if in agony. Nell crouches down to pick up the comb, her fingers glancing over the carved birds on it. As she straightens back up, Maester Luwin comes rushing out, looking askance. 

“What’s happened, my lady? Is someone injured?”

“I don’t know,” Nell says honestly, grip tightening around the comb. She can still hear the ravens cawing and crowing in the distance, even through the howls and growing number of shouts and cries. “Jon went to find out-,” she breaks off as a figure comes running towards them. It is Jeyne Poole’s father, Vayon the steward, a slight, grey-haired man. Nell has never heard him so much as raise his voice before, but now he’s panting and panicked, shouting in between gasps for air-

“Maester, come quickly! He’s fallen! We don’t want to move him, and the wolf won’t let anyone near-,”

“Who’s fallen?” Nell demands, but catches Luwin’s countenance out of the corner of her eye, and then she knows.

“Bran,” he pronounces it like a prayer, and the battered comb slips from Nell’s slackened fingers and falls to the ground once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I've mentioned before in the comments, Nell is not necessarily a 'likable' protagonist/POV at present, and I hope I've done a decent job establishing her as both being very observant but also very narrow-minded at times. The way she treats Dana and Jon (as well as her general disdain for Sansa and Arya) in this chapter is in no way fair or justified, but she is also a deeply insecure 17 year old who, for all her criticisms of the Starks for 'sheltering and coddling' their children, has seen very little of life and is not nearly as ready for marriage and the responsibilities of adulthood as she believes herself to be. I didn't want to write her as a character who immediately ingratiates herself with the Starks and considers them family after a matter of weeks, so I hope some of the 'slow burn' of the relationship between her and Robb and his family won't end up being too frustrating for readers. As a side-note, although there's no explicit evidence for it in the text, I'd always figured that the Redforts and Boltons shared some kind of familial relation and that's why Domeric was sent south to foster with them. (Although it could easily be just because Horton Redfort and Roose Bolton were acquainted during the Rebellion).


	7. Donella VII

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell has very few examples of grief to turn to. There is the loss of Mother, now an old, ropy scar that sprouts from her heart. And there is the loss of Sara, a wound only just beginning to scab over, but liable to crack off and bleed fresh if handled roughly. When Mother died she just remembers the silence. There were four days between Mother’s death and Barbrey’s arrival, and during those four days Nell does not recall eating nor drinking, only silence. She would have spent those four days clutching her mother’s corpse, had it been permitted. Instead she slept in a dead woman’s bed and clutched at empty air and silence. Barbrey, after her arrival, only permitted herself to weep in Nell’s presence the once, in the godswood. Even that, her aunt did silently and proudly, her tears tracking near lines down her severe face.

There is nothing silent nor proud nor neat about Winterfell’s grief. Nell is there to witness each Starks’ reaction to the news, and wishes very much she was not. Not just because it is so painful and uncomfortable but because she feels as though she were an interloper they forgot to send away. As she told Dana, she is not their kin, not their blood, and to be included in this cacophony of shock and anger and horror is overwhelming. It is a labyrinth she can not escape from. Everywhere she turns, someone is crumbling and tearing and splitting, like a tapestry being ripped apart. Everywhere she looks, someone is saying, “No, it can’t be, Bran never falls, never-,”

But he did. He did fall, sweet and earnest Bran, who she has seen scrambling up walls and onto roofs and ramparts many times. He was always so quick, too, and oddly sure of himself for an otherwise shy boy of seven. She’d sometimes thought he’d be an athletic, graceful man someday- he wanted to be a knight, and Nell would have believed it, although she does not think any Stark has ever held the title of ‘ser’. He could have been the first, perhaps. Ser Brandon the Bold. Scaling towers to rescue kidnapped maidens, a sword strapped to his back. 

Jon Snow is crouched beside Bran’s body when she arrives with Maester Luwin. Nell assumes the boy is dead because he looks dead; pale and still and bent, his eyes shut. His wolf sits beside him, howling and howling. Jon’s hands hover over his brother, as if afraid to touch him, as though he might break some sort of spell. His face is white as his own wolf’s, and his grey eyes so dark they might be black. “Bran,” he is saying in a low, urgent, tone, as if trying to confide a secret in the child. “Bran, wake up, you’re alright, Bran, come on now, you’ll be alright, just get up-,”

Catelyn Stark arrives with her daughters mere moments later, flushed and breathless, hands shaking as Maester Luwin searches for a pulse. The sound that comes out of her is a low moan of despair, which steadily surges to a howling shriek at the sight of her favorite child prone and still on the ground. The wolves match her in tempo, as Sansa wraps her long arms around her wailing mother and buries her auburn head of hair in her chest. Arya stands stock-still and frozen as if momentarily perplexed into immotion by this chain of events, and then even her solemn little face puckers, and she sags with wrenching, hoarse sobs. Dana puts her hands on the girl’s trembling shoulders, but she wrenches away and reaches for Nymeria instead. 

Nell has accepted all of this- children die, sometimes suddenly and horribly- all the time, and a fall is hardly an uncommon cause, even for a healthy, active little boy like Bran- but Maester Luwin’s proclamation that Bran still lives catches her off-guard, like a bucket of icy water dumped over her head. The next few minutes are a flurry of shouting and activity, until the boy can be placed on a makeshift stretcher and carried into the keep, and a messenger sent out to the hunting party to call them back. It is not her place to see whether Bran Stark still draws breath, so she she waits with a distraught Vayon and tearful Jeyne and speechless Dana by the hunter’s gate.

In Ned Stark and his heir she sees death and terror, respectively. Lord Stark has the look of a man who has just seen an axe fall, as though he were somehow waiting and waiting, all these years, for his happiness to be ripped away, expecting something terrible to happen. This is a man, she thinks, who saw his mother, father, brother, and sister all dead before his twentieth name day. He is still more used to grief than he is to joy, all these years later. It is a familiar pattern and the potential loss of his son is just the latest note. 

Robb is terrified. There is a little boy’s fear writ all over his face, and for once she cannot fault him for it, because she does not think he has ever lost anything or anyone in his life, and for all the flaws she might pick out of him like seeds, apathy for his friends and family is not one of them. Robb loves, genuinely loves his mother and his father and his bastard brother and his younger siblings and his wolf and Winterfell itself- He loves them all so easily, it seems absurd to her, and now she sees the underside of that. When you love with ease, you can lose it with ease as well. “Where is he?” he keeps asking, voice cracking in half, “Where did they take him? He can’t be- It’s Bran, he can’t be-,”

But he can be. He can be unconscious and possibly dying. Nell does not know. Were she already wed to Robb, she would be crowded around Bran’s bedside with the rest of them, out of duty if nothing else. She is not, so she takes Dana and Jeyne Poole to the godswood and the three of them kneel and sit beneath the heart tree to pray. Nell tries to pretend it were her own child, and prays for what she thinks is best- an end to it. Let the boy wake and recover, or let him die. The waiting will be torture, and were Bran her own son, she would rather have a dead boy than one barely clinging to life, unable to speak or eat or even sit up in bed. They remain there in silence, among the whispering trees, until well after the sun has slunk down below the walls.

“He’ll live,” Dana tells her later that night. She sounds frightened but certain all the same.

“He may not,” Nell corrects her. “His heart may give out, his lungs could be damaged-,”

“How could he not?” Dana demands hoarsely, the firelight dancing across her thin face. “The gods are with them. He cannot die, else they never would have given him a wolf.”

A wolf will not knit bones back together and drag him back on his feet to run and play once more, Nell wants to say, but she is too tired and too cold inside, and she does not want to fight with Dana again. Instead she says, “I was cruel, before. I should not have spoken to you like that.” She reaches out and touches Dana’s sharp elbow. “I’m sorry, Danelle.”

“Be as cruel as you like,” Dana’s words are brusque, but her face softens slightly, “but don’t lie to yourself, Donella.” She hesitates, then adds, “You should go to Robb.”

Nell blanches. “Now?”

Dana huffs gently. “Who’s the silly one, again? No, not now. But tomorrow. Bran is going to be here for a long time. Best Robb knows you’ll have his back for the fight.”

Nell is even more confused, and annoyed by Dana’s dancing around the subject. “What fight?”

Now it is Dana’s turn to regard her as the naive child. “I know he will live because the gods are here,” she says calmly. “But I also know that boy will never walk again. He’s crippled, Nell. They will mourn and pity him now, when he is a sweet little boy, but when he is a man they will mock and deride him wherever he goes, just like the Imp. He’ll never be able to pick up a sword and fight for himself, so Robb will have to fight for him. And you as well.”

The idea of fighting for anyone but herself is profoundly unsettling.

She finds him in the godwood just after dawn. It was not a hard search; Robb Stark may have been raised to honor both the old gods and the new, but Nell has never seen him enter the sept unless accompanied by his mother or Sansa. He is alone, to her relief. She had been dreading the idea of encountering Jon with him, or Theon, but neither seemed the consoling type, although she remembers the way all the color drained from Greyjoy’s face when he heard. Perhaps he is not as unfeeling as he’d have them all believe. 

He does not hear her silent approach; Nell knows well enough how to walk through a wood, but Grey Wind does. The wolf turns, tracking her with its yellow eyes, and Robb glances back, face wet and shiny. Nell halts, and bows her head slightly. “I thought you might want some company,” she lies in a low murmur, “but if you would prefer to be alone now, I understand.”

“No,” he says roughly. “No, my lady- I’d be glad for it.”

Nell nods, and approaches. It is extremely inappropriate for them to be entirely alone together, but that is lessened some by the fact that they are in a godswood. In the south, a young couple might treat what to is, to them, merely an overgrown garden as a place to fondle and rut, but Nell knows very few northern boys bold enough to seek to rid a girl of her virtue in the presence of weirwood trees. No one is looking for either of them at a time like this; they are safe enough. Lady Catelyn is with Bran, Lord Eddard is with the King, and much of the rest of the castle is still asleep. But she knows Robb likely did not sleep much at all last night, and the dark circles under his eyes and rumpled head of hair are proof enough. She sits beside him, trying not to think about how they will kneel under this tree to wed each other in a matter of months.

“Maester Luwin did not think he would survive the night,” Robb says in a low voice, not looking at her but at the heart tree’s face instead, “but he did.”

“What does the maester think now?” Nell does not like Luwin anymore than she likes any other maester she has ever met, owing to her aunt’s loathing for them, but she does not despise the man either. He seems a good deal more trustworthy than Uthor, at any rate. 

“I spoke with him a little while ago,” Robb’s face is still damp, but his eyes are dry. She is glad; if he were to cry in front of her she is not sure if he would be able to easily forget it. Boys are tetchy about that sort of thing, looking weak in front of women. “He says we will just have to wait and see, but it is a good sign that Bran,” he wavers slightly, “that Bran has made it this long.”

“Dana thinks he will live,” Nell says, surprising him and herself. “She thinks the gods are watching over him through his wolf.” Grey Wind is lying down mere feet away, but alert and awake, staring at her. He raises his head slightly, as if he can understand her. She remembers Ghost’s silent snarl and almost flinches, but forces herself to remain still. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I pray they will restore him to you.” That is not a lie, at least. 

Robb finally looks directly at her, and Grey Wind rises silently and trots over to them, brushing up against Robb’s back. His wet snout collides with her arm, and once again she tentatively offers the wolf her hand, holding her gloved fingers tightly together so they do not shake. This time he does not lick at her, but inclines his head against her hand. She can feel his warm breath; he is about the size of a large dog now. For a few moments, she is not afraid, before he circles around and lies down once more.

“Your mother,” Robb says then, suddenly, and Nell tenses. Color rises in his freckled face. “I- I’m sorry, I mean- you lost your mother when you were a girl, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” says Nell thickly. “I... I did. She took ill, while our fathers were off putting down Greyjoy’s Rebellion. It was quick. I was eight.” She starts to close her mouth, then blurts out, “I loved her,” and hates herself for it. What is she doing? Trying to prove to him that she is capable of love? Of caring? That she is not just Lord Leech’s cold and disgruntled daughter? 

“I was six then,” he tells her. “Mother was having Arya. I was too young to remember Sansa’s being born. Jon and I wanted a little brother,” he almost smiles then, “but it was hard for her, I think. I remember she was ill all the time, and the babe kicked a lot-,”

“That sounds like Arya,” Nell murmurs, and he does smile briefly at that.

“But when her time came, Father was still gone, and- I was so afraid,” he sounds almost surprised at himself. “I was afraid she would die, and I would be alone. I don’t know why. Nothing went wrong, I don’t think- Arya was fine, my mother was fine. But I was afraid until Father came back, all the same. I think I’d just realized then that- that people could die. Real people, that is. Not characters in stories, or myths and legends.”

He pauses, and then says, “I’m sorry, Nell. It must have been very difficult for you, to lose her, and with your father away at war-,”

“I was glad he was gone,” Nell didn’t mean to say it aloud, and later blames it on her own exhaustion, but she’s said it all the same.

Robb stares at her, and she grimaces, expecting distaste or shock or anger to appear on his face, but instead he just simply asks, “Why?”

Nell knows she should make up some excuse, take back her words, apologize- what must he think of her, a daughter who would openly insult her own father, her own lord? Instead she says very softly, as if in a dream, because she cannot lie when he is looking at her like that with those clear blue eyes, “Because he didn’t love her, nor she him. He-,” but she stops there, because even transfixed as she is, she cannot tread down that dark path. “He’s not a kind man, my father,” she settles on. “I- I respect him, of course, but… The Dreadfort is not like Winterfell.”

Not at all like Winterfell.

“I didn’t think it was,” Robb says, and then, to her shock, he takes her hand. She thinks she could kiss him now, again and again, and he might love her, and never question her after this, and she could rest easy knowing who would rule this marriage. But she can’t kiss him, can’t do something so calculated when he took her hand not to allure or seduce her but to comfort her, as he might his sister or his mother. It would feel perverse, somehow.

“I know we don’t know each other well, but I hope-,” he bites his lip the way Arya often does, and then continues, “It will not be like that for us. Even if we don’t- if we never have what my mother and father do, I swear I will never mistreat you, or dishonor you.”

Boys swear such things often, but she almost believes him, he is so serious and grave, like his father before him. He knows none of it. He knows her parents had a cold, unpleasant marriage, like many others, that her father was unkind, like many others. He does not know about the hunting and the miller’s wife and the Bastard and Sara and the servants who miss their tongues. “Of course you wouldn’t,” now it is her term to comfort, “I know you are a good man.” She does not know that, but she knows there is a wide gulf between Roose Bolton and Ned Stark.

He lets go of her hand. “I should see if my mother or Maester Luwin need help.”

“Yes,” she stands with him. “Please tell her to send word, if she has need of me. I don’t want to intrude-,”

“How could you? You belong here,” Robb says honestly. “With us.”

Again, she almost believes him. 

There is no grand feast, of course. The castle’s guests are quiet and reserved; very few are fool enough to be seen openly cavorting about when their host is under such strain. The king seems to be taking it as hard as he would have had it been one of his own children to fall- perhaps harder, thinks Nell. She has seen enough of the Baratheons to know that there is no love at all between Robert and Joffrey. 

Which is perhaps understandable- were she heir to the Iron Throne, she would be bursting at the seams to wrest control of it from a man like the king. But he seems no more interested in Myrcella or Tommen, either, who, while spoiled and coddled enough to make the Stark children look hardened in comparison, both seem well-behaved and obedient. Mayhaps it is that they all so obviously take after Cersei. Nell sees no real trace of Robert Baratheon in Joffrey, aside from his violent temper and poor impulse control.

Bran’s condition does not change. He does not wake, but he does not deteriorate either. Catelyn will not leave his bedchamber, and while Nell visits at least once a day, usually with Sansa and Arya, she can never bring herself to stay long. Bran may not be actively dying, but he looks like death itself. Were it not for the shallow rises and fall of his chest, she would think him a small corpse. He is pale as bone and gaunt, his hair greasy and unwashed, plastered to his scalp. From a distance, he could be a scarecrow, a boy composed of sticks and twigs and old rags. It frightens his sisters to see him like this; they hesitate at his bedside as if he might suddenly lunge awake and attack them. Nell for once cannot blame the girls. Were it her brother, she would be sick to her stomach at the sight of him.

They pray. Her days are full of prayer now. Nell has never been the most devout, but she has never questioned the existence nor the power of the gods before, and she is not about to now. She wishes she could pray with the frenzy and want the others seem to. Instead she tries to visualize Bran waking, speaking and smiling again, his hair regaining its luster and his skin the flush of childhood. She imagines him sitting up in bed and eating and drinking and talking with his siblings, imagines him laughing, even. He will never walk, nor even hobble on crutches, but they will find some way to help him, surely. The Starks are not people to sit idly by. 

She wonders if this is how her mother prayed for a son. Did she imagine a boy, dark-haired and brown-eyed like her, devoid of any semblance of Roose Bolton? Did she dream of the day that boy would grow tall and strong and carry live steel and wear the flayed man on his cloak? When he might gut her husband like a fish and leave him for the dogs, when he might free her? Perhaps she thought one day her longed-for son would ride out into the wood with her, and she would be happy once more, light and full of ease, and she would look at him, handsome and courageous and powerful, and know she had somehow earned this reward? She has very faint memories of being ill once, when she was five or six, and her mother spending hours in bed with her, telling her stories and stroking her hair. 

Were Bran her boy, Nell thinks she would sacrifice much more than a prized stallion for him. She would go out and hunt a bear, if she had to. She would give the gods whatever they wanted, no matter the cost. But she does not think the Starks would take kindly to the sight of her slaughtering some beast and dragging its entrails into the godswood to hang in their heart tree. Instead she tries to be useful and invisible at the same time, saying very little and keeping busy, helping Sansa and Arya unpack and then repack without complaint. She had not been sure if Ned Stark might call off the entire trip south, but after a week has passed it becomes clear that they will still be leaving soon.

To her surprise, she finds herself almost sorry when the day comes. It was one thing when Ned Stark was taking his daughters and second son and leaving her with Catelyn, Robb, and little Rickon. It is quite another now that Bran has been in this state for nearly a fortnight, Catelyn seems a hollow shell of grief and anger, Robb is heartbroken, and Rickon pitching a new tantrum every day. This is hardly the peaceful keep she thought she’d be left to leisurely oversee. And part of her- part of her, however small, can admit that she will miss some things. She will miss Sansa’s eager looks and watchful gaze as Nell showed her how to master a new sewing pattern, she will miss Arya’s challenges to show her how to properly hold a bow and notch an arrow. Perhaps she will even miss Ned Stark’s quiet composure and slow smiles, when he thinks no one is looking. 

She has only been at Winterfell for two months. It would be absurd for her to be anymore attached. But however thin and fragile the threads may be, they are still there. She is grateful, she can acknowledge, for what Robb is, even with how aware she is of what he is not. Ned Stark raised a dutiful heir and a kind boy with the makings of a decent man. She is not used to feeling grateful. And perhaps in a few years’ time, she may sit at some feast with Robb’s sisters, a child in her lap or in her belly, and laugh and talk easily with them, for they will all be women grown then. Perhaps Bran will even be there too, sitting with them, and Lord and Lady Stark smiling once again, and they will have proper musicians and venison and boar she hunted herself, with her lord husband.

It is an amusing fantasy, she knows. But her smiles and promises to write when she bids goodbye to Sansa and Arya are not entirely forced and manufactured, either. It is snowing gently, tiny flakes catching in everyone’s hair and cloaks. Sansa is beaming so hard she looks almost in pain from stretching her mouth. Arya is less exuberant but still seems excited for the call of the open road ahead, chattering away with the butcher’s boy, Mycah, and petting Nymeria with one grubby hand. Robb is a little ways away, saying farewell to Jon Snow. Nell knows better than to go over there, and instead curtsies one final time to Ned Stark. “I wish you a pleasant journey south, my lord.” She adds, “Should there be any news of Bran, I will be sure to write, if Lady Catelyn is occupied.”

“My thanks, my lady,” the Warden of the North says gravely, but he looks a little less the imposing man, and a little more the weary father at the moment. No doubt thinking with dread upon three months on the road with the likes of his she-wolf daughters, Joffrey Baratheon, and venomous Cersei Lannister. Nell is hardly saddened at all to see the last two go. Good riddance. They are pure southern, and pure Lannister pride at that. It is one thing to be proud of one’s house, and another to ignore the fact that Cersei’s beloved husband would have no throne at all, and her no gleaming crowns atop her golden curls, were it not for the North’s efforts in the war.

“It is my hope that Bran will recover,” Ned Stark says. “But it is up to the gods now.” He hesitates. “If it proves impossible for me to return to the North for the wedding, you have my apologies. As does Robb.”

“You are his father, my lord,” Nell tells him, sweetly, but not entirely untruthfully, either. “You are with him wherever he goes, I am sure of it.”

He inclines his head to her, then rides off to the front of the column, calling for his daughters. Robb returns to her side, and she glances briefly at Jon Snow, mounting his own horse beside Benjen Stark. His gaze meets hers, but she looks away before she can see the familiar bitter envy in his eyes. She will have no cause to think of him ever again. He is off to the Wall, and there he will stay. She takes Robb’s arm, watching both of their breath mist in the air, and dares to briefly catches a few flakes on her tongue.

Robb takes notice, and smiles as the last of the travelers disappears through the gates. Then his smile fades as quickly as it came. “It feels strange,” he says. “I’ve never been apart from them all before.”

“You’ll grow used to it quickly,” Nell assures him. “And then before you know it, they’ll be back to vex you again. That’s the way of family, isn’t it?” 

He exhales in amusement and nods, watching the gates slowly lower shut once more. There is a note of finality to it all. On the other side of him, Grey Wind gives a sudden low, mournful howl. It startles Nell enough that she drops his arm, and before she can recover herself, there are two answering howls from the godswood. Only three wolves left now. That is what feels strange to her, more than anything else. That three direwolves would somehow seem lonely and vulnerable to her. They are beasts, hunters, not lost puppies. But there is something oddly sad about it all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now the plot is starting to kick into gear. Could I have just skipped ahead at the beginning and started at this point? Probably, but I hope everyone didn't mind the six chapters of character-establishing/exposition/world-building that came before this. I'm going to try to move forward with the plot at a reasonable pace- obviously I do not have the POV switching that GRRM does to break up events, but I don't want the plot to stall out because I'm trying to cover every little detail, nor do I want it to start leaping ahead just for the sake of getting to the drama. In canon our initial insight into #TeamStark is Catelyn's POV, then Bran's POV, then Catelyn and Bran's POV alternating. I don't want to piggyback off of either of their chapters (too) much, so I'm going to try to keep things fresh without essentially writing the same chapters as GRRM. 
> 
> Just to give everyone a general sense of where we're going: as I stated in the beginning of this fic, this is a pretty solidly northern fic populated by northern characters, some of whom we don't see much in canon. We're never going to have a chapter set in King's Landing or Dorne. Additionally, this is not what I'd describe as a 'fix-it' fic. While there will be ripple effects, please (please) be mindful of the tags and the general tone of the fic. This is tagged with 'Dark Fantasy', 'Horror Elements', 'Boltons are Their Own Warning', 'Blood and Violence', etc, for a reason. That's not to say there won't be lighter moments and positive developments, but I don't want anyone to feel blindsided at any point. 
> 
> Finally, thank you all so much for the support and feedback so far! I know this fic is pretty 'niche' and doesn't necessarily feature many of the most popular characters/settings, so I'm really thrilled with the response so far. I've been wanting to write this for a long time now and I'm glad the fandom is generally so supportive.


	8. Donella VIII

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell’s dreams turn stranger than usual after the royal party has departed. A first she attributes it to simply falling into deeper, more restful sleeps, having grown more used to her new bedchamber, but she never had dreams like this at Barrow Hall. And at the Dreadfort she seldom dreamt at all. She dreams she is lost, stumbling through the snowy wood, but despite being clad only in a woolen shift and stockings, she does not feel the cold nor the wind. She ought to be more alarmed, but she is not, only intent on finding her way back home. She is not sure where that is, though, and cannot call up a place in her mind, either.

And then, always, she hears the deep bellow of a hunting horn, growing louder and closer, and in good time riders come streaming out of the trees, reining up around her with shrill cries. Some are on horseback, but others ride on moose and elk, and one clings to the back of a great trundling bear. None have saddles or reins or halters. Mystifyingly, every single rider is female. She cannot make out all their faces; they are more like shifting shadows, wreathed in mist, but she can hear their voices. There are no men among them. A few sound almost like children. They smell like the deepest, darkest parts of the forest, like moss and mud and sap. 

They are always led by her mother, the only one whose face is clear to her. Beth Bolton looks as she did in the weeks before her death; vibrant and alive. “My foolish girl,” she always exclaims in exasperation. “I warned you to stay close to me, didn’t I? You should not wander so far, Nell. How am I to protect you? You could be snatched up by a grumkin.”

She knows this is a dream and just silly fancifulness, so Nell says, “I am too big for a grumkin to snatch up, Mother. Take me home.”

“I’ve no mount for you,” Mother replies irritably. “You should have told me. What am I to do now? Give you my steed?” She pats Harlan’s flank, and her bare hand comes away coated in the dust of the crypts. “I think not. You’ll have to walk, or find a beast that will take you.”

“You can’t just leave me here!” Nell always exclaims some version of this, and sometimes she is amused, other times frightened, others, enraged. “I am your daughter. You swore you’d never leave me.” She reaches for Mother, but Harlan shies away, neighing, and Mother just laughs and shakes her head. 

“You should never take a mother at her word, my love. We lie to our children more often than not.”

“No,” Nell shakes her head, and sometimes tears prick at her eyes, “no, you wouldn’t. You were always true with me. You told me the truth of Father, of marriage- you never lied-,”

“About your sire, I never lied,” Beth smiles thinly. “But when I held you in my arms and swore to stay with you always, I knew it was not a promise I would keep. My girl, he would have been the death of me, had the fever not taken me first. He is a leech, it is in his nature to take and take until he is sated. And then take some more,” she reaches down, and her bony fingers graze across Nell’s wet cheek. “Don’t cry. Ryswells do not cry.”

“I’m not a Ryswell.”

“You are not.” Now Mother does sound sad, in her own way. “You cannot ride with me anymore. More’s the pity. I would have taken you with me, if I could.”

“You can’t go again.” Nell murmurs, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why come to me at all?”

She has never gotten to this point before. She’s always woken up, or seen the dream shift to something more mundane or absurd. She feels a sudden urgency, an impatience to get it over with. “Mother, why are you here?”

Mother just inclines her head, digs in her heels, and moves Harlan forward. Another rider takes her place, her mount far less impressive, a small mare to suit her small frame. Nell’s breath catches raggedly in her throat. Sara Snow looks down upon her, in her old grey cloak and with a familiar disapproving look on her pale face. “Why are you out here dressed like that? Gods, child, have you no sense at all? Where is your cloak? Your shoes?”

“Sara,” Nell sobs instead, reaching for her, and Sara takes her hand firmly.

“Don’t cry, you’ll make yourself sick in this cold. There’s a good girl. Dry your eyes.”

“I’m sorry,” Nell says, wiping at her nose and stinging eyes. “I’m sorry, it was my fault, I should have-,”

“Your fault?” Sara seems more bemused than anything else. There is something different about her face. Nell peers up at her hooded frame. “What have you done now, Donella?”

“He hurt you because of me,” Nell says with deep loathing, and then regrets it at the shock that blossoms across Sara’s face. A realization or recognition of sorts. As if she’d just remembered something very inconvenient or unpleasant.

“Oh,” her mouth forms a small o, and Sara reaches up, the hood of her cloak falling back. “Oh,” Sara says again, with deep dismay, and Nell sees now that she looks slightly different because her familiar braid is gone. Chopped off at the root, her hair ends in a hacked and jagged bundle along her scalp. She feels at it, and when Sara pulls her hand away, her fingers are wet with dark, old blood. As if it were a limb lopped off, and not a braid at all.

“He cut it,” Sara recalls, and for a few moments she is older than twenty five, bowed with despair. “He put his knee on my back and my face in the ground and he cut my braid off.” She brings her fingers up to her mouth, and then jerks her hand away in disgust. “I don’t know why he did that.”

“I’m sorry,” Nell whispers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.”

“He cut my braid,” Sara repeats herself yet again. “And then he…” She pauses, and then shakes her head a little. A dull trickle of blood from the hacked braid worms its way down her thin neck. “I am going to see my mother’s kin now,” she changes the subject. “My cousin’s had a new babe. Perhaps I can come visit you, when you are settled.” Underneath the cloak, her bare legs are caked with dried dirt and purpling bruises. A wet leaf clings to her foot. Her nails are broken and bloody-black. 

Nell begins to sob in earnest again, as Sara wipes her fingers clean on the cloak, and then she’s awake. The fire has died out in her hearth, and the braid of hair around her wrist itches terribly. The wind rustles at the window shutters, and she pulls the furs up over her head and rolls onto her stomach, closing her eyes once more. Nell tries to grasp at the dream again, to relive it, but it is lost to her, along with Mother and Sara’s voices and the sounds of the hunters and their mounts. In the morning her throat is raw and sore, and her nose stuffed up from sniffling. She takes a very long, very hot bath to clear her head.

Winterfell seems more cavernous now that everyone has gone. The household continues to run at a quiet, even pace, but there is some occasional floundering with Vayon Poole gone and Catelyn too grief-struck to oversee things. Nell knows what her aunt would say: that this is a golden opportunity for her, and she would be a fool not to make use of it. If she establishes herself firmly as the mistress of the household now, even should her good mother recover, the servants will learn to turn to and trust in her first. But it is not easy to wedge herself in place, either. She has no idea what counts for ‘normal’ here, and Robb is hardly much help: he is not dismissive of her or Maester Luwin’s concerns, but he spends his free time training with Greyjoy, more often than not.

Furthermore, there is Rickon, who is often a more pressing (and noisy) matter to see to. Nell wishes the boy were just a year or two younger or older. As it stands, he is too old to be confined in the nursery all day (and it seems the Starks were never the sort to keep their children holed up there in the first place), but too old to have lessons to attend to. As a result, with his father gone and his mother rooted to his brother’s bedside, Rickon Stark is everyone’s child. He spends his days being shuffled from person from person, from servant to guard to cook to lady to lord and back again. It would be one thing were he an obedient, quiet little boy.

But he is anything but. Rickon kicks, scratches, bites, pulls hair, pummels, and screams himself hoarse. Nell had no idea one so small could make that much noise. His freckled little face reddens and purples with exertion, his short limbs flail, he throws himself onto the floor and bashes his head into legs and stomachs and chest, he pinches and prods angrily, he howls alongside his wolf. The more upset Rickon is, the more wild Shaggydog, as he has dubbed the beast, becomes. Nell is not terrified of Shaggydog the way she was of Ghost, but it is clear the wolf is going to grow into a behemoth. Gods help whoever makes an enemy of Rickon Stark by the time the thing is full grown. One of the maids nearly toppled down the stairs at the sight of Rickon riding the creature down the hall, shouting and hollering like a miniature warlord.

It has been a little over a week now. Bran shows no signs of waking anytime soon, and Rickon shows no signs of calming. Catelyn shows no signs of leaving Bran’s side. A spate of dreary weather has taken hold, and the sun shows no signs of shining. To say that tempers are frayed would be to put it gently. Nell is taking her breakfast with Dana and little Beth Cassel, who, in the absence of Sansa and Jeyne, has attached herself to them, when the nearest doors of the great hall slam open, and Theon stalks over to them, swearing under his breath, a kicking, screeching Rickon tucked under one lanky arm.

Dana chokes on her sip of cider, and Beth pauses mid-bite of bacon. Nell puts down her knife with disappointment, having been about to dig into her apple cakes. “Here,” Theon spits out, as if depositing the head of an enemy king at their awaiting feet. He hauls the still fighting Rickon onto the bench, trapping the child between him and an annoyed Dana, and glowers at Nell as if she somehow provoked this. “He got into my arrows again. Broke two of them. I’d just had them fletched yesterday.”

“Perhaps you should take better care of them,” Nell suggests dryly. “Might I suggest not leaving them where a three year old could find them?”

“He climbed the bloody shelf like a squirrel,” Theon hisses, casting a dark look at young Beth, who is trying to repress her giggles. “It’s not funny. Robb and I don’t have time to play nursemaid. You ought to be looking after him.”

“Yes, you’re ever so busy fending off wilding invasions,” Dana rolls her eyes.

“This is women’s work,” Theon pointedly ignores that barb. “You’re neglecting your duties to sit by the fire gossiping-,”

“And I suppose your work is striving to breed a horde of Ironborn bastards in the winter town,” Nell says through her teeth at him. Dana laughs and takes a swig of her cider, and poor Beth flushes bright red and begins chewing loudly on her bacon. Still, she doesn’t feel like spending the next ten minutes arguing with the likes of Theon Greyjoy on whose duty it is to see to Rickon. “Be on your way, then. There’s some gossip in the guard barracks to see to, I’m sure.”

She’s very sure that her status as Robb’s betrothed is the only thing that keeps him from saying something very rude indeed to her. Instead Theon stands up stiffly, snatches up a biscuit, and points sharply at Rickon, as if disciplining an unruly dog. “Stay. Here.” As soon as he’s gone, and the child seems in danger of fleeing, Nell quickly heaps a plate with food and shoves it in front of him. “Beth, pour our little lord some milk, won’t you?” 

Rickon spends the next twenty minutes methodically destroying his meal, but at least he seems to have digested some of it. When he is done, his smock is coated with crumbs and stains, and his mouth is colored purple and red from mashed berries. “I want Shaggy,” he says immediately, standing up on the bench and licking his fingers. Nell exchanges a look with Dana, who gets up to fetch a maid. 

“You need a bath,” she tells him firmly.

“Don’t wanna bath! I want Shaggy!”

“Baths can be fun,” Beth attempts, picking a flake of bread crust out of his tangled curls. 

“I only like baths with Mother!”

Nell sighs. “Your mother has to take care of Bran. We can visit her after your bath.”

Rickon’s outraged response to this is to pick up a handful of eggs and fling them at her. Nell narrowly dodges, considers murder, and settles for grasping him firmly by the back of his smock and hauling him off his feet. “I don’t want you! I WANT MOTHER!” Rickon roars, delivering a surprisingly strong headbutt to the underside of her chin. Her teeth clack together, and she gives his ear a sharp twist, just as Dana returns with Shaggydog instead of a maid, who gives a low growl at the sight of his master in such distress. 

“How’s this- you and Shaggy can bathe together,” Dana says lightly. “In the hot springs. You won’t both fit in a tub, I’m afraid. Shaggydog wants a bath, doesn’t he?”

Shaggydog does not seem convinced of this, but Rickon’s lower lip stops trembling, and he gives a jerky nod. Nell sets him down gingerly, and he immediately grabs hold of his wolf and leads the way outdoors. It’s a cold, damp morning, but the heat emanating from the springs is enough to make all of them shed their cloaks and gloves, even if they are not bathing. Rickon strips naked with all haste and jumps into the warm water with a shout and a tremendous splash, and his wolf is quick to follow, with an even larger splash. Beth shrieks as the water crashes over her, soaking her coppery curls instantly. 

They end up going down to their smallclothes and dipping their legs in the water, while Rickon paddles around quite happily with his wolf and tells them, in a disjointed, three year old fashion, about how his mother taught him how to swim last year, when he was two and ‘a little baby’. Beth tells them about how horrible it is with both Sansa and Jeyne gone off to be pretty ladies at court and get crowned queens of love and beauty at tourneys, while she is stuck here helping Maester Luwin and her father. Beth shares both Nell’s mother’s name, and Nell’s lack of a mother at all, and so Nell is inclined to vague fondness for the girl, if nothing more.

“Court can’t be all wonderful,” Dana points out, reclining on the mossy earth and positioning her hands behind her head. “Think about how hot it is down south, and how smelly and ugly the capitol must be. They say there’s piles of shit on the street and roving gangs of orphans who’ll slit your throat for a few coins. Would you really rather be there? At least the winter town smells better.”

“There’s nothing to do in the winter town,” Beth mumbles. “And Father is always here, so I never get to go anywhere! I’ve only been to White Harbor once! And I’m nine,” she proclaims indignantly. “That’s almost a woman. Sansa gets to marry the prince, and Jeyne a lord, and I’ll be stuck here forever and have to marry Turnip!” 

“Who’s Turnip?” Nell grimaces.

“Gage’s son,” Dana reminds her, then adds, “the cook’s boy. Smells of turnips. Looks like a turnip. Hair sticks up, big head, skinny neck.”

“He’s six,” Beth pronounces in horror. “And once he tried to kiss me! He hasn’t even got all his teeth yet!”

“Beth, your father is a knight,” Nell says in bemusement. “I’m certain you won’t have to marry Turnip. Perhaps a Glover, or one of the Tallhart boys. One of them must be close to your age.”

“Beren is,” Beth says, scrambling out of the way of Shaggydog, who has emerged from the springs to shake his thick black coat dry. “But he’s so loud.”

“Better loud than a vegetable,” Dana mutters, and Nell grins at that.

Rickon stays in the water for near an hour- the boy must truly be half fish, or have hidden gills somewhere- and then reluctantly agrees to be dried off and changed into fresh clothes. Then Nell insists they take a very long walk around the castle, simply to eat up more time and keep the child occupied with running from here to there, showing them things, and after that it is time to eat again, and then they manage to see him off to play with Bandy and Shyra, two of the stable girls, and then Nell shuts herself up in her rooms with Dana, exhausted.

“It’s good practice for when you have your own children,” Dana snickers, as Nell collapses into an armchair and kicks off her boots with a groan. “At least you’ve only got to help look after one of them. One of my aunts whelped eight boys. Be grateful Lady Catelyn only had three. And you were the one who said you preferred the brothers Stark to the sisters! At least Sansa and Arya bathed regularly!”

“Yes, yes, I brought it all upon myself,” Nell mutters. “Your point is made. Gods. I still hold that he’d be much easier to manage were it not for the wolf pitching tantrums alongside him.”

“Good luck seeing them shut up in the kennels,” Dana snorts. “Farlen’s like to resign his position in that case.”

“Robb thinks they might be good luck for Bran. Like you.”

“Didn’t you ever hear Ned Stark lecturing his children about winter? He quite enjoys it.” Dana imitates the man very convincingly, but her blue eyes are deadly serious. “The lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”

“And I call the wolf who travels south to play games with lions a fool,” Nell says irritably. “He should have stayed here. Look at his lady wife- I should kill my husband, were he to leave me with a crippled child.”

“What choice did he have?” Dana stokes up the fire. “Refuse the King? Unthinkable. Baratheon is exactly the sort to take slight over it. And if Sansa is to be queen she would have had to go south either way. Only a true fool would send his maiden daughter to court alone.”

“A Northern queen,” Nell muses. “The court must be in a frenzy.”

“She does worship the Seven,” Dana shrugs, glancing over at the windows as rain begins to patter down, hard and fast. “And she was raised by a Tully and a septa. It’s hardly as if Joffrey is marrying an Umber.”

“She also prays in a godwood, sews her own clothes, keeps a direwolf for a lap dog, and has never been south of the Neck,” Nell retorts. “Cersei must be furious. I’ll wager she wanted to hand-select a bride herself, not bow to Robert’s whims because he could not have Lyanna. A Lannister cousin, perhaps.”

“Pray for the girl anyways,” Dana says. “I’d rather be dead than be a queen. Especially that boy’s.”

“Oh, hush.”

When they come down to dinner, Nell scans the head table but sees no sign of Rickon, only Robb. “Theon’s gone into town,” he says when she joins him, and she does not try very hard to hide her relief. “Rickon’s off sulking somewhere. If he wants to go without supper, let him.”

“He’ll learn quickly,” Nell assures him, smiling her thanks as he pours her drink. Robb seldom touches wine or rum, she’s noticed, and even during the feasts, he was only allowed two cups under his father’s watchful eye. Lord Stark will have no drunkards for sons, it would seem. In some ways it is a blessing. Some men go mild and meek with drink, and are thus easier to sway or influence, but others fly into black rages at a moment’s notice, like she’s heard whispered of the king. 

“He’s never gone this long without Mother before,” Robb admits. “He’s too little. He doesn’t know why Father left with the girls, or why she won’t spend time with him.”

“It’s been less than a fortnight since Bran fell,” Nell says. “I’m sure she’ll begin to come back to herself soon. She seems a strong woman, your lady mother.”

“She is, but-,” Robb hesitates, then takes a bite of his food and chews and swallows instead. “She’s always had Father, and he her. The last time they were apart was Greyjoy’s Rebellion. I don’t know how to help her. Bran hasn’t gotten any better…”

“But he hasn’t gotten any worse.” Nell feels strange being the optimistic one for once, but she can hardly tell Robb that she still half-expects Bran to die any given night. The rain has finally died down outside to a light drizzle. “Mayhaps you should try to ease her into it. Convince her to leave him for just an hour or two each day.”

“I’ll try to speak with her tonight,” Robb decides. “Maester Luwin has figures and appointments to go over with her.”

“With you as well,” Nell is careful with her tone; she does not want to come across as nagging or pushing him, or she’ll have a slippery hole to dig herself out of. Men need to be prodded and cajoled while feeling as though it were their idea all along. Barbrey taught her that. “You are lord of Winterfell in your father’s absence. They will try to test you, to see what sort of Warden of the North you may be.”

“My father is still Warden,” he frowns.

“Your father is well into the barrowlands by now,” Nell says. “He cannot rule the North and serve as the king’s hand all at once. He would not have left had he no faith in you to manage his lands and people properly.”

Robb smiles briefly at her, just as two maids come up to the table.

“Milord, we still cannot find Rickon,” the older one says. “He’s not in his room, or in the godswood-,”

“Or the stables,” the younger one adds, “nor the kitchen, milord, beggin’ your pardons, but it might be he will only come if’n you call for him.”

“Lord Robb must meet with his mother and Maester Luwin,” Nell says swiftly, standing up. “I will go with you to search for Rickon. I’m sure he’s hiding somewhere, hungry.” Dana and Beth follow her and the maids out, and begin the arduous process of trying to determine where Rickon might be. 

“Let’s split up,” Dana suggests wearily, as she pulls on her cloak. “I’ll take Arla and search the godswood and guesthouse again. He might be playing around in there with Shaggydog. Lorna, you check the bell tower and the kennels.”

“Beth and I will search the crypts and then the library,” Nell takes the young girl’s hand. “He likes to hide under the tables there sometimes.”

The crypts are dark, damp, and cold. Nell fights back any sense of unease about being surrounded by dead Starks, and lights a torch from the wall. Beth holds onto her tightly as they descend down the ancient steps. “I hate it down here,” Beth murmurs. “Once, we were playing hide and seek, and I was looking, and Arya and Bran hid down here and scared me. And I fell and cut my knee…”

“Rickon,” Beth calls into the gloom. “Come out! You’re hungry, aren’t you? If you come out now, you may still have some supper before bed.” There is no answer beyond the faint drip of water and the occasional rustle. They pass by several statues, and Nell is careful to keep her gaze focused straight ahead. No sense in spooking herself. “Rickon!” There is still no answer.

“He doesn’t like the dark that much,” Beth says warily. “He would have come out by now, or Shaggy. Shaggydog smells people before he sees them.”

There is a distant scream, and Beth gasps, bumping into Nell, who nearly drops the torch. “What was that?”

Another shout, more yelling, and the sound of running feet. “I don’t know,” Nell says, with a terrible sense of foreboding. This is too much like- “Let’s go.” She tightens her grip on the torch and hastens back upstairs with Beth, dashing out into the courtyard as men rush by, shouting for buckets. 

“What-,”

“Look!” Beth is gaping up at the spire of the library tower. Several of the windows are glowing orange, and the smell of smoke hangs heavy in the air. 

“Gods, Rickon-,” Nell can think of several ways a fire might start, and a rambunctious little boy knocking over a lantern or trying to light a candle is one of them. She lets go of Beth and starts forward. “Robb!” Then she sees him, running towards the blaze, the maester on his heels. “ROBB!” she shouts, and he stops to look at her. “Rickon might be in there!”

He nods tightly, and starts running again, shouting for the men to form a chain.

Beth has darted off to find her father, and Nell looks around frantically for a few moments before she spots Dana. Only then does she make out the howling of the wolves again. “He wasn’t in the godswood, but his wolf was,” Dana says darkly. “Scared the maids half to death when they started howling- it’ll be hard for the fire to spread across the bailey, though.”

“Are you lookin’ for Rickon?” A small hand grabs at her elbow. Nell starts and glances down at the boy they call Turnip. Beth was right about his missing teeth.

“Have you seen him?” she demands.

Turnip nods eagerly. “He was goin’ to find his ma.” Then he continues on his way, heaving along a bucket nearly as large as him, brimming with filthy kitchen water.

“Then he’s not in the library,” Dana sighs in relief. 

“The first keep,” Nell agrees. “But Lady Catelyn must be beside herself, if she can see the blaze-,”

They quickly start off in that direction, leaving the crowd working to fight the fire behind, and cut through the silent armory and deserted guards hall to reach the circular first keep. “I don’t like this place after dark,” Dana says, as they enter the building. “You always hear about ghosts and the like prowling about.”

“I think ghosts should be the least of our worries when towers are catching fire,” Nell snaps, then stops. “Did you hear that?”

Several loud thuds, as if something had fallen and rolled off a shelf. All the howling has ceased. Nell wonders wildly for a moment if the fire might have woken Bran, somehow. Her and Dana glance at each other, then rush up the stairwell, the sounds louder now. Then there is a low growl, of sorts, and as they reach the corridor Nell just gets a glimpse of a furry shape slipping inside Bran’s room. 

Nell flies down the corridor, shoving open the half ajar door, just in time to see Bran’s direwolf come away with half a man’s throat in its jaws. Dana screams, the freshly made corpse on the floor continues to bleed out, a red pool flowing across the stones, and Nell looks from the dagger on the floor to the strange, filthy dead man to Catelyn Stark, white-faced and wild-eyed, huddled against the bed, to the wolf licking blood off her twitching fingers.

“Mother?” There’s a high, frightened voice from behind them. Nell quickly moves to block the bloody view of the room from Rickon, who cranes his neck trying to glimpse around her. “I got lost,” he says plaintively, “but Bran’s wolf showed me. Why’s Mother being silly?”

The wolf has jumped on the bed beside the still unconscious Bran, and Lady Stark has begun to laugh and laugh, on the verge of hysterical sobs. “She’s just had a bad fright, that’s all,” Nell lies to Rickon, and then, without looking back, scoops him up into her arms and runs down the stairs with Dana, shouting for the nearest guards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as we currently known in canon, Beth, Turnip, and the other kids of Winterfell are still held captive at the Dreadfort, alongside everyone's favorite grandma, Old Nan. If they don't make it out in one piece, I'm going to be very upset. That said, I was really trying to embrace the horror aspects in this chapter, from Nell's dreams of dead women to the general spookiness of Winterfell after dark to Summer's timely kill. I also really, really like writing Rickon as a small feral child riding around on his wolf.


	9. Donella IX

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell knows a lie when she hears one, and she’s heard many in her life. Never from her aunt, her father, or Sara- Barbrey thought it a disservice to lie to her niece, Father thought it unnecessary, and Sara thought it pointless. But she’s heard lies all the same, from servants and guards and cooks and washerwomen and stableboys- lies from villagers and innkeepers and farmers. Nell thinks herself shrewd and observant, but in reality, most lies are lazy, indulgent things, easily ripped open. Born of convenience or pity or flattery. She’s certainly told her fair share, with varying degrees of success. The best lie, of course, is one that has some shade of truth to it. 

So when Lady Catelyn informs Nell that she and Ser Rodrik are paying a visit to White Harbor to seek the counsel of the maesters there for Bran, Nell knows it is a lie immediately. Catelyn Stark is an honest woman, for better or worse, not easily given to deception and trickery. Her clear blue eyes- Robb’s eyes- are shadowed and strangely determined when she lies. Her hands are still heavily bandaged, her hair arranged to cover the wound on her scalp, and her face still pale and gaunt from a fortnight of barely eating or sleeping. But she seems almost stronger, sharper, somehow. As if, absurdly enough, the attack jolted her back to life.

And it is a lie. She is likely going to White Harbor, yes, and taking Ser Rodrik with her, and for Bran’s sake, yes, but for maesters? No. Maester Luwin is a clever, learned man. Nell may not trust him, but she believes his claims that Bran will never walk again, and that he will not sleep forever. She may believe Bran will wake from his slumber only to finally pass away, but the presence of his wolf by his side, day and night, gives her new doubt. How did the beast know he was in danger? Did it follow the stranger’s smell? Or did it have some other sense to warn it?

Catelyn is not going for maesters, so why is she going to White Harbor? What would drag her away from Bran’s bedside now? Answers, Nell thinks. The truth. They will have no answers from a dead man, but she saw that blade he carried herself, before Maester Luwin took it away to examine it. That was finely made, perhaps even Valyrian steel. Poor murderers do not carry Valyrian steel, unless they steal it or rich men give it to them. And the fire in the library tower could certainly be some grand coincidence, but like her aunt and mother before her, Nell does not believe in coincidences. The fire was set to distract the rest of the household and draw away the guards while the man silenced Bran.

So then the only question remaining is who and why. Who would want Bran Stark dead, and why. That too, comes easily enough, although perhaps it is her natural inclination towards paranoia. He knows something that they do not want him repeating. He must have seen something, or heard something, that his would-be murder does not want getting out. Someone who was visiting Winterfell with the royal party. And if that follows, then- well, perhaps Bran did not fall that day, at all. Perhaps that was merely the first attempt to kill him, and once it became evident he was not dying immediately, they left someone behind to finish the job.

“I apologize for the short notice,” Catelyn is telling her, and Nell realizes she is gaping at the woman silently. They are not in Bran’s room, but in Lady Stark’s sitting room, adjoining her bedchamber. The last time Nell was in here, she sat in a corner, sewing with Jeyne and Beth, watching Sansa and Arya, dressed in their very best gowns, sit stiffly together for a portrait miniature for their mother. It was the closest she’d ever seen the two; they shared a velvet cushioned bench, sitting shoulder to shoulder, or shoulder to head, really, given the difference in height. 

Sansa had been in snowy white, trimmed with Tully blue, while Arya had been in Stark grey, trimmed with Tully red, their hair held back with matching silk ribbons. Sansa had been practically bubbling with pride, while Arya had looked as though she wanted to scream, but restrained herself for her mother’s sake. Catelyn had had tears in her eyes, and afterwards embraced them both and told them what fine young ladies they would become at court. Nell had tried, very hard, to stamp out the flame of agonizing bitter envy, watching them, and rubbed at the braided hair round her wrist instead.

“You have no need to apologize to me, my lady,” she says now, inclining her head respectfully. “I shall strive to see Winterfell just as you left it, upon your return.”

“You have my thanks.” She can tell Catelyn likely suspects that she suspects that both of them are lying, but both of them are also well-bred women and far too polite and too careful to say it. “I know this has been a difficult time for all of us. I am in your debt, truly, Donella, for the care you’ve shown my sons.” Catelyn hesitates. “Both Rickon and Robb.”

“House Stark shall be my good-family before the year is out,” Nell says with a smile that she hopes does not look more like a frustrated grimace. “Your sorrows are my sorrows, my lady. I shall pray for your safe travel and Bran’s improvement daily.”

“May the gods, old and new, hear all our prayers.” Catelyn nods, then stands. Nell follows suit, smoothing out her skirts. “I have spoken with Robb as well. I leave Winterfell in his hands, and yours. Ser Rodrik and I will depart at dawn on the morrow. You must excuse me for the rest of the day-,” she pauses, and then gives a sad sort of smile. “I should spend this time with Rickon, before I leave.”

The Starks take their meal separate that night; Catelyn and Robb and little Rickon eat in Bran’s bedchamber. Nell eats with Dana in her own chambers, and in between bites of food they come up with all sorts of wild theories and speculations as to what Bran Stark could have heard or seen. “A plot of some sort,” Dana is certain of it. “The boy was climbing the broken tower, was he not? Exactly where someone would go to avoid being overheard. Perhaps a scheme against the king or queen-,”

“Or a scheme put forth by the king or queen,” Nell points out darkly. 

Dana wrinkles her nose as she takes a long sip of her stew. “What could they have to plot about? They’re the king and queen. They have everything.”

Nell shrugs lightly. “And both of them seem utterly miserable. The king has no love for his wife or children, the queen has no love for him and his whoring and drinking. I imagine she can hardly wait until Joffrey sits the throne and she’s free to return to Casterly Rock.”

“I imagine the king wishes he’d wed a woman with a smaller, poorer family,” Dana japes, then frowns. “That’s just the way of it, isn’t it? Everyone thinks they want to get their hands on some power, but once you’ve got it, there’s all this nasty duty that comes with it. Isn’t that why they made the throne so bloody uncomfortable? So no man would ever have an easy go of it.”

“When it’s her boy’s turn, Cersei Lannister is like to order a few cushions,” Nell mutters.

In a sense, she pities the Baratheons. She might eagerly look forward to the day when she is Lady Stark, but ruling the North and ruling all seven kingdoms are two very different things. Cersei might seem a supremely unpleasant, vindictive woman, but perhaps she was once light-hearted and sweet. Fifteen years of marriage to a man like Robert might harden anyone. And their children are simply a product of that as well. Even Robb might have turned out as arrogant and pigheaded as Joffrey, were he born into the Red Keep, and not Winterfell.

Later, after they’ve changed for bed, she adds, “If Lady Catelyn isn’t taking a ship to King’s Landing, I’ll strip naked and sleep in the godswood for a month.”

“With a fast horse, she could catch up to Lord Stark before they’ve reached the Neck,” Dana counters. “Why waste the time and take a ship? The Baratheon party will be moving as slow as mud, with that many people and baggage trains.”

“Because whatever she wants to tell him, she does not want within Lannister earshot. Or the king’s,” Nell decides. “She’d rather sacrifice the time and coin to hire a ship and wait in the capitol to speak with him privately.”

“Whatever she wants to tell him,” Dana yawns. “You’d best figure that out quick, before we’re caught up in something nasty. I don’t like any of this. Assassins and plots and politics,” she shudders dramatically.

“You’re free to return to Barrowton at any time,” Nell rolls her eyes, plumping her pillows.

“Oh, you won’t be rid of me that easily, Nellie,” Dana calls over her shoulder as she slips through the doorway. 

Of course she intends to get the truth of the matter from Robb, but she isn’t so obvious as to immediately harangue and harass him for information. Instead Nell adopts the patience of ice itself, conducts herself as she imagines any unassuming, blissfully ignorant young maid would, and waits. Of course, she has never been all that patient, ice aside, so she only waits five days, but surely that is long enough to not seem too suspicious or demanding? Barbrey would call this a test, tell her it her duty to try to get the whole truth without ever directly asking for it. If she puts him on the defensive, she could undo weeks- months- of effort. Nell is certain no one believes her to be some spy for the Lannisters, of all people, but that does not mean she has won the confidence of the Starks, either, for all the professions of kinship.

Were she in Robb’s shoes, she certainly wouldn’t be telling him anything. Then again, she would welcome an assassin in the night for the Bastard. She would lead the villain to his room herself, and bid him a merry murder. So perhaps the idea of being fiercely protective of one’s family is somewhat of a foreign concept. But empathy aside, she must know. Not just to sate her own curiosity, but because Dana is right. This could indeed turn into something nasty. Particularly when southerners are involved. This is not some petty feud between northern houses to be firmly stamped out by Ned Stark. If Bran’s death was ordered by a Lannister, and accusations and threats are leveled, Nell is not certain even Robert Baratheon would be able to quell the resulting clash. 

To his credit, Robb may not be dishonest by nature, but he is certainly capable of putting on a calm and composed front. He has made no attempts to avoid or ignore her, and makes a point to spend time with her at least once a day, albeit usually in the company of others. Nell has had quite enough of Theon Greyjoy and Beth Cassel serving as makeshift chaperones to protect her virtue. Beth is a child who would marry Robb in a heartbeat, much like every Northern girl, and Theon has never guarded anyone’s virtue in his life. He rides through the winter town and catches the eye of half the girls over the age of fifteen. He has likely caught much more than their eyes. 

So Nell catches him coming back from the First Keep, knowing he is likely to be alone after visiting Bran, and hails him from across the courtyard, lifting her skirts and smiling as she hurries to his side. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” she chides with a wry smile, hoping to set him at ease with her apparently high spirits. She is still not used to the sight of him in ringmail, carrying steel. Since the attack of Bran, Robb goes nowhere without a weapon. At least he has not insisted on naming his sword. As far as Nell is concerned, the only blades worth names are those of Valyrian steel. Everything else is usually some young lordling attempting to sound menacing, and boys always come up with the silliest names, like Piercer or Heartsbane or something that sounds like a veiled innuendo for their cocks.

Still, were she ever to get her hands on Valyrian steel, Nell thinks she would name hers Bethany. It would seem only fitting. 

“Rickon hasn’t gotten into the larder with Shaggy again, has he?” Robb groans.

Nell smiles, but then lets it sag a little, into a crestfallen look. “No, but I did want to ask about him- that is, your mother. Did she tell you how long she thought to stay in White Harbor? I know it is a ten day’s ride down the White Knife, but Rickon asks daily for her. I hope she might make a swift return, for his sake.”

Robb hesitates, and she latches onto that, touching his arm gently. “I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped-,”

“No, of course not,” he shakes his head. “You’ve… I know Rickon is not easy for anyone to deal with, least of all-,”

“Strangers?” she gives that wry smile again, but glances away, as if slightly stung.

To her satisfaction, he takes her arm. “You’re not a stranger to any of us anymore, Nell. It’s just that he’s so young, and there’s been so much change…”

“It’s lucky that he is so young,” Nell looks back at him soberly. “He’s too young to understand the danger we were all in, what with that rogue slinking about, waiting for his chance…” She trails off, as if it is too horrid to even consider, then adds in a hushed voice, “It chills me, it truly does, Robb. Your mother was lucky to escape with her life.”

“Lucky that Bran’s wolf saved them both,” Robb shakes his head, and she can see the pain in his eyes, and feels a stab of guilt. “I- had that man succeeded, we would have lost both of them, and I-,”

“Don’t think about that,” she assures him. “What matters is that he’s dead now, and Lady Catelyn and Bran are both safe, praise the gods. And if she brings back those maesters- who knows, perhaps Bran really will wake soon.” Nell smiles hollowly.

Robb stops walking, as does she. He looks at her, really looks at her, and then blurts out, “My lady, if I tell you something in confidence, will you swear to me not to repeat it?”

 _I’ve struck true_ , she thinks triumphantly, and says earnestly, “On my very life, I swear it, my lord. You are to be my husband. My loyalty will always lie with you before any other.”

“My mother did not go to White Harbor for the maesters,” Robb lowers his voice, taking her by elbow and leading her into a deserted alcove. “She went there for the ships. She is going to King’s Landing, to meet with my father when he arrives with the girls.”

“I don’t understand,” Nell murmurs, understanding perfectly. “Why would she not simply send a raven?”

“Because we cannot trust this message to ravens,” Robb tells her gravely. “My mother believes the man who attacked her set the fire in the library, that he was here to kill Bran… on a Lannister’s orders.”

Despite her suspicions, Nell knows she does look a little shocked, all the same. To think it is one thing, to say it is another, even here in the heart of Winterfell. “But who? And why would they want an innocent boy dead?”

“The Kingslayer did not go out on the hunt that day,” Robb lets go of her, and a shadow passes over his face, and he seems taller, older, for a few moments. It unnerves her, to see a glimpse of a man in him. An angry man. A man who might use that sword at his side to avenge his own. “We don’t think Bran slipped. He was thrown, or pushed. And when that did not work-,”

“He sent someone to finish it?” Nell murmurs. “That is a bold accusation, Robb. What proof do you- do we- have that the Lannisters- any Lannister- had cause to want Bran dead? He is just a child. No threat to anyone, least of all a warrior like Jaime Lannister.”

Robb pauses, debating, and then seems to decide that he has already waded in with her, so he might as well start swimming. “Mother received a message in code from my lady aunt. It seemed to imply that Jon Arryn’s death might not have been sickness. That he may have been murdered. By Lannisters, at the queen’s bidding.”

This truly is a surprise; Nell could never have anticipated that Arryn’s name might come up. Her practiced mask of false earnestness and sweet sentiments slides off her agape face; unconsciously, she raises a hand to cover her mouth. Jon Arryn was an old man. Old men die from anything and everything. A slip down some steps, a fever, a nagging cough, a chill, bad meat. To claim that he was murdered- But if Catelyn believes it-

“Does your father know that?” she finally whispers.

“That’s why he agreed to take the position,” Robb’s voice rises slightly in frustration. “He thinks it his duty to uncover the truth of the matter, and see justice done. But he has no idea that Bran’s fall was no accident, nor that there was an attempt on his life. That is why Mother said she must go, and without an escort beyond Ser Rodrik. She means to warn Father.”

“I see,” Nell says, and knows she is undone now, because in the face of her genuine shock, her previous attempts at feigned innocent curiosity and protests of wifely loyalty seem very blatant indeed. She has never thought Robb cunning, but she has never thought him stupid, either, and he’d have to be very stupid not to see through this now.

She is right. He suddenly steps away from her, shaking his head. “I should not have told you any of this. You- you suspected, didn’t you? This was all some ploy to get me to admit it?” He scowls suddenly, and there is a hint of Jon Snow in it, loathe as she is to admit any resemblance. “I only told you because when Mother asked for my oath to never repeat her words, I only nodded. I thought I might need- that eventually, I might have to tell you the truth-,”

“You owed me the truth,” Nell says flatly, refusing to shrink back in the face of his outrage. “You owed me that much, Robb. I understand your reluctance-,”

“Gods, sometimes I hardly know what is true and what is false with you,” he snaps back. “You play the innocent maid one day, the-,”

“The what? The knowing woman?” she demands. “I am. I am a woman grown, not a child to be coddled and shielded from the truth. You know I will not repeat this.” That is a lie. Of course she will tell Dana, just not directly. But aside from her, she will never breathe a word of it.

“I don’t know,” he retorts. “I was trying to- you made me feel the villain, keeping it from you, acting as if you really cared about Rickon missing my mother-,”

Now she is truly stung. Nell recoils as if he’d slapped her. “I don’t care? I was looking for Rickon that night! I found him mere feet away from a blood-soaked direwolf and your mother in hysterics on the floor! Had Dana and I been there a few minutes earlier, we might have been at the end of that dagger.” 

He is flushed red with anger, and she is getting there. She should have apologized immediately. She is doing herself no favors with this display of anger, however righteous she feels it to be. Barbrey would shake her silly for leaving herself so vulnerable, so wounded and angry. Being angry with a man and letting him know it gives him power over you. 

“How dare you,” she says furiously. “I have given up everything for your sake. For your family’s sake. I left my home. My aunt. My life- No, I don’t love your family. They are not my blood. You are not my blood. But you will be soon enough, and I have tried to make the best of things, and to be better, and-,” to her disgust she feels almost close to tears. She should not care this much. Not at all. “And I still have to prove myself to you. If you don’t trust my silence, my loyalty, then send me back to Barrow Hall, my lord, and summon me back when you wish to be wed.”

“Donella,” he says, still red but his mouth softening, as if heartened by her display of genuine emotion. It only aggravates her more. “I didn’t mean-,”

“I know what you meant,” Nell would rather he cling to his anger stubbornly, or just walk away, than to- to retreat in the face of her explosion, to express pity- “You think me a Bolton and a liar.” His brother’s words are still ringing in her ears. _Robb sees through you. He knows what you are. A frightened, manipulative little girl._

Robb tenses. “I know you for a Bolton,” he agrees, and then he catches her by the wrist before she can stalk off, and puts his lips to hers. He is hesitant and unsure and she is shocked all over again, so it is not a very good kiss, but it is enough. They break apart, and he seems to be waiting for her to scream, or slap him. “You may be a liar,” he says. “But these days I think we could use a good liar. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Nell replies, unsmiling, digs her fingers into his hair, and shows him a proper kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the theme of this chapter was definitely 'lies'. My main issue was that in order to not waste a few chapters of Nell sitting around scratching her head going 'I wonder where Lady Catelyn has run off to...', she needed to find out the truth of not only Robb's mother's disappearance, but their suspicions against the Lannisters for the murder of Jon Arryn and attempted murder(s) of Bran. Obviously it doesn't take a genius to put together that the footpad with the fancy knife was probably paid by someone rich, or that the library fire was probably not a coincidence, but I didn't want to write Nell pulling a Sherlock Holmes and somehow deducing half the plot thus far based on some snippets of information. Hence why she feels the need to try to manipulate/guilt Robb into telling her himself, and why she is genuinely shocked by the news of Jon Arryn's death potentially being a murder. 
> 
> As for Robb breaking down and telling her, I always found it slightly curious/amusing in canon that when Catelyn swears him, Ser Rodrik, Maester Luwin, and Theon to secrecy, Robb is the only one who doesn't verbally state 'I swear' but instead just nods. Here he uses this to justify breaking his promise to his mother to inform Nell himself, although he does lash out when he realizes she may not have been entirely truthful in getting it out of him. But I thought it was important for them to have their first genuine 'fight' wherein Nell is so angry/upset that she forgets all about Barbrey's tutelage and lets herself be honestly angry and outraged. Ironically, this works in her favor, as Robb seems to appreciate that she cared more about being true to herself and him then she did about smoothing things over and playing the demure young lady who'd never dare contradict her betrothed.
> 
> All of this probably could have been avoided by placing Nell in the scene itself wherein Catelyn spills the beans and formulates the plan to warn Ned, but I really didn't want to just rewrite that chapter, and while I do think Catelyn would have included Nell had she already been married to Robb, it is somewhat of an awkward/distrusting situation for both sides. Nell is (usually) very cautious about how 'open' she is with Robb and his family, and while he is more inclined to believe the best of her, the rest of the Starks are not necessarily as immediately trusting, although they are welcoming and polite.
> 
> One final note: after this chapter we will be doing a time skip to about 2 months later, because nothing is really happening at Winterfell until Bran wakes up.


	10. Donella X

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell wakes when Bran does, which is to say that she’s awoken just past midnight by a pounding on her bedchamber door. She’s always been a light sleeper, so she’s up and on her feet, pulling on a fur-lined robe and unbarring the door, stomach clenched with dread- Gods, what could it be now? Another bloody fire or assassin? But when she opens the door she is confronted not with terror but elation. “He’s awake,” Dana hisses, and Nell stares at her in dumb shock and confusion for a moment before the truth sinks in, cold and crisp.

“He’s awake?”

He’s awake, and despite the late hour all of Winterfell has woken with him. The halls and corridors and stairwells are crowded with gossiping, excited servants, and despite the cold chill and the long walk, Nell feels none of it, heart pounding somewhere up in her throat, blood humming in her ears, until they are outside the room with Rickon and Beth. “We’ll wait a little, you go in,” Dana says, nudging a still half-asleep and cranky Rickon over to Nell, who takes his hand. For once he doesn’t wrench away from her, which she decides to take as either a sign that he finally growing to tolerate or her or simply that he is too tired and bewildered to care.

Outside all is dark, but Bran’s room is bathed in light, from the new fire crackling in the hearth to the torches blazing on the walls to the lanterns on the floor. Maester Luwin is examining the boy, and Nell feels rooted to the floor at the sight of Bran awake and moving- his upper half, at least. The heavy quilts and furs have been stripped off the bed and thrown to the side, and at the maester’s hushed commands Bran raises both arms above his head, clenches and unclenches his fists, and follows Luwin’s quill in the air with his wide eyes. The man takes frantic notes all the while, white with shock, but Nell looks away from him and to Robb.

Robb and her have come to what she supposes is an ‘understanding’ of sorts since their… quarrel. He may think her vexing, but he is truly the contradictory one- kiss or no kiss, she had not expected him to warm to her simply because she was completely honest with him for once. Had she known that in advance, she might have saved herself the trouble of the flirting and the quips and the secretive smiles. Of course, they are not now the very best of friends just because they told one another the truth. But things have been easier, she thinks. It is not so stiff and tense between them. Grey Wind seems to reflect his mood; now when she enters a room the wolf approaches her, and if she can work up the nerve to pet his big head, he seems to like it, closing his eyes in contentment. 

They have not kissed again, though. There have been a few close calls, but Robb is too honorable and she is too cautious- not for any fear for his or her virtue- what does it matter when they are to be married in five months?- but because she will not risk compromising herself. Not physically, but- she worries that she will lose her clear head. Robb is not the man she envisioned in her girlish dreams of marriage- he does not even turn fifteen until next month- but that means little and less when a handsome boy is smiling at you and running his fingers through your hair. If she is too busy infatuating herself with Robb Stark, she will lose focus, lose foresight. She will grow careless, lazy, and she knows, knows deep in her bones that it will come back to bite and scrape at her. There will be some mistake, on his part or hers, and they will all pay for it. Too much is at stake now. Especially with the threat of war.

Robb is standing in a corner, arms crossed over his chest, pale and glassy-eyed but so frantically hopeful she cannot help but go to him, as though he were a flickering light at risk of blowing out. “You were right,” she says hoarsely, “he got better.” He says nothing but takes her hand in his, and she holds on for a bit longer than is proper before letting go as the maester turns back to them. Bran is silent but seems aware enough, his eyes following them, his wolf curled up around him like a massive cat. 

“He has no feeling in his legs,” Luwin pronounces. “But his other senses seem intact; he has his sight, his hearing, his arms and hands, and he is awake and alert. He should be watched very closely these next few days, and we must monitor what he eats- some broth or a very light soup, I think, and perhaps some bread crusts or sliced fruit-,”

“Bran!” Rickon has awoken enough to realize where he is and who he is with, and like a bolt he lets go of Nell’s hand, darts past the startled maester, and leaps up onto the rumpled bed.

“Rickon, don’t-,” Robb starts forward, but Rickon is already clinging to Bran, grinning broadly to reveal a cheeky, dimpled beam. Nell realizes then that she has not seen the boy truly smile like that in months. Not since all the Starks were here together, before Bran fell and the others left. Just as Robb reaches the bed to pull Rickon away, Bran’s frail, gaunt arms lock around his brother in an embrace, and his darker shade of auburn hair intermingles with Rickon’s bronze curls.

“You came back!” Rickon tells him happily. 

“I came back,” Bran agrees. His voice is a thin, papery rasp from months of disuse, but he is speaking all the same, and there are tears gleaming in his Tully blue eyes.

“We’ll speak more in the morning,” Robb tells Maester Luwin, and then joins his brothers on the bed. Nell stays a little while longer, sitting on the edge of the bed by the open window and listening to an owl hoot outside and the brothers Starks’ soft conversation and the sputtering and crackles of the torches and the hearth. 

There is a palpable sense of relief after that, if only because the waiting is over. There is no longer a question of ‘if’ or ‘when’ Bran might awaken. He has woken, and while the loss of his legs is no small thing, the fact that the boy seems of sound mind and has all his wits is surely a miracle of some sort. When Dana says that the gods preserved him, and little Beth nods sagely, Nell does not disagree. What else could keep a boy of eight alive for that long? He should be dead.

But he does not remember. Nell is not present for the questioning, but Robb tells her later that Bran’s last memory is of climbing the broken tower. After that… nothing. He does not recall how or where he fell or if anyone else was there or if he was pushed or thrown. Robb seems visibly disappointed by this, as if having had the hope that all along, the answers might have been lurking inside Bran’s mind, but part of Nell is relieved. This all may still be forgotten and put to rest if Bran does not remember, if he can make no accusations. And even if he could… the Lannisters and the King could easily dismiss it as the mad ramblings of a crippled child. 

Any hope (or dread) of justice lies with Lady Catelyn now. If she uncovers some proof or somehow manages to provoke some confession while in King’s Landing… But if she does not, and it is all for naught, then what? What will they do? Will House Stark brood on this for the next century, the mystery of who or what happened to little Lord Bran? There are far stranger mysteries lost to history. In the long term, it might be for the best. Yet there is still the question of Jon Arryn. Even if what happened to Bran is put aside, what could have led Lady Lysa to believe her husband had been murdered? Why would the Lannisters want him dead now, after years of service to the king?

Perhaps, Nell thinks, he was a casualty of some plot to install Lord Tywin in his place. With the king’s good father as his Hand, House Lannister’s advantages at court would go unchallenged. Perhaps they do not think Robert like to see the next decade- and she could believe that, with the way the man eats and drinks- and simply wanted Joffrey to have as gentle a seat as possible as king. Then Lord Tywin might rule for him, as he did in the time of Mad Aerys. But if that is true, it seems an awfully risky plan. Clearly Robert’s first inclination would have been to demand that Ned Stark replace Lord Arryn.

“Mayhaps it is all a new widow’s paranoia,” Dana suggests one day to her. They only ever discuss any of it in the privacy of Nell’s own chambers. Robb has some measure of trust in her now, and she will not risk it anymore than is necessary. “You heard the rumors- they say Lady Lysa’s been queer of mind for years now. All those lost children. It could be that Jon Arryn died naturally, of some ordinary sickness, or a bad stomach, and she is simply spinning a tale out of hatred for the Lannisters or the queen- she might blame the stress of court for her own misfortunes.”

“Or perhaps the rumors are the work of Lannisters hoping to discredit a woman with genuine grievances against them,” Nell retorts. “That would not be so far-fetched, either. They say she’s holed up in the Eyrie now. Might be for very good reasons.”

But whatever the real truth is, none of them have any hope of approaching it at Winterfell. Nell tries to put it out of her head and concentrate on the more practical matters instead. She spends an hour each day in meetings with Robb and Maester Luwin, an hour each day finishing the needlework on her wedding garments, her maiden’s cloak especially, an hour each day visiting with Bran, an hour each day running after Rickon, and an hour each day seeing to Beth Cassel’s education. The girl can read and write and calculate sums, but in the absence of any septa or other tutors at Winterfell, Nell begrudgingly takes it upon herself and Dana to see that Beth can master the womanly arts as well. They usually focus on something different each day, and occasionally Bandy and Shyra and Palla or even little Turnip might make an appearance, scrawling on slates or stumbling over the words before them. 

Nell has heard the familiar warnings that education makes servants impudent and lazy, believing they know better than their lords and masters, but Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn never barred anyone from their library, high or lowborn, and she sees no real disadvantages to at least seeing that these children might be able to read and write their names and simple sentences, if nothing more. Robb does not object to it, nor does he have time to- he is the lord now, and often they are only ever together at meals. 

Sometimes he is off visiting other castles and holdfast- never any further than a week’s ride- but it is strange to watch him ride out with Hallis Mollen and Theon Greyjoy and Grey Wind and disappear into the green-and-grey landscape of the North. Once she watched him go and felt as though something were clawing at the inside of her chest, and it occurred to her later that it had been genuine worry. She worries for him now, and she is not even a wife yet. That makes her uncomfortable. She feels as though she waded too far into a mire, and cannot get out. Stuck in thick mud and muck, up to her waist. 

Robb is sitting the lord’s seat and holding an audience in the great hall when Tyrion Lannister comes down from the Wall to Winterfell. Nell is playing the lady’s part and listening to the people’s concerns and complaints in the winter town. Inside the simultaneously stuffy and drafty Smoking Log, the village inn and tavern, Nell sits by the blazing hearth with Dana and two guards at her back, a quill and ink and paper before her, and sets about dispensing, if not a lord’s justice, then a lady’s judgement. 

“My lady, this here boy’s gone an' stolen chickens-,”

“My lady, my girl’s run off to Cerwyn, an' I want her called back-,”

“My lady, beggin' your pardons, but my husband’s been gone four moons now-,”

“My lady, won’t you take me son into your service? He’s a proper hearty lad, won’t be any trouble, I swear it-,”

“Pardon, my lady, but the innkeep, he’s cut our wages again, an' he’s got no right to, not after the business we’ve had-,”

To be sure, none of them are very ‘serious’ matters- no murders or rapes or questions of besmirched honor- but Nell has been along with Barbrey on dozens of these visits in Barrowton, and knows well enough that it is her duty to put on a stoic, grim face, and treat each matter before her as though it were being recorded for the history tomes by a hundred harried maesters. Her seat is horribly uncomfortable and her legs are stiff and prickling from sitting for so long and she hasn’t eaten in hours and the guards look bored out of their minds, but this is what must be done from time to time. Every lord rules over his smallfolk, his crofters and townspeople and tradesmen, of course. But it is in every lord’s interest to at least keep up the appearance of having a vested interest in them. Lest he start to find himself short of firewood. Or grain. Or servants. 

Open rebellion is rare, but this is not the South, where a lord might immediately call upon his allies to aid him in crushing a peasant revolt. A slow death from a hundred small, irritating wounds is just as much as a death as that by an axe through the skull. So Nell stays where she is, tries to keep a cool head, and waves man and woman alike forward to hear them out. Sometimes they resolve it themselves, right in front of her, bolstered by her mere presence and implication of power and authority. Other times, they turn beseeching eyes on her.

“Did you steal chickens?”

“No,” the youth mutters. “And she’s no proof of it, milady, I’m telling you-,”

“Harrett, you gods-forsaken liar-,”

“Were I to order the guards to search your home, I’d not find chicken in the pot over the hearth?” Nell massages her forehead.

The boy hesitates, then gives it up. “Me mam can’t work, milady, and they’d got out- s’not really stealing if her chickens are in the road, please-,”

“You wretched-,”

“It’s not,” Nell agrees, “so it’ll be twenty lashes in the town square, instead of a finger taken for each missing hen. You want work, come to the castle. We could use more men in the barracks. Provided they haven’t got feathers in their hair.”

And so on-

“No, Goodman Morgan, Lord Robb will not drag your daughter back here. A girl of seventeen’s reached her majority, and may wed whom she chooses. Varya here swears they went before a heart tree and made their oaths, so she’ll stay with that man of Cerwyn’s.”

“Goodwife Shenna, you’ll take this woman and her babe into your home. She wed your son before he died, so she’s due a widow’s rights, and the law states a widow may not be put out on the street when she has living kin.”

Nell is in the middle of what has become a rousing debate surrounding whether or not wages were stolen from the ale girls and barkeeps during the royal stay when one of the doors to the inn bursts open, and mutters and exclamations of the ‘The Half Man’s back,’ begin to move through the crowd. Nell stands suddenly- it is not altogether a shock that Tyrion Lannister might be here again, coming down from the Wall- and raises a gloved hand for silence as men in Lannister scarlet, burdened down with heavy furs, shove their way through the packed tavern.

When that does not succeed, Dana hands her an empty flagon, which she smashes down atop the table, and then they have something like quiet. 

“Lord Tyrion,” she says as graciously as she can, and curtsies at the sight of him. 

“He looks as though he’s seen a ghost,” Dana murmurs in her ear, and Nell keeps her smile tight and poised.

“My lady,” he returns. He does look disturbed; pale and drawn and sweating, and one of his sleeves is torn. Did he meet trouble in the winter town? Has he already been in the castle? They could have come through the northmost gate, the one by the wolfswood-, “If you will excuse my ill manners, I find myself in dire need of a drink.”

The man tending the bar at present does not look particularly enthused at the notion of serving the Imp. “Let’s not tarry, Yors, see to his lordship,” Nell says sharply, and the man reddens, then obeys. 

“I thank you for your hospitality, Lady Bolton,” Tyrion has found himself a seat at a conspicuously empty table. “I found the reception from your lord somewhat… savage.”

Gods be good, if Robb was fool enough to threaten him with Grey Wind-

“I certainly hope you are unharmed, my lord,” she comes through the crowd to him, the picture of courteous concern, her hands clasped in front of her. 

The Imp just smiles coldly at her. “I confess my spirits and breeches dampened some, but other than that I am quite well.”

“My betrothed offered you the hospitality of Winterfell, surely?”

“In a fashion, yes. I simply had not realized the hospitality included quite so many snarling teeth.” With a drink set roughly before him, he seems to cheer slightly. “I’ll spare you the gruesome tale, my lady. But you might remind your bridegroom-to-be that in the future, when he greets a guest with steel unsheathed, he’d best be prepared to follow through on the promise.”

Nell blinks, dips her head, and says, “My deepest apologies, my lord. I beg of you not to look unkindly upon House Stark’s courtesies in the future. This has been a most trying time for us.”

One sharp look to Dana and the guards, and they are off. It is a very short ride back up the castle, but Nell presses Roddy hard all the same, comes thundering through the gates, nearly flings the reins at a waiting stableboy, and begins her hunt for her thrice-ignorant-obstinate-fool of a betrothed. Sword unsheathed- is he mad? Has he any idea- What kind of pigheaded-

Robb is in the lord’s solar. Alone, aside from Grey Wind, who is lying down beside the fire. And looking near as guilty as the chicken thief did. Nell knows she is flushed red with fury and her hair is a mess and her hands are clenched into fists at her sides, but a tentative friendship or not, he is still her lord. So she restrains herself with great difficulty, and says only, “I had the pleasure of running into little Lord Tyrion in the winter town. He claims- of all things- that you denied him guest right with naked steel and direwolves.”

“It was- I did not think,” Robb admits, shame-faced. “When I heard he was here, I was so angry, I couldn’t… I only thought of Bran, and what they did to him-,”

“As far as we are concerned, they did nothing to him,” Nell says through her teeth. “As far as Tyrion Lannister knows, we suspect nothing. Or as far as he should know. I’m sure he knows quiet a bit more, now that you’ve made your feelings towards him so very clear.”

“I know it was wrong to treat a guest so-,”

“It was foolish,” she says sharply. “And I am not your mother to shame you, but Robb- how could you think to do such a thing? I am not saying you ought to have embraced the dwarf warmly, but to so obviously signal that we have suspicions- What do you imagine he will tell his sister and brother, when he returns to King’s Landing? You could have put your family in grave danger.”

“He drew up plans for a saddle,” Robb is not defensive with her; she will give him that much credit. He simply hands the parchment to her, eyes averted in regret. “I… I misjudged him, I think. It might be he had no hand in Bran’s fall, even if the others did. Why would he do him a kindness like this, then?”

“Guilt?” Nell suggests tartly, but studies the plans intently all the same. “Had you played the open-handed young lordling with him for a night, you might have learned more about Tyrion Lannister and why he does the things he does. You might have gotten a measure of him. But there’s no hope of that now. He’ll drink and wench the night away at the Smoking Log, and we’ll dine here with the crows.”

She hands the papers back to him. “I’d be happy to see to Bran’s riding with Joseth. It would do him good, to feel that he still has some freedom left.”

“You must think me a fool,” he mutters.

In spite of her anger, she can’t help but soften slightly to him. _Curse those blue eyes_ , she thinks savagely. Give her an uglier face, and she’d show him the meaning of anger. But it was honestly meant, what he did, at least. He feels as though he cannot protect his family, any of them, so he took it out on Tyrion Lannister. “I think you love your brother, and I know love makes men do foolish things.”

Robb gives a slow nod, before glancing at Grey Wind. “I didn’t command Grey Wind to attack. He came in with Rickon and the others- they surrounded Lannister before we could stop them. They were- they were almost vicious. They’ve never been like that before.”

“They’re not pups anymore,” Nell sits down beside him, and resists the urge to add, _‘And neither are you.’_ “When a dog is uncertain, he looks to his master. When a wolf is uncertain… he decides for you.”

“Father warned us, that they weren’t pets,” Robb sighs. “People see them- see Grey Wind- and they’re afraid.”

“With good reason. A little fear isn’t always a bad thing. But that doesn’t mean you can expect them to behave like people, with thoughts and reason.”

Something strange crosses Robb’s face then, flickering in her blue eyes. Nell pauses and stares at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “They’re not people,” he agrees, “but they’re not dumb beasts, either. Grey Wind… Sometimes I think he knows things I don’t.”

“Mayhaps he does,” Nell smiles briefly, taking it for a jape, but later thinks that Robb might not have been jesting in the slightest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These interim chapters where the Starks are basically just waiting for word from Catelyn or Ned as to what the hell is going on in King's Landing with the Lannisters are going to be a bit stilted, I'm afraid. But I wanted a chance to show what some duties as a lady might entail, in terms of Nell stepping up in the winter town, and I didn't want to just rehash the scene where the wolves almost make Tyrion their dinner. (Apparently a popular theory for that scene in particular is that in the original outline for the ASOIAF series, Tyrion was going to be much more of an outright villain and end up as the one to conquer and burn Winterfell, not Theon/Ramsay, which explains why we see the direwolves freak out in unison at the sight of him).


	11. Donella XI

298 AC - THE WOLFSWOOD

Nell is satisfied that Bran can control his new mare well enough to ride out beyond the walls of Winterfell near two months to the day after Tyrion Lannister has left them. The year’s end is fast approaching now. Old Nan swears that they will see autumn enter with the new year, and Nell cannot shake the sinking feeling that they are running out of time. For what or who, she cannot be sure. By all rights, she should be happy. Content. Satisfied. She will be a woman wed in a few short months. Everything she could have ever hoped for, she will have. A handsome, courteous husband. A fine, proper wedding, where she will be recognized by all the North. An enormous, powerful castle and keep that she should be proud to call home.

But she is not. Perhaps she could be happier, were it not for the ravens. First, one from the Wall, from Lord Commander Mormont, informing Robb that his uncle is still missing. Nell had only met Benjen Stark the once, and very briefly at that, but she was struck then by the laughter in his grey eyes all the same. He looked quite like his brother, aside from the eyes. He was the only Stark she’s known to have an easy smile. And now he’s vanished, north of the Wall. Likely killed by wildlings or the cold or the beasts that lurk beyond their borders. Nell has never seen the Wall, and has very little wish to. It is an honor to serve there, to be sure, but all the stories surrounding it are more sinister than heroic. 

Throughout the North, they whisper round their fires that the Night’s King was a Bolton, the man who let the Corpse Queen freeze his heart with her icy kisses. Some son of the Dreadfort who built himself and his faerie lover thrones of skulls and bones when they claimed the Nightfort for themselves. They say they sacrificed young maidens and innocent babes alike to the Others, and practiced foul witchcraft to keep the righteous at bay from their fortress, until Brandon the Breaker and Joramun the King-Beyond-the-Wall freed what remained of the Night’s Watch and slew the traitor and his sorceress bride. 

But in the Dreadfort, when that tale is told, it has only ever been a Stark. It was a trueborn Stark, a proud warrior, who deserted the Wall to hunt the Corpse Queen, who glimpsed her moon pale hair and her queer, burning blue eyes and longed for her cold touch. It was he who enslaved his brothers and slaughtered thousands of innocents to appease the Others. It was he who ruled for thirteen dark and bloody winter years, who met his own brother in battle at the Nightfort, and who died calling his witch queen’s name. It must have been a Stark, the Boltons say, for why else would the name be lost to history? It was not a Bolton nor an Umber nor a Skagosi, but the kin of their own ruling family. 

Nell is doubtful there was ever such a man- the Others are mere children’s tales now, like grumkins and snarks, designed to keep little ones from wandering into the forest past sundown. But all the same, for a Stark to go missing beyond the Wall seems a bad omen. She hardly believes Benjen Stark ran off with a faerie or any other sort of mythical creature. Still, it is fitting that this is the first of the bad news they receive. Shortly thereafter they had letters from both the Eyrie and King’s Landing. Nell has read them half a hundred times; the two are tied together quite snugly. 

Catelyn Stark has taken Tyrion Lannister prisoner. Eddard Stark and his men were ambushed by the Kingslayer in the street. The short of it is that Catelyn was recognized by the Imp at an inn, and seeing no recourse and no way to prevent him from returning to the capitol and alerting the queen and the Kingslayer to the Starks’ suspicions, rallied the rivermen there and took him to the Eyrie, to her sister. Jaime Lannister, upon hearing word of this, confronted Lord Eddard and slaughtered three of his guards in revenge. Ned Stark went under his horse and has not woken from the poppy sleep since, his leg shattered.

Nell hardly knows where to begin. She’d been infuriated with Robb for being so blatantly hostile with Tyrion Lannister, but that hardly matters now, with Lannister having no chance of reaching King’s Landing anyways. It would be easy to throw up her hands and decry Catelyn Stark a fool for making such a bold move, but Nell cannot claim she would have done any differently. Let the Imp return to the city, and risk her husband and daughter’s lives. Take the Imp then and there, and risk war. At the very least, they did not bring him back here, or Tywin Lannister would be trying to sail ships across Ironman’s Bay to hack his way into the North. Nell would rather not be staving off an invasion when she ought to be planning her wedding menu.

As for Lord Stark and the Kingslayer- well, that was hardly unexpected. Jaime Lannister struck her as the sort of man who is still somehow eighteen at heart, the type to favor bold proclamations and reckless moves such as starting a brawl in the street like a common thug. Truly, she thinks they ought to be relieved that Ned Stark yet lives. The Kingslayer likely only did not kill him because he knew to provoke Robert’s ire would mean his own head on a spike. They say he has fled the city with his men, to no one’s surprise. Nell imagines Cersei standing forlorn at some window, weeping prettily and trying to slip poison into Ned Stark’s milk of poppy.

But now- she does not see how the king will resolve any of this. Robert Baratheon hardly has a reputation for his diplomacy, and the one man who might advise him reasonably on such matters, his Hand, is unconscious and possibly crippled. Ned Stark is a young man no longer. He may not be old and grey yet, but an injury like that could keep him off his feet for months. It may not just be Bran who has to relearn how to ride a horse now. And Tywin Lannister may be old and grey, but not old nor grey enough to have put away his steel. He will be at court soon enough, demanding that the king demand the Eyrie to turn both Tyrion and Catelyn over. 

And then, in the midst of all that, came the two men with Lady’s bones. Rickon sobbed and wailed to see them, and Robb went very still and pale, and touched them gently, and Bran, when he was told, turned his face away and asked to be left alone. They say that there was some incident with Arya’s wolf along the Trident, and that when Nymeria could not be found, the queen demanded Lady’s pelt instead. Nell remembers her words to Jon Snow about Ghost and feels a little ill. She may not be overly fond of the direwolves, but to kill such a creature- especially the gentlest of them all- seems a monstrous thing. 

“He should have sent his daughters back with the bones,” Dana pronounced, upon seeing them laid to rest in the crypts, beside the statue of Lyanna Stark. “Direwolves don’t belong that far south. Neither do Starks.”

“It bodes ill for Sansa’s marriage,” Nell had agreed, trying to picture Robb’s sisters at court. She cannot. All she can see is the Red Keep like a giant, slavering mouth, jaw unhinged to swallow them up. Dreamy Sansa and wild Arya- the court will choke on them and spit them back out like chicken bones, and she does not think they will be the better for it. Had the Starks wanted southern ladies for daughters, better to send them to their mother’s kin- Sansa could have gone to the Eyrie with her lonely aunt, Arya to Riverrun with her grandfather and uncle. Their direwolves and their Northern ways would have been far more welcome there.

But today is supposed to be for Bran; the first time he has been out of the castle since his fall, and in the interest of not being a wicked good sister, she is trying to put on a smile and act as though all is fair and fine with the world. She knows Bran would likely have rather it just been him and Robb, but their party is still small; Bran and Robb and her and Greyjoy and Joseth and Maester Luwin and just four guardsmen. They are not going very far, either, but it should still be far enough for a boy of eight. Bran has gained back some of the weight he lost, and no longer looks quite so frail and withered, but there are still dark circles under his eyes, and he seems even smaller, atop the chestnut mare he calls Dancer. 

Robb is outwardly calm, but she can sense the distress roiling off him like choppy waves in the Saltspear. He has not told Bran the news about their father yet. And poor Rickon knows none of it; he is too young, and Nell agreed that it would just distress him all the more. The last thing they need are another spate of tantrums, from him or Shaggydog. She tries to forget, as they ride through the quiet winter town, smiling serenely for the people, as though all this were very ordinary. But today she brought her own bow and quiver, despite Theon’s japes and Robb’s concerned glances. She claimed it was because, like Greyjoy, she had a mind to bring them back a deer for supper, but really it was because the wolves were howling again last night.

It may have just been because of the raven from King’s Landing. Or it may be something else. She hopes not to find out. The weather is fair, despite the light snow. She hangs back to let Robb speak to Bran privately as they leave the village behind, and finds herself riding alongside Theon, and already regretting her choice. He’s never been one to keep a still tongue for longer than a few moments. 

“Hoping to show me up with that toy, are you?” Theon nods to the bow across her back and the quiver at her side. He is smiling, as always, but she knows the jest for what it is. The idea of a women carrying a weapon around him must unsettle him. She’s heard the Ironborn women are not a dainty and delicate lot, themselves, but then again, he must know little and less of that. Perhaps Robb should find him a Mormont wife, who could put an axe between his eyes if his tongue and cock wagged too much. 

“That wouldn’t take much effort,” she says, without so much as glancing at him. “You’d be a better marksman if your prattle wasn’t scaring all the game away.” That is half a lie- she has seen Theon shoot, and he is an excellent archer. She’ll be dead before she tells him that, though. He has quite enough vanity as it stands. You’d think he were the only handsome man north of the Neck, the way he struts about. She doesn’t know when to tell him that the tavern girls of the winter town hardly have very high standards.

“My prattle?” he scoffs. “Let’s hope marriage curbs your tongue. Robb puts too much stock in a spoilt girl’s words.” His tone is light, but that careless grin is gone. His eyes are so dark a brown they are nearly black, and for the first time she sees how hungry they are. Not in their usual way, not for her or attention or acceptance from Robb, but for something else entirely. This one cannot wait to be properly blooded in battle, she thinks. He wants to pay the iron price and go back to Pyke smelling of southern blood and southern women. 

“I did not dissuade him from calling the banners, if that’s what you’re insinuating,” Nell retorts coolly. “But I cannot blame him for taking his maester’s advice over yours, Greyjoy.”

“What does a maester know of war?” Theon sneers.

“What do you?” she laughs. “Does it irk you so, nineteen and unblooded?”

“I’ve killed before.”

“Yes, a few cringing bandits and robbers here and there, perhaps a stray wildling. What, do you think to be the Ned Stark to Robb’s Robert? That he might carve you out a kingdom along Ironman’s Bay, all your own?” She is angrier than she thought she would be. It is not even that she is firmly against the notion of calling the banners- were it her in Robb’s place, they would already be here, honing their blades for war. But that Theon is so careless- it is one thing to accept bloodshed, another thing to welcome it, seek it out. Anyone Nell wants flayed and dead, she has good reason for. It is not to soothe her own pathetic ego.

“I see now,” Theon says, “that marriage to a sharp-tongued little-,”

Whatever it is he wanted to say, they are both distracted by a distant call from Robb, and ride up to join him and Bran at the edge of the wolfswood. “I’m going to find the wolves,” he tells them, “wait here with Bran, will you?”

Theon barely disguises an eye roll, but Nell says steadily, “Bran and I shall go for a little ride down stream while you fetch them, then.”

Robb nods and trots off into the deeper parts of the wood, Theon mutters something about finding a deer trail with one of the guards, and Nell takes Bran and Dancer through the treeline and towards the burbling little stream, just wide enough to give a horse pause, but not nearly deep enough to be much danger to anyone. Bran is quiet; she has spent the least time with him, after all, of the Stark brothers, and she knows he does not trust her yet. But he brightens a little at the sight of the rushing water, before his expression crumples. 

“What is it?” she asks, frowning. “Are you hurt?”

Bran just shakes his head mutely, then wipes swiftly at his eyes with his gloved hands. “It’s nothing, I just- I only remembered something, is all.”

He fears he may never see his parents again, she chides herself. And you were strict with him, you and Joseth, in training him to lead the mare. Let the boy be for now. The snow is coming down a little heavier now, and she can no longer hear the distant conversation of Theon and the guards, but all is quiet in the wood, aside from what might have been a distant howl. Perhaps the direwolves have found some relatives. 

Then she thinks of Sara, for some reason, and feels like crying herself. To distract herself, Nell says, “Let’s cross the stream, why don’t we?” She rides Roddy a little further down, to a narrower point, then leans forward in the saddle and spurs him on with a cry. Despite his whinny of annoyance, he clears the stream with ease, and she grins as Bran stares, wide-eyed. “You can’t jump it, but I’ll help you cross, alright?”

Nell dismounts easily, brushing off the dark maroon velvet of her riding habit, ties Roddy to a tree, and wades through the shallowest part of the stream, no more than three feet deep. She’ll be bitter cold and her skirt will drag, but it should be a much faster ride back to Winterfell than it was going out, and the wind may help dry it a little before she can get herself into a hot bath. She smiles slightly at Bran as she leads his mare across, and after a moment’s hesitation, he smiles back. “Thank you,” he says, “for teaching me how to ride Dancer with Joseth. I- I didn’t think I’d ever ride again. Not ever.” 

He gazes up at the snowy forest ceiling with something like wonder, and Nell feels a dull pang of sadness. He is a sweet boy, Bran. He did not deserve any of this. “By the time you are Robb’s age,” she tells him encouragingly, “you shall be the best rider in the family, I’m sure of it. You’ll have a bow and quiver of your own- wouldn’t you like that? You don’t need legs to aim properly, only good eyes and a clear head.”

Bran’s little smile wavers, but he asks, “Do you think I could? Still be a warrior? I’ll never be a knight now, but…”

“Certainly,” Nell says as she unties Roddy and swings herself back up into the saddle, adjusting her skirt. “You’ll just have to be cleverer than the rest of them, to know when to strike.”

They have not gone more than a few yards when the bushes rustle, and Nell sighs, expecting to see Theon and Joseth or the guards. “Took you long enough, didn’t it?”

It is not them. There are six of them, ragged and weathered from wind and snow and rain. Four men, two women, all tall and strong. Nell draws her bow and notches an arrow in two quick movements, cursing herself for taking them over the stream. “Stay back,” she says sharply, moving Roddy in front of Bran and Dancer. “And be on your way. Now.” She is using her aunt’s voice; sharp and hard and crisp, the angry lady’s voice, the voice of a woman in authority and very conscious of it. 

“Pretty girl to be pointing arrows at us,” the biggest man growls in amusement. 

“Too pretty,” one of the women agrees, twisting a knife into her filthy hand. “Lookit those fine clothes, Stiv.”

“And two horses,” a stubbled man comments. “We’re in luck today.”

“We’ll be taking your mounts, girl,” the bald man tells her coldly. “Be quick about it, and we won’t take turns mounting you too.”

All in black, the men. Deserters, then. Nell has seen deserters before. Just before their deaths. Her aunt has overseen the executions of two, in her memory. She imagines the Starks have seen more, being further north. “You’re all dead anyways,” she says, trying to stall for time. She will only be able to hit one or two of them before they rush her and Bran and the horses. She has no chance of defending against all six of them, and the one woman has a spear, a horse’s bane. “You’re on Stark lands, threatening a Stark of Winterfell and a Bolton of the Dreadfort.”

There’s a smattering of laughter and jeers.

“A Stark and a Bolton?” one of them men crows. “Fools, the both of you. Get down off those horses before we drag you off them.” They draw closer. Roddy shifts under her. “Put down the bow, Bolton bitch.”

“Do it, or I’ll cut the boy’s cock off and feed it to you,” the blonde woman snarls.

“Don’t be stupid,” the taller woman snaps at the rest of them. “Let’s take them both. Send the Starkling to Mance Rayder and ransom the Bolton to her father-,”

Nell looses her first arrow, catching the big man in the shoulder as he comes forward, reaching for her reins. Roddy rears, Bran yells, and a knife swipes at her recklessly, slashing through her thick cloak but missing skin and bone. 

“Put down your steel!” Robb shouts as the big man claps a hand to his shoulder. It comes away wet with blood. Nell notches another arrow. 

“Robb!” Bran calls out desperately. 

“Fuck this,” snarls the bald man, “kill them quick.”

There’s a short whistle, and Grey Wind and Summer come snarling in alongside Robb’s gelding as he rides down the bank towards them, weighed down by the elk slung across the back. Nell takes advantage of the distraction of the wolves to send her second arrow at the stubbled man. It takes him in the side, and he crumples to the ground with a shout of pain. 

She is distantly aware of Robb killing one man, Grey Wind dragging another man into the stream, Summer ripping into the blonde woman’s belly. Robb clashes with the tall woman's spear, Nell sends an arrow after the fifth, who is running, but it misses, sinking into the loamy earth, and then the big man has ripped her off the saddle. Roddy shies away, neighing, as they go tumbling to the ground, and Bran screams. Nell tries to wrench herself away, but he has her by the hair, and she can feel his knife against her neck, see their mottled reflections in the water of the stream, churning underneath them.

“I’ll slit the cunt right open, see if I don’t,” he roars at Robb, who lowers his sword slowly out of the corner of Nell’s eyes.

“Kill him,” she grits out. “Robb, do it.” He will open her throat anyways, she thinks, but she’s too angry to care. She just wants him dead, is so angry, the world around her may as well be bleeding with her neck. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to live. She was supposed to win. She was supposed to-

The knife presses into her skin, and she feels blood bead along it, drip down into the grey water. The big man’s grip on her hair tightens. “Call off your wolves!” he snarls.

“KILL HIM!” Nell screams, as Robb hesitates. The surviving woman is crawling for her spear. She is going to die for certain, but so will he if this keeps up.

The man yanks at her hair until she screams again, this time in pain. “You shut up.”

“Grey Wind, Summer, to me!” Robb yells raggedly, and she can hear Grey Wind run back to him, twigs snapping and fracturing underfoot. Summer does not move, positioned in between the still mounted Bran and the man and Nell.

“Osha, kill them, and take the boy’s sword,” the man snaps at the woman, who is struggling back to her feet.

She opens her mouth to respond, scowling, but no words come, her mouth twisting in shock.

There’s a familiar hum in Nell’s ears, and then the man holding her gasps as blood spatters across them both from the arrow in his chest. The knife falls from his hand and Nell snatches for it as he topples away from her and into the stream. She gets it in both hands and brings it down hard into his back with a muffled shout, then yanks it back out, trembling, and slams it down again.

“Mercy!” Osha is shouting, and Maester Luwin is calling, “My lady, are you hurt?” as he wades across the stream towards her, and Theon Greyjoy’s voice comes wafting on the wind to her ears.

“How was that for a lesser marksman, my lady?”

Nell stands up in the stream, and kicks the corpse, once, twice, until it begins to float away.

“Are you alright?” The maester and Robb are both at her side now, reaching, assuring, but she scrambles away from both of them, tosses the blood-soaked dagger down and walks shakily over to where her bow and quiver lie. Her bowstring is broken. “Damn,” she says, and then louder. “Damn!” No one hears her; Robb is snapping at Theon, Theon is snapping back, Maester Luwin is still trying to inspect the cut on her neck, and the guardsmen are staring with nothing less than terror at the direwolves, who’ve returned to feed on the corpses. 

When they return to Winterfell with the dead elk and the captive wilding woman and her broken bow and a sullen Theon and a silent Bran and a seething Robb, Nell retires to her rooms to bathe. She sits in the bath for a very long time, watching her fingers and toes prune and replaying the events over and over again in her mind. Damn the guards for neglecting their duties to chase after a turkey with Theon, damn Robb for leaving her and Bran to chase after the wolves, damn her for taking them across the bloody stream and being so careless, damn the deserters and the wildlings for being so desperate, damn the wolves for not killing the man who pulled her off her horse first.

She can still see the arrow sprouting from the man she killed, and the corpse facedown in the stream, how it felt to pierce the dying man’s back with the knife. It felt good, she thinks, but she feels a giddy sort of churning in her gut. She exhales forcibly through her nose, then sinks under the warm water. When she surfaces, Dana is slipping into the room, shutting the door firmly after her. “Get out,” Nell snaps, even as she reaches for her robe, but Dana just shakes her head, sitting down on the bed.

“You’ve brooded long enough. Your lordling’s waiting for you in the godswood. But you should look at this first.” She holds up a sealed letter.

The churning increases. “From the Dreadfort?”

“Seal’s yellow, not pink,” Dana says, and Nell is too tired to mask the visible relief on her face. 

Barbrey, not Father.

She pulls on the robe and breaks the wax, quickly skimming the letter, then reading it again when she’s certain it’s not more ill tidings of death or injury. Dana brings back a maid to help lay out fresh clothes for her, and Nell presses the letter into her hands. “Keep this safe for me.”

In the godswood, Robb sits under the heart tree, his sword freshly cleaned. He sheathes it as she approaches, then stands. She stops, and they look at one another. “I should never have left you and Bran alone,” he says hoarsely. He’s grown these past months; he’s the same height as her now. The obvious guilt and shame in his eyes irritates her. Had there not been so many of them, she could have held them off alone, she is certain of it. 

“We were hardly defenseless. A group of deserters that large is rare-,”

“But you never should have had to defend yourself-,”

“Because I’m a woman?” she snaps. “I should never have to lift a finger, even to save myself? I am not one of your sisters! You should not have spared that wildling bitch!”

“She surrendered-,”

“And when she slits all our throats in our sleep, you’ll thank her?”

“She’s confined to a cell for now!” For the first time that Nell can recall, he raises his voice to her, properly shouts her down, and she recoils for a moment, before easing up some. Good. Thank the gods for a bit of steel to his spine. She cannot always be the furious one. 

“I am sorry for what happened today,” Robb seems to be reining in his temper with great difficulty, “I am sorry you and Bran were put in danger, but I am still the lord here in my father’s absence. And she surrendered. If I deem her a threat, I’ll put her to death myself.”

“Fine,” Nell says bitterly, then turns away from him a moment to collect herself. 

She hears him sigh, and then he gently touches her shoulder. “Donella.”

When she turns back around, he is kissing her, and while at first she stiffens, after a moment she responds, if not enthusiastically, far from reluctantly. “I was frightened,” she admits when they break apart, breathless. “I was just too angry to feel it then.”

“My father says the only time a man can be brave is when he was afraid.” Robb brushes a lock of dark hair away from her face, and Nell impulsively kisses him again, almost sweetly this time. To her shock, he embraces her, and they stand there like that for a few moments, listening to the trees whisper. Grey Wind comes around the heart tree, whining, and Nell releases Robb, then sinks down into a crouch. The wolf approaches, then rubs up against her, knocking his massive head against her shoulder. She almost smiles and scratches behind his ears, then stands. 

Best snare the Boy now, Barbrey has written her. Quickly, before the Young Wolf finds he likes the taste of war better than a wedding feast. You cannot lose him now, niece. See yourself wedded and bedded sooner, else it be too late for all of us. 

“Theon thinks you should call your banners,” she murmurs. 

“Yes.” Robb sits back down, and she kneels down beside him. Grey Wind lies firmly between them, snuffling to himself. Nell lets her fingers splay deep into his thick fur. “And Maester Luwin reminds me that I have not the authority nor the just cause to do so, yet. I have already sent word to the more powerful houses, warning them to be ready. But until there is more word from Mother or Father wakes-,”

“By the time he is back on his feet, it may already be too late. It may be too late as we speak.” Nell looks at him intently, grey finding blue. “Call them now, the Lannisters and the King may take even greater offense. Don’t call them, and be known as a coward who waited too long before your time as Warden has even begun.”

Robb scowls. “I know that-,”

“And I know another way,” she cuts him off. His brow furrows.

“You dare not call upon them directly. But it will take time to gather all our strength. Yet if you summon them under the banner of war, you risk much. So don’t. Send them a different sort of invitation.” She pauses, then says meaningfully, “A wedding invitation. We are young and reckless- who could blame us for moving our wedding up? Spread the word far and wide. Tell all your bannermen- our bannermen- to come, bring their strong sons and their brash brothers and even their pretty daughters. Tell them to sharpen their feasting knives and polish their finest armor. And when they come we will feed them and entertain them and should we receive more foul tidings, then…”

“Then they all march south,” he says, understanding, and Nell smiles widely.

“It will be their wedding gift to us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wedding bells and war drums, how romantic! Things are heating back up now in terms of the plot. I feel a bit awkward about mixing up the wolfswood encounter- I don't want to just sub Nell in every time something dramatic happens, but I also thought that entire sequence was a good chance to show Nell arguing with Theon, trying to bond a little with Bran, and in general build up to the end of the chapter wherein we see her proposed solution to the 'call the banners or don't call the banners' debate. I'm also very excited to get some other Northern houses on the scene, so I think we can expect to see much more of an ensemble next chapter in terms of Boltons, Flints, Ryswells, Umbers, Mormonts, etc.


	12. Donella XII

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell marks the days by their guests, who arrive in a steady stream of horses and wagons. The Cerwyns are present within days; ingratiating Medger Cerwyn, reticent Jonelle, past thirty and still a maid, and energetic Cley, who attaches himself to Robb’s side as moss would to a log. Then come the Tallharts, who are but masters, not lords, but who have held Torrhen’s Square since The King Who Knelt gifted the land to them a decade before the Conquest. Ser Helman is as stiff-necked and bristly as his pine tree sigil, Benfred is as blunt and foolish as ever, and young Eddara marches about snapping orders at her older brother, who hastens to obey as though a child of nine were a commanding serjeant. 

Then arrive her own kin; she wonders if there were some silent competition between her father and aunt, to see who could reach Winterfell the quickest, but Roose wins, arriving several days before Barbrey. All the same, they are united in a joint sense of smug triumph. Her father looks rather like a kitchen cat that finally pounced on a particularly willful rat, and her aunt goes about as if in a waking dream, to be in a Winterfell free of both Ned Stark and Catelyn Tully. Nell wonders whether she might have to stop her from changing the drapes and commissioning new furniture. To her immense relief, Father did not bring the Bastard. She knew he would not- a Stark wedding is no place for any natural son- but the fear lingered all the same. Not just of him, that just his mere presence would somehow taint Winterfell forever for her, like a rot in the walls.

The Glover brothers and the Hornwoods follow. Loyal Galbart and ambitious Robbett, and affable Lord Halys and dignified Lady Donella, with self-conscious Daryn, who never seems sure when to bow and when to smile, and usually settles for a sheepish look and jerky nods instead. Then the Ryswells, and Nell is never sure whether to be gladdened or dismayed at the sight of her grandfather and uncles. Her cousins are still young, and were left behind in the Rills with their mothers, but the youngest of Lord Rodrik’s sons, Roose, named for her father, is but nineteen, just two years her senior. They think her haughty and ungrateful, and she thinks them a pack of squabbling imbeciles on the best of days, so in that they are equal.

Besides, if her grandfather so much as breathes her mother’s name or offers up any gruff words about how beautiful Bethany looked on her own wedding day, Nell thinks she will set about him with an iron poker, and knock out his remaining teeth. A good match it was, to be sure. He took the finest mare of the herd and sold her to a butcher, and named the next foal after him. Some regret, she thinks, might be more palatable than his stubborn insistence on pretending that it was a great gift to his daughter. What fine marriages, the both of them. He wed Beth to a smiling leech and Barbrey to an impending corpse. 

After them follow the rotund Manderlys, all bursting at the seams save for the graceful daughters, who Nell assumes they must lock in a cellar during feasts. She should not be so cruel; she has spent time with Wynafryd and Wylla before, and they are far better company than most, although it is hard not to gawk at Wylla’s ridiculous hair, and Wynafryd is a disturbingly tactful liar, all cool smiles and soft words. At the same time, the Flints flood in from Widow’s Watch and Flint’s Finger in equal measure, and Dana seems to spend much of her time working hard to avoid running into either branch. Nell can barely keep any of them straight; the Flints are nearly all dark-haired, blue-eyed, wiry, and abrupt. 

Foul-mouthed, too; Cregan Widowflint and Ben Fingerflint manage to get into a brawl within hours of their respective arrivals. Harry Karstark and his brothers can be seen making bets before the fight is broken up, and Nell gives her good family’s distant relations a wide berth. To say that Rickard Karstark is displeased to be attending the wedding of Robb to any girl save his own precious Alys would be an understatement of the highest order.

The Umbers, Mormonts, and the mountain clans are among the last to arrive. The Umbers all seem to be straining to reach six and half a feet, even the women, and Nell hears tell that half of them are denied rooms at the inn because the ceilings are too low and doorways too narrow. The Mormonts are a provocation and a delight; Nell has never met a Bear Islander before, and is perhaps a little too pleased that Maege saw fit to bring three of her wild daughters; Dacey, Lyra, and Jorelle alternate between ringmail and leathers and finely embroidered gowns, and on their first night in the castle host an axe-throwing competition, which a cackling Lyra promptly wins with a bow and a wave to the disgruntled crowd. 

That same night word comes from King’s Landing, but the letter is not in Ned Stark or even Vayon Poole’s hand. Robb reads it, reddens with rage, and nearly throws it into the fire; Nell has to wrench it from him, tearing off the signature in his hand, Sansa’s. Even without it, Nell recognizes her looping, airy letters all the same, but the words are not hers at all. “Not a word of Arya,” Robb spits, pacing over to the window. “And the King dead, Father plotting treason with Stannis and Renly Baratheon- has she gone mad?”

“Think,” Nell says, without looking up from the letter. “What might compel a girl of eleven to say such things? I wonder. Your father in a black cell? Arya locked in some tower? Don’t act the fool. You know perfectly well why your sister lies. She doesn’t want to see her father’s head on a spike. You’d do much the same.”

“I would never-,” he begins hotly.

“Oh, you would,” Nell says, turning cold Bolton eyes on him, and Robb stops. Grey Wind growls fretfully near the door. They share the news, if not the exact details of the letter, when they break their fast the next day with their guests. But there will be no talk of battle and who will have what command yet, at Nell’s insistence. There is a wedding to see to first, and she’ll be damned to be thrown out of the saddle this late in the race.

“My lords,” she says, addressing the hall, “you must forgive a lady’s frivolities, but I would see my maiden’s cloak shed before we venture south. Mayhaps one of you may be so kind as to fetch me a lion’s pelt for a wedding gift!” When they roar back at her, stamping their feet and snarling for Lannister blood, she beams and sits back down beside Robb, who looks at her as though he’d never seen her before. Despite the wild rumors curdling in the winter town, despite the grim acknowledgement that there is no need for any further deception- they will have war before the year is out, and the Riverlands will burn for it- there is something a little thrilling about the whole thing. Every boy Robb’s age or a little older has grown up on the tales of Robert’s Rebellion, how some lost everything in a day, how others made their names on the battlefield, how the North carved the way for a new king on the Iron Throne. 

Why should Robb’s Rebellion be any different? This is the second time in two generations that a king has held Starks prisoner in the Red Keep. This time, they all assuring themselves, it will be different. This time they will be better prepared, this time they will not hesitate, this time the South will learn once and for all not to provoke a sleeping giant. Nell ought to be worried, ought to be terrified, really, and of course, she is, but there is also the small matter of her wedding, which she has been rehearsing since she was fifteen, and really, Tywin Lannister seems a mildly irritating gnat compared to the looming threat of marriage. 

She wonders if Robb feels the same, but doubts it. He is likely eager to get the ceremony and the feast out of the way, and turn them all out of the castle and the winter town to begin the long trek south. What is it to him? A few words before the heart tree, a short feast, a romp in bed. He will dismiss her the next morning with a few kind words and a soft kiss, and if she does not proceed with caution she will find herself watching from a window while he rides off. That is what Ned Stark left Catelyn with. A babe in her belly, and a very long wait. Not Nell. It will not go that way for her. Those southern gods might have smiled down upon Catelyn Stark’s wedding night, and seen fit to bless her womb then and there. The old gods are not half so generous.

Nell will not be left with a faint hope. She will not be her aunt. She will not wrinkle and silver into a widow in black. She does not care what it takes. She would stow away in the baggage train before she let Robb Stark leave her to mind an empty castle and wait. And wait. For how long? Years? He could die in battle in three months time. He could fall off his horse and break his neck in three weeks time. And then what? Someone else would take the command of the northern army, likely her father, regardless of who he had to skin to get to it, and she’d be quickly packed off to the Dreadfort and Ramsay, or married to Bran, who aside from being many years from his majority, may not even be able to sire sons himself. 

But she knows better than to breathe a word of any of those qualms to Robb before the wedding. There are already daily disputes over the marching order. It was how the Greatjon had come to lose two fingers. Nell was not there when it happened, but she heard the shouting, and glimpsed the bloody stumps on the floor, being fought over by Grey Wind and Summer. The shouts turned to laughter and murmurs, and Theon found her in a doorway and cast aside his usual aloofness to breathlessly repeat what Robb had said- “Doubtless you only meant to cut my meat.” 

Doubtless indeed- she saw Robb later that evening, and his voice shook to recount it, and Nell only said, “My lord, you must remember it would be a tremendous waste of rope to hang all those Umbers.” He’d smiled weakly at that, and she was only glad he could play the cold Lord Stark for their audiences. He can threaten them well, of course he can. Whether he could see those threats through is another matter entirely. Grey Wind may not always be there to tear off fingers and knock men the Greatjon’s size to the ground. Robb is brave, she knows that much from the wolfswood. He is also noble, and there is nothing noble about putting men to death, whether they deserve it or not, but it must be done all the same.

She does not sleep the night before her wedding; despite this being half her own machinations, it seems to have crept up on her with alarming speed. It seems too soon. She’s not ready. She’ll never be ready. She was a fool to suggest any of it in the first place. Something will go wrong, she’s sure of it. She’ll disappoint him, offend him somehow, someway, displease him. Father will be angry with her. Barbrey will be disappointed in her. She’ll fail this test. She’s sure of it. This isn’t how it was supposed to be, there wasn’t supposed to be the shadow of war over them, it was supposed to be simple, easy-

Just shy of midnight Dana drags her out of bed, bundles her down to the kitchens, and sits her down in front of one of the smoldering cooking fires with Dacey and Lyra Mormont. Dacey is tall and slim and even-keeled. Lyra is short and thickset and excitable. Nell does not see what advice or comfort two Mormonts who have never been wed and likely never will could have to offer her. Then Dacey pours them all cups of spiced cider and her cheeks go bright pink and her head a bit fuzzy and it doesn’t seem half so intimidating. Dacey tells them tale after tale of childish antics- the time their sister Aly nearly drowned after they built a raft and tried to race it down a river, jumping off of the top of a waterfall and nearly skimming the rocks, high summer dances in the pine groves and Jory’s talent for throwing knives. 

Lyra is but nineteen but as experienced, from the way she tells it, as a man twice that age, and her recountings of her many ‘bears’ send Dana shrieking with laughter to the floor and Nell gasping for breath. “And then I said, Varen- no, listen, to me, you bitch-,” she swats at Dacey, who is shaking with mirth, pouring herself another drink- “gods, pass me that-,” Lyra takes a rejuvenating swig, wipes at her mouth, and grins, “I said, Varen, why’s it that you’re dark up top, red down below, and he says- he tells me, me mam always said that it’s on account of touching yourself too much, it changes the color of the hair-,”

“No,” Nell is crying with laughter, “no, he didn’t-,”

“Aye, he did! So I said- ah, alright then Varen, but were you fondling yourself in a carrot patch-,”

“Tell them about Daryle-,”

“The bastard! He tells me he went to the wrong room! Wrong room- Others take him! He ran into Aly in the hall and decided he liked the looks of her better! So you count it as a victory, my lady Bolton, that they’ll be delivering Robb straight to your rooms come tomorrow!”

Her head is pounding and the inside of her mouth tastes awful come daybreak, but she does not dream the night before her wedding, and for that she is thankful. The day dawns crisp and clear. No fresh snow showers, to her relief, although the ground is coated with mud and slush. Robb takes a small party out hunting at dawn, her father among them; it’s supposed to be a year’s good luck if the bridegroom brings back a stag. A decade’s good luck if he brings back a white one. They don’t go far; Grey Wind’s faint howls can be heard on and off all morning.

The women host a formal breakfast where Nell sorts through wedding gifts, smiling tightly. Rich fabrics and rugs and tapestries, two new weaving looms, a carved wolfshead harp from White Harbor, jewelry of all sorts, from carved bone bracelets to gleaming silver pendants, sashes and new boots, thick winter cloaks with pearl buttons. Books and scrolls and leather saddles and hunting horns and plump quilts and fur hats for her and two new helms for Robb. A slender new hunting bow from her aunt. A garnet hilted dagger from her father. 

They are bathing in the hot springs when the men return, and there’s laughter and cheers as she is promptly bundled away from Robb’s sight and he hers. Nell cannot recall ever being around this many other women, and despite the comfort it brings to her vanity to be the center of much jealous attention, she is relieved when it is just her and Barbrey shut up in her rooms. Her aunt dismisses the maids, sits Nell down, and begins the difficult work of combing through her thick hair herself, as she used to when Nell was a child.

“They remembered the right flowers, didn’t they?” Nell has not fidgeted like this since her mother died. “Bloodblooms and dusky roses and winter-lilies?”

“Of course,” Barbrey’s sharp fingers work through a particularly bad knot, and Nell winces. “You should not fret so. It’s unbecoming in a bride, child.” ‘Bride’ and ‘child’ seem very ironic when said so close together, and Nell scoffs to herself, watching Barbrey smile faintly in the looking glass. “You must permit me just a little while longer of scolding, Donella. It is not easy to see a daughter wed, and you are the closest I have to that.”

Nell bites at her lip for a moment. They have never been the sentimental sort, she and her aunt, but it seems wrong to let this go by without acknowledging it. They are all the other has. Nell is Barbrey’s legacy. Her only legacy. That she raised up the girl who would be Lady of Winterfell. “You raised me well,” she finally says. “You did not have to take me, after Mother died. I am grateful to you, Aunt.”

“Don’t thank me,” Barbrey sniffs, raking the comb down yet again. “I would have done as much for any child of Bethany’s. She was my sister. Sometimes I hated her, but I would have done anything for her, and she for me.” But she does soften, just a little, enough to say, “She would be proud, regardless. You are every bit her daughter. She was wasted on your father, as are you. But that is over now.”

“Yes,” says Nell. “I shall belong to another man entirely, and him not yet sixteen.” She means it in jest, but it tastes bitter between her lips all the same.

“He may playact the severe lord all he pleases, but the boy is as soft-hearted as they come,” Barbrey tells her sharply. “What do you think would have happened in that hall, had he not a direwolf for a guard dog? Do not humble yourself before a half southern child fumbling at war games.”

“Robb isn’t soft,” the protest escapes her before she can really consider it. “He’s killed before, in the wolfswood-,”

Barbrey stops combing her hair all together. “And had to see his future lady wife saved by a wily Ironborn. I can smell the shame on him still. He is fortunate that most have not heard that particular tale, or they might think twice about letting him lead us into battle against the Lannisters.”

“He is the Stark in Winterfell,” Nell mutters balefully. “We do not ‘let him’ do anything.”

“Is that what you have him believe? Good,” says Barbrey approvingly. “Don’t delude yourself, Nell. You may be fond of him, but he is no Brandon Stark.” she sets down the comb. “He is young, impetuous, and coddled. It was one thing when you were to marry him in peace times. Now we are at war. You must bear a son from him, and the sooner the better.”

Nell reddens. “I know. You have told me many times-,”

“And I’ll tell you again,” Barbrey retorts. “Men die. Winterfell is not truly yours until you have a Stark babe in your arms.” She squeezes Nell’s shoulders. “Flatter and titter for him in bed if you must, but make sure he attends you regularly. Hold your tongue until you have a child in your belly.”

“Aunt!”

Barbrey tsks, runs her hands through Nell’s hair, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Good. You look a pretty, blushing bride. It’s time now.” She pauses. “You aren’t frightened, are you?”

Nell tilts her chin up to stare at her aunt defiantly. “Never.”

“Good. Your mother was not frightened either. Smile, and take small steps. Your slippers are new and I won’t see you tripping over your skirts like some oaf.”

Nell’s wedding gown is elaborate, but not extravagant. When Dana looks her up and down and pronounces, “Looks someone got knifed in a snowbank,”, she’s not quite wrong, Nell thinks dryly. But it is pretty enough; sheer white lamb’s wool, with red and pink stitching to accent the tight bodice, and flowing sleeves lined with dark pink samite to match her intricately stitched slippers. She wears garnets around her neck and an amber ring on one finger for the Dustin colors. Two iron stallions bare their teeth on her wrists. But the veil attached to her crown of flowers is the real majesty; crimson red silk flutters down her dark ringlets and across her back, rippling in the wind from an open window. The girl she leaves behind in the looking glass stares intently back at her, a pale figure spattered with blotches of red, particularly the bright patches in her cheeks and lips. 

She twists the ring on her finger all the way down the stairs, but by the time she’s reached the bottom, Nell has forced her arms to lie flat and still at her sides, grips her skirts firmly, and faces Father. “You look very beautiful, Donella,” he says, as Dana and the Mormont and Manderly sisters come chattering down the stairs after her. Nell looks at him, pushes back the prickling terror, and simply smiles and takes his offered arm, pretending she is somewhere else, that she is simply watching this happen from afar, a passive observer. 

The sky is purpling with twilight by the time everyone is gathered in the godswood. Robb wears a fine woolen doublet of the palest grey possible, just a shade darker than white. He is looking at the weirwood’s grim face, not her, but when Grey Wind, sitting calmly at his side, turns his head, so does Robb, like a mummer’s puppet on a string. Nell glances around at the crowd gathered, the singer from White Harbor strumming his lute, the heads turning to whisper and gossip, and for an instant she sees Sara in the forest of faces, regarding her evenly. Then she blinks, and it is not Sara at all, but Donella Hornwood standing serenely beside her lord husband and awkward son. 

She looks back at Robb, who for an instant looks as though he would like nothing more than the ground to swallow him up. Then he straightens, and says loudly and clearly, “Who comes before the god?”

Roose brings her to Robb’s side, relinquishing her arm; his cold fingers leave behind white indents in her wrist. “Donella of House Bolton comes here to be wed. A woman grown and flowered, trueborn and noble, she comes here to beg the blessings of the gods. Who comes to claim her?” 

For some reason Nell cannot bring herself to look at Robb’s face during the split second before his reply. She is worried she will see some doubt or hesitation or reluctance upon it; instead she studies the vivid red leaves of the weirwood shadowing them. Is her mother here with them? Would she be proud, as Barbrey said? Or would she turn her face away in disgust, to see House Bolton advance, even if it is through her own daughter. 

“Robb of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell, heir to Eddard. I claim her,” says Robb, in his lord’s voice, cool and crisp. “Who gives her?”

“Roose of House Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort, gives her,” Father says in a voice that is so quietly satisfied she wants to reach back, grip him by the hair, and grind his face into the gnarled white roots at their feet.

“Do you take me?” Robb asks her, and Nell looks back at him so suddenly she feels momentarily light-headed. 

“I take you to be my lord and husband,” she says automatically, having laid awake in bed and recited the words to herself half a hundred times. 

They kneel down to pray, holding hands, but nothing comes to mind. Nell stares blankly at the dirty slush underfoot, waiting to feel some rush of euphoria or relief or even terror. Nothing. A minute later and they are back on their feet, and Robb is carefully removing her maiden’s cloak, silken skin that it is, and replacing it with his own. The direwolf hangs heavy across her back, and he offers her a small, cautious smile as he pulls back, but Nell cannot bring her lips into any shape at all. She feels frozen. She has been waiting for and anticipating and dreading and longing for this for so long that now that it is real, not a childish daydream, it seems-

He picks her up as the lutist breaks into ‘The Winter Maid’, and Nell focuses on making sure he does not stagger and drop her to distract herself. Robb does not, and they make it out of the godswood and into the Great Hall in one piece. He sets her down once they’ve made it through the doorway, and then they turn back around to face the applause and cheers and well-wishes. Nell quirks her lips up into a passable expression of excitement and delight then, all the way until they are seated at the high table, and then tries to convince herself that this is just like any other feast.

She sits in between Robb and Father, keeps a careful eye on Bran, seated in between Barbrey and Rickon, and watches Theon needle Dana and Beth Cassel glance longingly after Edd Karstark and she says things and drinks wine and eats the food placed before but none of it seems real, somehow. It is as if this were one of her dreams. She sits there and half expects to see Mother ride through the doors on an elk, carrying the Bastard’s head under one arm. Robb and her have no time to speak with one another, which is perhaps for the best, as they are deluged with well-wishers and compliments and blatant flattery and thinly veiled suggestions.

This feast is nothing compared to the one held when Robert Baratheon visited, but Nell had thought six courses was quite enough, really. One did not need to be chained to the table for six hours. Now she wishes it were twelve courses. But of course there is more music and dancing, and she takes Robb’s hand and dances to Fair Maids of Summer and No Featherbed for Me and then she dances with her father to Black Pines and Wolves in the Hills, and then she dances with Theon to Six Maids in a Pool, and with her lord grandfather to The Red Stallion and then each of her uncles, and by the time she has danced with everyone that courtesy demands she dance with, the singers have turned to the bawdier songs, so she must sit back down. 

When she was still a maid it was one thing to dash into a reel and come out spinning and laughing on the other side, but she is a woman wedded now, and on her wedding night of all nights, some decorum is expected. She sits back down beside Robb, and turns her attention to his brothers. She recalls Bran dancing with Sansa at that last feast; smiling and laughing while Sansa led him through the steps with all the severity of a master-at-arms. Now Bran will never dance again, and she knows she is only so sentimental because of today, but it makes her sad. Rickon is pouting furiously and picking at his food, working his way up to a tantrum until Dana creeps up behind him with a snickering Eddara Tallhart, scoops him up, and darts back into the fray of dancers.

Nell glimpses them a few minutes later; Dana is spinning like a top, Rickon on her hip, howling like a wolf, while Eddara balances on her big brother’s boots as they dance alongside them. Daryn Hornwood is dancing with his own betrothed, Alys Karstark. He is still a terrible dancer, but even proud Alys does not seem to mind; when she laughs, he flushes, so she laughs all the more. Beth is being led out onto the floor by the youngest Umber brother, Osric, beaming with delight. Joseth has spared a hand for each of his daughters, and twirls them both as they gallop across the floor. Turnip is perched in a corner, drinking stew straight from the bowl. Palla the kennel girl is playing some clapping game with Jory Mormont. 

But it does not last forever. Eventually the occasional calls for the bedding grow louder and louder, and the singer bows and starts up ‘The Queen Took Off Her Sandals, the King Took Off His Crown’, and while Robb looks at her with some concern, it only incites Nell to stand up, tear off her veil, and toss it to the first approaching Flint. In the end she and Robb are both surrounded, and Nell braces herself, ready to draw blood if Greyjoy or a Karstark so much as thinks this is their lucky night- only to be swept up and tossed over Smalljon Umber’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. 

While it is certainly humiliating to be carried out of the hall in such a manner, she supposes it is better than being fumbled and dragged down corridors and upstairs by a group of drunken halfwits. Smalljon may be drunk, but he is so big she doubts he even feels it, and at least he does not let her fall, and his impressive height keeps most of the groping and fondling to a minimum. She gladly drives the heel of her foot into Gawen Flint’s face when he tries to snake a hand up her skirt, all the same.

The bedchamber is almost uncomfortably hot, but she knows that could just be the wine. Nell throws open the windows, conscious of the fact that her gown is unlaced and hanging open to reveal her back, and her shoes and jewelry are gone as well. She resolves to take inventory come morning; if it is not all returned to her by then, she is going to take Grey Wind and go hunting for the thieves. But when Robb is finally pushed into the room by a smirking Dacey and a pink-faced Wylla Manderly, Nell is relieved that his wolf is not with him. She does not think she could stand Grey Wind being a witness to this, at least.

The door slams shut behind him, and then there is just the muffled murmurs and laughter of the people crowded around in the hall. Nell knows most of them will drift back to the feast within a few minutes, already bored of the excitement. Robb is looking at her. His wavy hair is rumpled and he is missing his boots. He follows her gaze and says with an attempt at a wry smile, “Lyra stole them.”

Nell hand goes to her own mussed hair. “Theon stole my crown.”

They both chuckle, albeit somewhat stiltedly, and then he asks, “Are you alright?” and Nell wants to slap him. The gentle concern is not making this any easier. As if she were the young, innocent one. Aye, she may still be a maiden, but she gave her maidenhead up to the saddle years ago. There will be no blood in this bed, and if there is pain, well, what will be more painful for both of them will be his awkward apologies. Gods, she wishes he were older. He is not the child he was when she first came here months ago, he is taller, broader, colder- But some new stubble on his face does not make him a man.

And, despite all her insistence to the contrary, she knows that stolen kisses and bold touches in the barrows and dark corners of stables and behind closed doors does not make her a woman, either. “I’m alright,” she says. There is some wine left out for them, but if she drinks any more she knows she’ll be silly and useless. He is still standing there, as if she were a wild beast he was wary of drawing too close to. 

He opens his mouth again, looking furtively from her to the bed to the barred door. “We… We don’t-,”

“Yes, we do,” snaps Nell, incensed that he would even suggest it. It’s not that he doesn’t want to. She knows that he wants to. It’s this feeble last minute attempt at chivalry- they’ve no time left for chivalry. Yes, if these were peace times, his offer to wait would be sweet. She would not accept it, but it would be sweet. He is not her father. He may not even be his father. 

There is a long silence, punctuated only by the crackle of the log in the hearth.

“If I should die in battle, Winterfell would pass to Bran.”

“Bran is eight.”

“My mother-,”

“Would tell you to do your duty, as she did hers.”

“Nell,” he snaps in exasperation. “I know this is- I know I’m likely not what you wanted in a husband, I’m younger than you, my father’s just been declared a traitor-,”

“Oh, shut up,” she groans, marches over to him, takes his shoulders firmly, and kisses him. He kisses her back with more ferocity than she is used to, and she takes a step back, bumping into the edge of the bed. Then he stops, although he does not let go of her waist. Nell searches his face for want, and sees it flickering in his keen blue eyes. 

“In the godswood, after Bran fell, I swore I would never mistreat you or dishonor you.”

“And I told you that you were a good man,” she says. “So prove it to me, my lord.”

He almost laughs, but kisses her again instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I apologize for this chapter having more 'wedding' details than necessarily Northern politics details, but it was becoming very long already and I decided it'd be easier to just focus on Nell's perspective of her own wedding (which is obviously a major part of this fic) before delving into the details of the Northern army and what's going on there. Some of the issues that crop up in this chapter- first, the introduction of other women such as the Mormont sisters. I really, really wish we'd seen more of Dacey or even Lyra and Jorelle (who are stated to potentially be seeking out Howland Reed with their mother) in canon. Asha and Alysane Mormont's burgeoning friendship was one of my favorite parts of ADWD. 
> 
> Second, the issue of heirs and Nell going south. This is a very big deal for Nell now that there is a real possibility of Robb dying prematurely and leaving her a childless widow. Obviously she has genuine fears and qualms about pregnancy and childbirth due to her childhood and her mother's trauma, but she is also determined to cement herself as not just some girl Robb is married to, and that means producing a child, ASAP, and not being shuffled off either back to Barrow Hall, or worse, to the Dreadfort and a waiting Ramsay. 
> 
> We then get to Nell blanking out upon being married. While yes, she has been working to make this wedding happen sooner and seemingly very eager to become Robb's wife, I think it's important to remember that Nell's agency here is fairly limited, despite her high social status. She had no real choice in the betrothal (nor did Robb) and she has been raised with the expectation/threat that if she cannot be a 'good' wife and produce a son for her husband, she'll be a failure and the subject of scorn/pity. Nell is also seventeen and while her society considers her an adult woman, psychologically, she is a teenage girl who I think would not necessarily be particularly excited/eager at the thought of immediately consummating this marriage, given all the pressures surrounding them. While she and Robb have expressed attraction to each other and know it's reciprocated, that doesn't mean they're ready for sex. So character-wise, while I didn't want to write this as yet another traumatic experience for Nell, I did want to acknowledge that it's not too shocking that both she and Robb might be uncomfortable with this and wish things could be different, even though they are learning to care for each other.


	13. Donella XIII

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell wakes up to scratching at the door. But mostly, she wakes up frightened- she can’t remember what she dreamed of, but she was running, she knows that much. Her legs burn and tingle as if she really had been, and sweat drips down her back. She takes several deep breaths, trying to calm herself- if she had a nightmare, it was probably due to all the rich food and the wine. But it’s still dark outside; the moon is gone, and she can see the first streaks of light, very faintly through the windows, but that’s all. A glimmer peeking out of the treeline, like a momentary wink of a coin in a deep, dark pocket. 

She sits up in bed very slowly, careful not to wake Robb, although she cannot see his face. Nell likes to sleep on her side, facing the window. Robb, as it turns out, prefers to sleep on his stomach, his head practically smothered in his pillow. All she can make out of him in the very faint light in his freckled back and the deep bronze of his hair. She looks at him for a few long moments, waiting for a surge of resentment or disgust or even fear, and is relieved when nothing comes. She doesn’t hate him. That’s good. 

It’s not that she’d expected to, suddenly, but- she had this nagging fear that it was all too good to be true, that as soon as they were faced with the hard truth of consummating the marriage, of lying together, whatever tenuous bond there was would splinter to pieces and be replaced with slow, churning bitterness and loathing on both sides. She doesn’t know why. Perhaps it is Barbrey’s fault- Nell feels that if her aunt had never given up her maidenhead to Brandon Stark, she might be presently happier for it. She might have still longed for him, but she would not have felt robbed of him. She could have remarried, after Willam. She did not, in order to keep Barrow Hall. 

Or perhaps it is Father’s fault. Nell does not know what happened to her mother, on her own wedding night, all those years ago, but she can surmise enough. She only wonders if Bethany had some lingering hopes, perhaps some determination, that it would be, if not a terribly joyous marriage, not a miserable one, either, only to have it all ripped away from her. She does not think Roose Bolton offered her gentle touches or sweet kisses to ease her into the act. She does not think he offered anything. He took and took and took, and come morning, Beth Bolton knew exactly the sort of man she had married, and knew exactly what she would face from him, every night. 

It wasn’t like that with Robb. Nell doesn’t feel hurt or demeaned or violated. It was not like something out of a song and it was not all she had imagined or all she had dreaded. It simply was what it was, and when they were done they kissed a bit more until her eyelids started to get heavy, and then they went to sleep. Very simple. Easy enough, she tells herself. Even if it is never perfect or wonderful, at least she knows what she will get from him. At least it was not all taking. She doesn’t feel as though she’s lost anything precious. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he must have asked at least thrice, afterwards, when she was half asleep, and Nell had not the energy to do much but shake her head and squeeze his shoulder.

He didn’t hurt her and she doesn’t hate him. That will have to be enough for now. The scratching at the door, having momentarily paused, grows louder. Nell slowly eases out from under the furs, and shivering suddenly from the cold, snatches up the rumpled Stark cloak Robb clothed her in, and wraps it around herself as she walks silently over to the door. As she does so, she offers a silent prayer with the direwolf at her back. Please, please, let it have took. Please. Barbrey cautioned her to always lie for a little while flat on her back, unmoving, afterwards, supposedly to encourage conception. And there are certain recipes for teas, said to bring on children, although Nell is not sure how much stock she puts in the brews of wood witches. 

She unbars the door as quietly as she can, lets it ease open with a low groan, and stares down at Grey Wind, who stares back up at her solemnly. “He’s alright,” Nell whispers, jerking her head at Robb’s sleeping form. “I didn’t cut his heart out and eat it, see?” She has no idea why she’s speaking to the wolf as though it can understand her speech, but- she jerks back when Grey Wind’s rough, wet tongue laps at her bare leg, resisting the urge to squeal, and then the wolf brushes past her, and leaps up with silent grace onto the bed.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Nell hisses, hurrying after him, but it’s too late, and now all she can do is lamely squeeze herself around his large, furry frame. Grey Wind rests his head contentedly on Robb’s still legs, and thumps his tail once against her. Nell flinches, then remembers Dana’s old jape, about their children having a full head of hair, and suppresses a laugh, in spite of her alarm. She falls halfway back asleep, and when she opens her eyes again, Robb is awake and stoking up the fire. Nell watches him for a moment with Grey Wind, and then gives a faint smile when he turns around and sees her.

“Good morning,” says Robb, reddening. 

To Nell’s relief, she does not blush half as badly. “Good morning.” She adjusts the sheets around her, unsure of how they ought to behave now. Should she go to him and kiss him and call him husband? Should he be scooping her into his arms and carrying her down the stairs to proclaim the marriage consummated and lawful? Are they expected to spend all day in here, working hard to make an heir? 

“I’m sorry about Grey Wind,” he nods at the wolf, who does not seem sorry in the least. He turns his muzzle towards her, and Nell forces a serene smile.

“It’s alright. He was missing you.”

Robb returns the smile, although his eyes are doubting. “Are you well?”

“Very well,” says Nell, and then adds, “I pray to give you a son very soon, my lord.” The words feel stiff and awkward on her tongue, but it is what was expected of her. She does not want to put him in the position of feeling as though he has to press the issue with her. Nell has heard all the stories, in all their variations, of what occurs between husband and wives and when to lie together. Men insist, women grouse, doors are slammed in faces, women bemoan cold beds, men take to brothels instead- all of it. There is really no way of coyly dancing around it and smoothly wording suggestions of who should visit whose chambers. Not now. “I shall await you in my chambers tonight.”

“No, I-,” Robb seems to give up on whatever he was trying to say, and nods jerkily instead. “I’ll call for one of your maids.”

“Wait,” says Nell, as he starts to dress. He pauses and looks at her, as does Grey Wind. It’s very disconcerting to have two sets of eyes on her. “You are due to depart in a week, are you not?”

Robb’s mouth softens, and he comes over to the bed. “I don’t like it any more than you do. I did not think it would be like this for us, but-,”

“But I must come with you,” Nell says forcefully, and he trails off in surprise.

“You-,”

“If I am not with child when you leave, we shall have no heir,” she forges onward, trying to keep the desperation from her voice. “You must see the sense in bringing me south, Robb. It can take time for a child to get, and neither of us can rest easy-,”

“And I could rest easy, bringing my wife to war?” he asks incredulously. “Nell, be reasonable. The battlefield is no place-,”

“No place indeed, when Maege Mormont and her daughters march with you!” she retorts. “You cannot tell me there will be no women. I know Cerwyn intends to bring his daughter-,”

“The Mormonts are warriors, and Lady Jonelle is past thirty and unwed-,”

“I will be of no use to anyone here,” she argues. “If we knew for certain that I was with child already, it would be different. But until then, it makes little sense for me to remain-,”

“It makes every bit of sense,” he says sharply. “Here, you are safe. Here, I will not have to worry about the worst coming to pass-,”

“But I must?” she demands. “You think I will not worry for you, every day, worry of what will become of all of us, should you fall in battle? Should you be captured?”

“I won’t.” That is a boy’s frightened, lie. Not a boast or a promise.

“You don’t know that,” Nell sits up straight in bed, pushing her hair out of her face. “I am not saying this out of a girl’s petty wishes to remain with her husband. You know I am practical. Hear me now. Your father always counseled you that the pack survives, but the lone wolf dies, did he not? He is a lone wolf now, as is Sansa, and Arya- all of them, separated. You must leave Bran and Rickon behind. You are going south without your pack. But we are wed now, and there is blood between us. And I know these men. Your men. My father’s men. My aunt’s men. My grandsire’s men. Bolton, Dustin, Ryswell. When you must reason and delegate to them, would it not serve you well to have my counsel? I know Roose Bolton. I know Rodrik Ryswell, and all his sons. I know the men of House Dustin my aunt sends with you.”

Robb is silent for a moment, and then he says. “What sort of man would I be, taking that risk with you? You were betrothed to me with the promise of Winterfell for your household. For me to take you on the campaign- think, Nell, of what kind of life that would be. Sleeping in tents. Poor food. Always on the move, no privacy, surrounded by men, not all of them honorable- the dangers from the Lannisters- that is not the life you were promised.”

“It is not the life you were promised, either,” she points out. “No one could have foreseen this. Just as your parents could not have predicted how their marriage would begin.”

“My father did not take my mother with him,” he says flatly.

“I am not your mother, and you are not your father. I give you my word. The instant I suspect I am with child, I will return to the North. You may keep me under guard day and night. You may forbid me to ride out or ever leave the sight of a Stark banner. You may command me to go no further south than The Twins, or Seagard, or Oldstones. I will obey. I will not lie to you, I will not hide things from you, if you give me an order, I will follow it as one of your sworn swords would. But whatever comes, we are wed now. We may have all the years your father and mother have had, we may have very few. But I would face it at your side, or not at all.”

They both go quiet; Robb glances away from her, his jaw working silently. Grey Wind lays his head in her lap, which she takes for an encouraging sign. Nell hesitates, then scratches the wolf under his chin, just as Robb looks back at her. “I will think on it,” he says, in his lord’s voice. She nods, inclining her head a moment longer than usual, and feels a flash of triumph when he presses a brief kiss to her cheek. He will say yes, she assures herself. He will. He may want her safe, but he wants her more. They may not love each other, but they have been together for months now. He has grown to depend on her in some sense, surely, for a sound mind and an even voice. Luwin serves his mother and Greyjoy serves himself, but she has always been his alone. Surely he is selfish enough to agree. 

She feels odd, when returned to her own rooms. She supposes they are only partially her rooms now, for she will be spending her nights in his bed, or he in hers. The custom is for the husband to visit the wife’s rooms- few women would be so bold as to directly approach a man’s bedchambers, especially in the first weeks and months of a marriage. Southerners say northern girls are brazen, without the pretty lessons from the Maiden’s Book to instill purity of body and mind. It is nonsense, of course. There are plenty of southern maids who enter their marriages far from innocent, and plenty of northern girls who guard their virtue fiercely. That makes her think of Sara, who would have gladly lived out her life a maid still. Nell once asked her, rather brashly, if she did not ever think of men- surely someone would have her to wife, bastard or not, a guardsman or a tradesman, some merchant’s son seeking an educated bride-

“I have thought of men,” Sara had told Nell, who could not have been older than thirteen at the time, “and I know very well what men have thought of me. They do not guard their tongues around natural daughters as they would a trueborn lady, Donella. But I will not wed. I have a rare enough gift here; a trade without being born into it. Some women are brewers or seamstresses or apothecaries, or even midwives, but nearly all were born or wed into it. I am a governess. I earned the position, it is mine. No man gave it to me, and no man will take it from me. Were I to wed, I would have to put my books and scrolls away, and tend to a home and children. I would rather tend to minds.” She’d tapped Nell on the head with a finger, pointedly.

“Yes,” she remembers saying petulantly, “but if you wed a man, you’d take his name. You wouldn’t have to be a bastard anymore. I should rather a true name than books.” 

Sara had looked at her for a moment, then said simply, “I am a Snow, but before that I am Sara Snow, and I shall make my own name when they write of women like you, who go on to do great things.”

And now, she thinks, as she finishes dressing in a gown of fine grey wool, to honor her new house, what will they write of Sara Snow? Murdered by another Snow. Butchered by the Bastard. Robbed of her virtue and her position and her future. And what justice has she seen? None. Nell has given her no justice and no peace, and now Sara haunts her dreams. If she could, she would take all these men gathered here, march them on the Dreadfort, drag Ramsay from it, and hang him from the mill. She cannot. Robb and the North have greater concerns than an errant bastard. And Father- well, Sara was wrong. Nell is not free of him now that she is wed. 

She is reminded of that when she rounds a corner with Dana and nearly runs into him. She involuntarily sucks in a breath, and Dana bows her head. “Lord Bolton.”

“Father,” Nell summons up a daughter’s gracious smile, despite wanting to brush past him. “I trust you enjoyed the feast last night.”

“Indeed I did,” says Roose plainly. He glances at Dana. “If you would excuse us, my lady.”

Even Dana is not one to dig her heels in when confronted with Roose Bolton. She shoots Nell an apologetic look, and hurries away, calling after Jorelle Mormont, who is coming down another stairwell. Nell reluctantly follows Father into an empty sitting room overlooking the First Keep. He shuts the door behind them, and her stomach clenches, as much as she chides herself. He has a weaker hold on her now. She is not pinioned to him anymore. She is a Stark now. She is a woman wed and bedded. But when she opens her mouth to speak, no words come. He smiles faintly, a queer initiation of an emotion. “And how has marriage treated you thus far?”

“Well,” Nell finds it easier to focus on something else, other than his gaze. The window, and the morning light spilling through it. “I thank you for making this match for me, Father. Robb has been so good to me, and the Starks so welcoming.”

“Good. And the bedding?”

She physically recoils, tearing her eyes from the window to his face. Nothing. No triumph or smugness or disturbed interest. Just expectation of an answer. “It is not my place-,”

“You will find that as long as you are my daughter, it is your place to answer questions I put to you.” He sounds almost bored. “The bedding?”

“There was one,” she says through her teeth. “I did my duty.”

“And your young husband?”

She swallows. “Did his.” Her face is scarlet now. She resists the urge to wrap her arms around herself, to comfort herself, and instead looks back to the window. “Is that all? You wanted to ensure-,”

“To ensure that I did not waste a dowry, yes,” he says coolly. “To ensure that I will have no complaints from Robb Stark, yes. You will forgive a father’s queries, Donella, but you were raised in Lady Dustin’s household, and it is a crude… but common rumor that she did not go to her own marriage bed a maid.”

There is a white hot flash of outrage at that. “My aunt is an honorable woman, and hearsay-,”

“Consider yourself fortunate I did not have you inspected by Maester Uthor before presenting you to the Starks,” he cuts her off smoothly. “But it would not have mattered, with how much time you spend in the saddle. Many noblewomen do not bleed the first night.” He lifts his chin slightly, and Nell understands him well enough- _but your mother did, I made sure of it_. He is likely proud of it, the way he might be of the leeches he uses to sap the bad blood from himself. 

“Even if Robb had complaints,” she snaps, “you are the last person he would voice them to. He is a good man. He would never treat me-,” she barely stops herself in time, and adds in a low voice, “ill.”

“No,” says Roose. “He is not me, is that what you meant to say, daughter? I take no offense to it. I am not most men. I have been a forgiving and lenient father, have I not? Letting you spend your wild days in Barrowton with your aunt whispering her schemes in your ears. Counting you for my sole heir, despite your sex. Making you a fine match with a good man, as you call him. All I ask in return is a bit of gratitude. And that you see your duties through. I would not have it said that Roose Bolton sold the Starks a dam that will not breed.”

“He is taking me south,” Nell blurts out, to get him to stop, to make it stop, because she will not cry, she is not going to cry, she has not cried in front of him since Mother died, she will not- “He is taking me south, so you may be assured that the marriage will be fruitful, Father. If that is all-,”

“There’s a good girl,” Father says mildly. “Thank you, Donella. You put my worries at ease. Between you and your brother, I am quite content. I have named him castellan of the Dreadfort in my absence. He has taken to the role with vigor, I am told. Mayhaps there is hope for him yet.”

She hears the warning for what is is. Nell says nothing, only turns and walks to the door. She is nearly to it when she feels his grip like a vice on her hair. He is not pulling or ripping, but he is holding her firmly by it, the way one might hold a leash on a dog or the reins of a horse. She bites back a yelp of protest, because inside, sometimes, she is still a child of six who displeased him, and Mother is screaming and _you always hear the switch before it hits you, you do, you do_ -

“Do not forget your courtesies simply because you are a woman newly wedded and bedded, daughter.”

“Thank you, Father,” she says quickly, the words slipping and stumbling in their furor to escape her mouth. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I am so grateful.”

He lets go, reaches around, and opens the door for her. “After you, Lady Stark.”

With the wedding concluded, now is the time for farewells. Husbands and wives, fathers and children- Nell overhears Cley Cerwyn’s outraged quarrels with his father, who will be leaving him behind to rule in his absence, rather than taking him with him to battle. She is surprised to see the boy sitting with his sister later; Jonelle keeps an arm wrapped around him, and presses a motherly kiss to his dirty blonde hair. Nell would have thought Cley would have held a grudge against his spinster sister, that she might be taken south to find a husband, and he must remain here. 

She catches a glimpse of Daryn and Alys near the lichyard, saying their goodbyes. Alys Karstark is dry-eyed, but her mouth is puckered in displeasure, and when Daryn says some jest, smiling hopefully, she scowls, makes a fist, and knocks it against his shoulder. He catches it and kisses it, and then they are embracing one another while her chaperoning brothers look on, rolling their eyes and cracking japes. 

The Umbers leave behind their three youngest, who will return to Last Hearth. The Smalljon is nearly toppled under the combined weight of his siblings; Osric hangs on one arm, Berena the other, and little Aregelle clutches at his legs, until he manages to shake them off and in turns chases them around the yard, roaring and laughing in turn. 

Donella Hornwood spends a good deal of time in the godswood with her husband; Nell wonders that she could still have such devotion to a man who sired a bastard after they were wed. perhaps it is like it was for Catelyn. She can forgive the man, if not the action. Larence Snow will not have the chance to say goodbye to his father and half-brother, tucked away at Deepwood Motte. 

And then there is Dana. Nell listens at the door, quite blatantly, while she goes in circles with Artos Flint. Nell had never met the man before he came to Winterfell with Dana’s uncles and cousins, but in her imagination and from Dana’s stories, he’d always been some drunken, hulking brute, a bottle in one hand, an axe in the other. Artos Flint has the sweats and shakes of a man who spends most of his nights drinking until he passes out, but he is not the Robert Baratheon-like oaf that Nell had imagined. The man is wiry, not much taller than his daughter, and composed of hard muscle rapidly wasting with age, although he cannot be much older than forty five. His hands tremble when not holding a weapon, and his voice still cracks like a boy of twelve. 

Just as it does now- “You’ll do as you’re told,” he is snarling back at his daughter. Dana, to her credit, seems ready to go several more rounds against him, as though they were fighters in a pit. “I’ve been soft enough on you as it is, sending you off to the barrowlands, when I should have seen you before a heart tree-,”

“You sent me nowhere! That was Grandfather’s doing-,”

“Aye, for he wanted you out of his sight! He would have left you for the fucking giants, girl, if it mean not having to endure your insolence-,”

“I am a woman grown now, and you cannot-,”

“A woman grown, are you? Then get ye wed, you silly wench. Donnel is willing to forgive-,”

“I don’t want his forgiveness, for I don’t want him at all!”

“And you think your sisters wanted their men, d’you? That your mother wanted me-,”

“Gods, who could?”

There’s the sound of a slap, and Nell stiffens, puts a hand on the door, but then a responding crack, and when she slams her way into the room, Artos Flint is rubbing furiously at his jaw with his callused palm. “Did you teach her to hit like that?” he asks irritably of Nell, who simply looks between the two of them, staring. 

Dana’s cheek is bright red, but she is not cowering or crying. She folds her arms under her chest, glares at her father, and snaps, “I taught myself.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” he sneers back. It is more like watching siblings than a parent and child. Nell is both appalled and amazed. Why is he not beating her bloody? He may not be a mountain of a man, but aging drunkard that he is, he should still be plenty strong enough to overpower a gawky girl of seventeen. “I blame your mother. It does queer things to a child’s mind, to see a man so shamed an’ derided in his own house-,”

“You shame yourself,” Dana spits back. “I will not marry Donnel. You’d have to chain me to the bloody tree. Grandfather’s the lord, and he’s not here-,”

“Your uncle Beron speaks for him here, girl-,”

“Then tell Nuncle Beron he’ll have to use all his sons to get me into a godswood to be wed! But you won’t, will you?” 

Artos raises a hand threateningly in her direction, then spits on the floor, and stalks out of the room, nodding his head to Nell as he does. Dana mouths some curse after him, then slumps down in the window seat, muttering to herself.

“By the gods, what was that?” Nell bursts out, shutting the door. “Is this how it always goes between you two?”

“I’m too much like him,” Dana says with a bitter smile. “Which means I’m his favorite daughter… and his least favorite. Alysanne and Jenny were good girls who wed without complaint. I shamed him- but he was proud, I think, that I dared to refuse Grandfather’s commands in the first place. They would have made me, all the same, but then came the offer from your aunt, so off I went,” she shrugs. “Now my uncles are nagging him to see me settled, but as much as he hates me, I do believe he hates Uncle Beron and Uncle Will more,” she barks a humorless laugh. 

“Which Donnel is it?” Nell’s brow furrows.

“Black Donnel, of Clan Flint.”

Nell is surprised. “But that is a fine match- you’d be the chief’s wife, when the Old Flint passes-,”

“I will not wed Donnel, and he knows it,” snaps Dana. “I’ve said my piece on the matter.”

Nell looks at her searchingly, while Dana avoids her gaze, then says, “You’ll come with me, then? You were to be my companion before my marriage, but I am wed now. If you would rather return home-,”

“Of course I’m coming with you,” Dana snorts, finally looking back up at her, eyes hard. “Wed or not, you think I’d go back to the Finger? My kin will pledge their blades to your husband before the gods. I’ve no steel to offer-,”

“Excepting your spine and your tongue,” Nell points out, and Dana grins, showing off her crooked teeth.

“Aye. Who could pass up that? Between the two of us, we’ll tongue-lash the lions to death.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, I know I promised a lot in this chapter and then it ended up being 4000+ words of father-daughter interactions. However! I solemnly swear we will see some actual movement of characters (into and out of the North) next chapter, and Bran and Rickon will get some page time before the northern army sets off. I was severely tempted to skip all of this and jump straight to Moat Cailin and some solid plans for the Riverlands Agenda, but whether or not you consider this all pointless filler, I promise it will have bearing later on. I wanted to delve into Nell's feelings post-wedding, specifically in regards to the tremendous pressure to get pregnant immediately, and her obviously very abusive relationship with Roose. I also wanted to start laying the groundwork for some of Dana's own backstory, so we ended up having a weird parallel in terms of daughters and fathers. Both Nell and Dana have fathers whom they have extremely dysfunctional relationships with. The main difference that Nell immediately identifies is that, that bad relationship aside, Dana still feels as though she can blatantly speak her mind (and even defy) her father, who is somewhat of a black sheep third son within his own family, without facing serious repercussions from him, personally. I also wanted to however briefly, show some of the more loving/stable families parting ways with each other, such as Cley and his sister, Smalljon and his younger siblings, and even Donella and Halys Hornwood and Daryn and Alys. I consider this important because we're going to be spending a considerable amount of time in the presence of many of these characters, and I'd like to establish them as people who care for and are cared for by others, not just meat shields for Robb.


	14. Donella XIV

298 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell is glad she dressed so warmly; Maester Luwin predicts there are still a few months of summer left, but the day before Robb’s host departs, the sting in the air feels like winter. The heart tree that witnessed their marriage now witnesses an entirely different ceremony; every head of house, or their chosen representative, comes before Robb and the gods, to offer their swords, their loyalty, and their honor for the cause of House Stark. They will not rest until justice is restored in the riverlands, and Lord Eddard is freed from the boy king and his treacherous mother. They will not rest until Robb’s sisters are returned to him. They will not rest, Nell thinks, until they’re growling at the Red Keep’s gates.

And there is something thrilling about it all; she may pride herself on not being easily stirred in emotion, but it would take a stone heart to be unmoved by the sight of so many powerful men- and women- pledging themselves to Robb. He deserves this, she thinks, rather charitably. Surely he does; he has proven himself to her, if not to them. Barbrey would tell her she has gone soft-headed and soft-hearted, won over by some sweet kisses and soft touches in the night, won over by a husband who agreed to bring her south with him, whose kindness may have overruled his good sense. 

Nell cares not, so relieved at the thought of not being left behind again. She could face down a wall of bristling spears and lances, if it meant not being left here with children and old women to console, and an empty womb. It has been six days since the wedding, and she got her moon’s blood last night. To directly inform Robb of such a thing was unthinkable, blunt as she can be, but she knows he understood her meaning, when she underscored, once again, how important it was that she go with him. She has never thought much of motherhood before, but now she considers what a child of theirs might look like. A son, she thinks. A son with her dark hair and his bright blue eyes. Would that not be so fair to look upon? They might name him Benjen, for his lost uncle. 

When her father kneels before them, presenting his cold steel, and says the words, ending with their house’s- “Our blades are sharp… and ever yours, my lord,” Nell can even twitch her lips up into a smile, thinking of a son. It will happen. It must. She is healthy; her cycle has always been regular, despite all her exercise, and she has good hips and breasts, better than her mother had. Robb’s father sired five children on his mother, three of them sons, and all survived their births and infancies. She will give him as many, if not more, but for now all that matters is an heir. Spares can be worried over later. 

As her father rises stiffly, Robb saying, as he has been all this while, “When winter comes, House Stark will not forget your loyal words and deeds,” Nell looks past him to where Bran rests in the basket on Hodor’s back, Maester Luwin at his side. That suits well enough for now, she thinks, but just because his legs are crippled does not mean the rest of him will cease growing, What will happen when he is too big for even Hodor to carry? He looks pale and frightened, but when she catches his eye he chances a small smile, trying to seem brave. Bran thinks he is a man now, eight years old and ruler of Winterfell in his brother’s absence. Of course, that honor will really go to the maester and Lady Catelyn, if she returns, but-

Rickon has vanished; for a brief while he was standing silently, begrudgingly holding Beth Cassel’s hand, but now he is gone, and she is whispering to Eddara Tallhart fretfully. Nell suppresses a sigh, and turns her attention back to the proceedings. They can hunt him down later. Three is too young for any of this, although Bran has reminded her that he will be four shortly after the new year. She had briefly raised the possibility of Rickon going back to Barrow Hall with her aunt to Robb- Bran, unfortunately, is no fit playmate or keeper of him, and at least in Barrowton he might have things to do and people to see.

But Barbrey would never permit Shaggydog to come with him, and while Robb said he was loathe to separate the family any further. Bran is lonely enough as it is, and to leave a wolf behind seemed wrong, near as wrong as sending Rickon anywhere without consulting his lady mother first. “He will be old enough to start lessons with Maester Luwin soon,” Robb told her, “and the quiet here, once everyone’s gone, might do him some good. Besides, my mother will return soon enough.”

Nell has not said it aloud, but she has thought for some time now that chances of Catelyn Stark docilely retreating to Winterfell while her father’s lands are ravaged and her son marches off to war, are slim to none. If Nell had a son of fifteen, newly bearded or not, marching to fight, she would not be content to tend the household either. Managing the North and the people left in it is no small matter, but neither is war, and a poorly plotted war with the likes of Tywin Lannister and the Kingslayer could have far graver consequences. Such as all their heads finding new homes atop spikes outside Maegor’s Holdfast. Or hanging. Or drowning. Or whatever other punishments Lannister picked up from his time as the Mad King’s Hand.

She would like to believe, of course, that the gods are on their side. Dana thinks so; takes the presence of the direwolves and Bran’s miraculous survival as signs that they are fated good fortune in their coming battles. After all, the old gods were once worshipped everywhere, not just north of the Neck. Their power does not wane on the basis of climate and terrain. But to believe in the gods is one thing, and to believe in the frenzy of western swords pouring into the riverlands is another entirely. Catelyn was not acting under the authority of House Tully when she took the Imp hostage, but Tywin Lannister does not care. He would set a house on fire to kill a particularly troublesome rat. 

Nell hopes they prove to be very quick and clever rats, if it comes to that. Robb was not exaggerating out of boyish chivalry when he expressed the dangers of her coming with him. She is not so naive to think that, if they fail, she will simply be ushered off to sit on some silk cushions and drink wine with the queen. If she is lucky, she may find herself a new novitiate of the Silent Sisters. If she is not so lucky, she will be waiting on the very long line for the gallows with everyone else. Southerners like to speak so fondly of the reverence the Faith of the Seven instills for the innocent and pure of heart, of the vows every knight swears to protect women and children. In practice, they seem to enjoy murdering and mutilating them just as much as any northman or Ironborn. 

Their own dear Ironborn himself says his vows last, so as not to provoke even more quarrels among the lords gathered. Nell has heard many a complaint at how Robb takes his father’s ward into his confidence. Many of them would sooner see Robb leave Greyjoy behind with the women and children, or better yet, threaten to take his head if Balon Greyjoy does not lend aid to their cause. It would be sweet to have the Kraken’s fleet at their disposal, but Nell thinks that about as likely as the sun rising in the west and setting in the east. 

“My bow is yours, Lord Stark,” Theon perhaps should have considered a career in the south with a mummer’s troupe; he seems to be enjoying this performance as he takes a knee at Robb’s feet, his quiver in his hands. “We do not sow…and I should be happy to reap some golden scalps on your behalf.” Nell rolls her eyes; there are a few quickly muffled snickers from the younger men and boys, and Robb inclines his head and sends Theon back to his feet and on his way. 

When it is finally over he unsheathes his sword, and the rasp of steel is echoed back at him by the crowd, loud enough together to send a chill down Nell’s spine. Robb slits open his palm shallowly and neatly, and she is glad he never did insist on wielding a greatsword like his father’s Ice, for he would have surely caught a vein with that. Blood wells up from his pale Tully skin and flows freely down his hand and fingers, dropping onto the dead leaves and moss underfoot. Robb wipes the rest across the heart tree’s sad face; it looks as though it had painted itself in red war stripes. “I shed my blood for family, for honor, and for the North. Today and all the days to come,” he says, his voice ringing out through the silence. “What say you?”

“THE STARK IN WINTERFELL HAS OUR SWORDS, OUR SHIELDS, OUR BLOOD ON THE FIELD,” they chant back, and Nell bows her head and counts to ten, before she grips Robb’s bloody hand with her own, kisses him as a devoted wife ought to, and holds their joined hands aloft before the upturned faces and raised steel. 

“May the gods be with us, and may you bring winter on your blades!” she calls out to them. Robb’s blood is trickling down her wrist and staining the midnight blue of her sleeve. “When you bring Eddard Stark and his daughters home, you will not be forgotten!” They sheath their steel as one, and she steps forward with Robb to lead them out, smiling proudly and flushed with exuberance. 

Afterwards Robb goes to meet with the Greatjon and Lady Maege, and Nell resists the urge to spend her last hours at Winterfell sitting in front of a roaring fire with Dana and Beth and the Mormont sisters, and instead sets off to find Rickon. He’s taken to roaming about at night, to the point where his door must be watched at all times, lest he get into some trouble. The sun is low in the sky, and she has to squint or stare at the grey ground as she makes her way through the castle. Many of the guests have already left; those who are not going to fight, back to their respective keeps and holdfasts. The Manderly girls and Cley Cerwyn both departed two days past; Wylla was longing to come south, adventure brimming in her sea green-blue eyes, and Cley was sullen but dutiful, kissing his sister on the cheek and returning his father’s embrace. 

She tries to imagine what it will be like, when they have all gone; the winter town will be quiet again until the last harvest of summer comes in. Then she thinks about how, by the time they return to it, Bran and Rickon may not be little boys anymore. She tries and fails to picture them at eleven and six, rather than eight and three. It seems impossible. Then she thinks of Sansa, who may have already flowered- Robb mentioned once that she turns twelve soon- and Arya. If the Lannisters had Arya, Nell has no doubt that letter would have borne her signature as well, however messy or defiant a scrawl. Perhaps Ned Stark was able to smuggle at least one of his daughters out of the city before he was taken. Perhaps Arya is on some ship sailing for White Harbor at this very moment, alongside some exhausted guard who survived the massacre.

Or perhaps, the voice that is equal parts Barbrey and Bethany, tells her coldly and practically, the girl’s corpse is rotting in some alleyway in King’s Landing. What are the chances that a sheltered child of nine could have survived on her own? Robb believes she must still be alive somewhere, that he will see her again, her and Sansa both, that they will still be the same argumentative and innocent children he remembers. Nell thinks that if the Lannisters have their wits about them, they will have wed Sansa to Joffrey already, send Ned Stark to the Wall, and try to broker peace with the promise of a half-Stark heir to the throne. It would likely not succeed, but it is what someone like her father might do. 

“Looking for the little one, m’lady?”

Nell stops, and turns on her heel to face Osha. It’s been well over a month since they brought the wildling back, and Nell would have counseled a quick death, the same Osha and her friends had offered them, but Robb asked his questions, got his answers, and set her to work in the kitchens under Gage’s watchful eyes. She is still chained at the feet, so she cannot run or climb, but Nell trusts her no more than she would a bear on a rope. 

But she is no longer enraged at the sight of Osha’s tanned and weathered face, tangled hair, and lanky frame. Nell thinks herself enlightened enough to not hate wildlings blindly, although she might had she grown up closer to the Wall, where they occasionally come down to raid villages or steal women. But that doesn’t mean she has any warmth for this one, either. She would have seen Robb dead on the end of her spear if she could, and Nell soon to follow, and then where would they be?

“Yes,” she says, in her cold lady’s voice, every inch Barbrey Dustin’s younger self. “Have you seen Rickon?”

“Saw him come skirting out of the godswood, m’lady,” Osha gives a swift nod, brushing her thick brown hair out of her eyes. Nell can’t quite place her age, but estimates her to be around the same as Dacey; twenty five or twenty six. She wonders idly if she left children behind to flee south. They say wildlings are brutal with their young, that they’ll leave a babe with any deformities or illness out to die in the cold, rather than burden the rest of the group with them. Then again, they also say all wildling women are witches and all the men are wargs.

“Where he did he go?” Nell presses impatiently, but Osha only says, “I’ll show you, m’lady,” and has the nerve to beckon for Nell to follow her, as though they were old girlhood friends.

But it’s not getting any warmer out, and she hasn’t the time to waste with yet another fruitless search. Nell follows the wildling through the guest house and to the kennels, which she might have guessed herself, had she put any serious thought into it. Shaggydog has been chained in there for three weeks now, baying and snarling and setting all the hounds on edge. Nell avoids the kennels if at all possible, but hasn’t much choice now, and so enters with Osha. For once, it’s quiet; most of the dogs are silent or sleeping, whining and snuffling to themselves, and in the loft young Palla is sleeping herself, a freckled arm dangling over the edge.

In the pen near the very back, Shaggy is curled up, still securely chained to the wall, to Nell’s relief, and Rickon dozes atop him, murmuring to himself in whatever dreams boys of three have. One small fist is rooted in the direwolf’s dark fur, and his head is lolling to the side, against his wolf’s. “Thank you for bringing me to him,” she tells Osha curtly. “You may return to your work now.” But the woman does not move, instead shuffling slightly, her chains rattling. Shaggydog stirs in his sleep but does not rouse.

Nell fixes her with a hard stare that she imagines is very like Father’s. “Is there something else?”

“I’ve tried to tell your man, m’lady-,”

“My man?” Nell echoes dubiously.

Osha scowls. “Your- your lord, the Stark, I’ve tried to tell him he oughta be taking all these swords here north, you see, not south. It’s the North that’s wanting the men and their steel, m’lady.”

“No, I don’t see,” Nell keeps her voice down so as not to wake the bloody dogs or worse, the bloody wolf, but finds it difficult to measure her patience, all the same. “Pray tell why Robb should go north.” Of course. The last thing she should be doing right now is standing here in a smelly kennel reeking of shit and wet straw, listening to a wildling prattle on about whatever nonsense is going on north of the Wall. What, some war between wildling kings?

“There’s trouble,” Osha says fervently, so Nell at least knows this is not some demented jape. “Trouble coming on the winds, and they may not blow this far south yet, but they will- men go into the woods and they don’t come out, or if’n they do, they’re gone to wights, m’lady, dead as stone and eyes like blue ice. That’s why I run south, m’lady. Not from the crows, from them. Mance thinks he can push ‘em back, but he’s wrong, and the crows-,” she snorts derisively, “they don’t listen, do they? Too busy putting arrows in us. Or their cocks.”

Nell stares at her, unable to keep her lip from curling slightly. “You wanted to tell me this? That-,”

“That you oughta tell your man to go north with his men, not south,” Osha nods. “Tried to tell him myself, I did, but-,”

“My lord husband,” Nell enunciates the words sharply, “has more important matters to attend to than the ramblings of a prisoner. Why should we believe a word you say? You’re a thief and a murderer.”

“Never stolen when I didn’t have reason to, never killed when I didn’t have to,” Osha frowns. “Why would I lie to you, m’lady? Got me a nice enough spot here, don’t I, saving these irons?” She lifts a foot. “Rather have Gage up my skirt than Stiv. Rather scrub pots and pour ale than spend my days scrounging out there in the wilds. But it won’t last. You don’t go north, won’t none of it last, m’lady. They’ll come for the Wall-,”

“Who?”

“The white walkers, the wights!” Osha bursts out. “I swear to you, they’ll come. Maybe not this year, not next, but soon-,”

“You expect anyone to believe that there’s wights roaming about?” Nell exhales audibly. “That’s a story told around campfires to scare children to bed. The white walkers? The Others, leading a host of the dead? Tell me, have you seen ice spiders as well? Giants? Are dragons falling out of the moon, or rising from the sea?”

Osha sets her jaw tightly and falls silent. 

“We’ve shown you mercy enough here,” Nell tells her shortly. “So you’ll keep those wild tales to yourself, rather than scaring the other servants and giving the children nightmares. I don’t know what you’ve seen or heard up beyond that Wall, aye, but we’ve a war to fight, here and now.” 

She’s more irritated than anything else. She won’t entirely dismiss the possibility of some dark witchcraft making a dead man walk again, or making him cling to life a little while longer, and perhaps there is war amongst the wildlings and panic over the summer coming to an end. But wights, like the ones from the Tale of the Last Hero? It’s absurd. Any man, northern or southern, will tell you as much.

“Yes, m’lady,” Osha grits out, just as Rickon’s eyelids begin to flutter. She stalks off, near silent despite the chains, as he wakes, ignoring his curious call after her and Shaggydog’s bark. Nell feels a trickle of cold sweat run down her back, but dismisses it. 

Robb is expected to dine with his lords, and Nell is expected to dine with Barbrey before she departs for Barrowton, but they both make their promises to see Bran and Rickon before bed. To her surprise, Nell finds herself almost looking forward to it, not the farewell but the ability to give one at all. Mother never got her chance to say her goodbyes to her. Of course, she is not their mother, but she will not pretend to have no care for the boys at all. They are her kin now, after all, and they have been through enough at it is. 

“You’re very quiet,” Barbrey observes, as Nell slowly stirs her soup with a dented spoon. She seems to almost hesitates, then says, “You will return to the North as soon as you believe you are with child?”

“Now Aunt, don’t grow soft on me,” Nell huffs, without looking up. “You were the one who has made it abundantly clear-,”

“There will be no child at all if you are dead or a captive,” Barbrey says sharply. “Of course this is not what I wanted for you. You may be a woman now, but in many ways you are a girl still. You have never seen war before. I want your word that you will not take any unnecessary risks-,”

“And you have?” Nell retorts. “Willam hardly took you with him, did he?” She regrets it immediately; Barbrey stops, jaw clenching, mid-sip of her wine, and sets the cup back down roughly. “I’m sorry. That was- please forgive me, Auntie.”

“I had Willam for three moons,” Barbrey says stiffly. Now it is her turn to avoid meeting Nell’s eyes. “He was not what I had wanted, but we were dutiful to one another. He was… he seemed a good man. I never had the chance to know for sure. When he left, my courses were late, and I was so…” she shakes her head. “I was still a girl then, just like you. There was still some space for silly dreams in my head. Then my moon’s blood came. And eight months later Ned Stark returned his horse to me. But not his bones.” 

They are silent, except for the sound of their utensils, and then Nell says, “I promise, I will do my best to keep out of harm’s way. Robb would never let me go defenseless. It may be that I spend the next year cooped up at Riverrun,” she remarks with a dry edge. 

“If Riverrun has not been overrun by lions yet,” Barbrey says coolly. Then she leans back in her seat, as if to regard Nell properly for the first time in months. “I tell you often that you are every bit Bethany’s daughter, but you are also your father’s. The Boltons excel at self-preservation. Use it. Bearing Robb Stark’s heir is important, but I would rather see you childless, with your head still on your neck, if it comes down to it.”

“There’s the tender-hearted woman who raised me,” Nell scoffs. To her surprise, Barbrey reaches across the table and takes Nell’s cold hand in her own. 

She squeezes it just once. “When you return, I will come back to Winterfell with you. A woman should not be alone during her confinement.” 

There are so many goodbyes and explanations one can offer children, so instead Nell sits up with Bran and Rickon and hears all their favorite stories. Mostly Bran’s, since Rickon is too young to have ‘stories’, or at least ones that make any sense. But Bran it seems has a good memory and can be quite witty for a boy of eight, and Nell laughs at his descriptions of mock fights with Robb and Jon Snow, of building a snow castle with Sansa in the godswood, of their lady mother teaching them how to swim and float on their backs in the hot springs. Of going out into the wolfswood with their father, of name day feasts, of Old Nan’s ghost stories.

Nell has no such tales from her childhood. She has some happy memories, of course, of drinking hot cider around a fire with Sara, of going out riding with her aunt to inspect House Dustin’s herds, of being dared to dash down the length of a frozen stream by Dana. But she has no shared sense of family, no one to meet her eyes and laugh at memories. Some day, she thinks. If- when she and Robb have children, it will be like this, only no one will be leaving them. They will all be together and they will be happy and her sons will never go to war. 

Rickon is half-asleep once more, nodding off against Bran’s shoulder, when Robb finally comes in. Nell is tired and quiet herself, but she rises from her chair to greet him. “How long will you be gone?” Bran asks, for the hundredth time.

“I don’t know,” Robb admits. “But the riverlands are not so far away. And- and even if I am still fighting the Lannisters for some time, once we free Father and the girls, they’ll come back here.”

“Arya will always beat me in sword fights now,” Bran says, gazing down at his legs, buried under the thick blankets. 

“Arya may have outgrown sword fights by then,” Nell murmurs drowsily, muffling a yawn. She would caution Robb not to give his brother false hopes, but there is no point. For a child a false hope may be better than the cold truth, and she does not want to have to dry up tears on their final night. “Robb, we should retire.”

He nods reluctantly, and scoops up Rickon into his arms, bending down to kiss Bran’s head. “Good night, Bran. We’ll say goodbye again in the morning, I promise.” He hesitates, then adds, “Just think, how happy Mother will be to see you awake.”

Bran smiles sleepily, eyes already closed, and Nell carefully blows out the candle on his bedside table. Summer rises from his place by the fire as they leave, leaping up onto the bed beside Bran. The last thing Nell sees before she shuts the door are his eyes, glowing in the dark.

They do say their goodbyes in the morning, under a red sky. “Red sky above head, by dusk men are dead,” Dana quotes cheerfully enough while they mount their horses. Nell ignores her in favor of promising to write to Barbrey, and instructing Beth that Rickon is not allowed to skip meals or spend all his days hiding down in the crypts. “And do practice your needlework, Beth, we’ll be needing it come winter-,” She’s distracted by the rumble of the gates opening. 

“I will,” Beth Cassel says earnestly, eyes gleaming with excitement at the sight of the knights gleaming under the red sun, and the banners rippling in the wind. Robb is speaking with Bran, atop his pony. Rickon is still in his room, throwing a fit, likely crying himself hoarse. Shaggydog’s howls can just barely be heard from the kennel in the distance. Summer prowls about nearby, setting horses on edge. 

“Be brave,” Nell calls to Bran, waving. “You are the Stark in Winterfell now!”

He waves back, although he looks on the verge of tears. Robb trots his great grey warhorse up alongside Roddy. “Are you ready?”

Nell takes one last quick glance around at the great walls of Winterfell, its outline blurring in her mind’s eyes. “Of course,” she lies. She has never felt less ready in her life, save on her wedding day. At least he is not saying goodbye to her as well. They pass under the portcullis, and she lets out a breath she did not know she’d been holding. The streets of the winter town are full; old men and women and children wave and cheer and scream, sending flocks of birds scattering into the air and horses whinnying in alarm, but the host is moving too fast to stop. 

Then they break free of the ramshackle rows of cottages, and the North stretches out ahead of, vast and a pale blueish green this early in the morning. An adventure, Nell thinks. It could be something like an adventure. She does not feel like a hero, though. She feels rather like she were chained to the mast of a ship being set out to drift at sea. For all her persuasion of Robb, as well as she knows the North and its men, what lies beyond the Neck is a mystery to her. She has never been to the riverlands, never seen Ironman’s Bay or the Forks. 

And then can be no more posturing or play-acting now. This is life or death. Gods help them if they make one wrong move and find themselves on the losing side. Part of her might want to turn tail and gallop back to Winterfell, but it is a bit late for all that now. She fought to be here by Robb’s side, and she will must not take this lightly. So instead she spurs Roddy to a canter, calls out to Dacey and Lyra Mormont, and sees who can reach the border of Cerwyn lands first. 

But aside from some amusements in horse racing or the initial thrill of sleeping under the stars, it is slow going. Their admittedly simple ruse with the wedding allowed them time to gather some twenty thousand men- or at least, they should have that many all together with them by the time they reach the beginning of the Neck- but that does not mean it will be any faster to move them. Riding hard and long every day or not, horses still need to rest and eat, as do their riders, and the wagon trains will slow them all down even more. But that is the price of keeping an army fed and coherent. Robb sends out scouts daily, to keep them appraised of any movements to the south, east, or west, and especially to watch for any signs that his mother has returned. But there is nothing of note to report, not until they first see the ruins of Moat Cailin before them, some twelve days into the march. 

Nell is exhausted and bone-sore, in the midst of looking for a place to sleep that is not like to see her eaten by lizard lions, when Robb finds her, a letter in hand. “Word from White Harbor,” he says. “From my mother.” He looks torn between open relief and great discomfort. Nell surmises that the letter was not terrible, but it brought no wondrous news either. She sets down her pack and goes to him. 

“Tell me.”

“She no longer holds the Imp,” he says straight away, and Nell barely keeps a groan from escaping. “He was put to trial at the Eyrie, and he won it.”

“The dwarf won-,”

“His sellsword won it,” Robb amends. “My lady aunt will not commit any men save my great-uncle, the Blackfish, for our cause.”

“Your aunt hardly commands your uncle; he is still a Tully of Riverrun,” Nell points out, but it is still a grave disappointment. Had they the knights of the Eyrie at their disposal, this war could be won rather quickly. “It was Lady Lysa who leveled the first accusations, at any rate. Does she truly intend to sit there and wait to see her kin slaughtered by Tywin Lannister?”

“My mother writes that my aunt cares little for any family save her son,” Robb says in frustration. “There’s little to be done about it now, save hope she may have a change of heart when she hears that Riverrun is threatened.”

Nell nods. “Then we should wait here for your uncle to join us- it can only be what, a two day’s ride for a single rider from White Harbor?”

“Two riders,” Robb frowns. “My mother intends to come with him.”

Nell wonders if she should pretend at some surprise, but instead she says, “That is not much of a shock, as much as you may dislike it.”

“Of course I dislike it,” he says, folding the letter back up in annoyance. “She is my mother. She has been gone for months now. I had not wanted Bran and Rickon to suffer any more time without her. By all rights I should command her to return to Winterfell-,”

“Well, you may certainly try,” Nell mutters dryly.

“But I won’t,” he admits. “Not just because she would ignore me, but…”

“A fool would dismiss your mother’s counsel because she is a woman,” remarks Nell. “But you are no fool. She was a Tully before she was a Stark, and she knows the riverlands and its people better than both of us combined. You are near a stranger to your grandfather and uncles and Riverrun itself, but she is not.”

“I would rather she be safe in Winterfell with my brothers,” Robb is looking past her, around at the moss-covered walls and gaping hole in the ceiling, the misty light pouring through it, and the faint scuttle of some rodent through a crevice. “But I need her here, if we are to get past the Twins. She has always said that Lord Walder trusts no one, and no one trusts him.”

“Then we shall simply have to inspire some.” Nell takes his arm, and for a moment leans into a tentative embrace, before they jerk apart from one another, both their names being called in the distance. Robb gives her a small smile, and goes, whistling for Grey Wind. Nell watches him leave, then grimaces as a drop of water strikes her directly on the cheek. Just what they need. Rain. 

They spend a very wet and cold night among the ruins, and are awoken at dawn by a raven from Edmure Tully. The Kingslayer has routed Vance and Piper at Golden Tooth and marches on Riverrun. The Mountain and his men have ambushed the knights Ned Stark sent under the king’s banner before his arrest. And Tywin Lannister is bringing a second host up from the south. Whether they sit here until the new year or whether they march south with all haste, it does not matter. They are coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I too was very frustrated writing Nell dismissing Osha's Others-related concerns right off the bat. But it wouldn't be ASoIaF if people took dark magic and world-ending eldritch horrors seriously right away! On the other hand, we finally got out of Winterfell. Next chapter should begin at Moat Cailin, end at the Twins. Some deviation from canon in terms of timeline is basically that the northern army is slightly stronger in terms of men but also moving about as slowly as one would expect. They're slated to arrive at Twins on the first day of the new year 299 AC. Obviously there are going to be some changes to the deal with the Freys, since Robb is (clearly) married already. As always, going forward please be mindful of the tags and the fact that this is a not a fix-it fic- there will be changes to canon but not all of them will necessarily be improvements!


	15. Donella XV

298 AC - MOAT CAILIN

Nell is watching from the fractured top of the Children’s Tower when she sees Catelyn Stark and her uncle’s party approach. They seem to have collected thirty-odd free riders, latecomers to Robb’s cause who will leap at the chance of a southern war and the hopes of northern coin in their pockets. It is late in the afternoon, but the heavy mist and fog that hangs over the marshland makes it seem even later, and she has to set a hand on the slick, mossy stones, and nearly leans over the edge to make out their shapes. 

“Don’t you dare fall,” Dana warns from behind her, and Nell jumps slightly, turning, but keeps her footing firm. 

“You’re like to make me, scaring me like that.”

“And you’re a proper fool, coming up here alone to play lookout,” Dana retorts, gesturing at the ruined tower all around them. “This whole thing could come down at any moment, even without you squirreling around.”

“Moat Cailin has stood for over a thousand years,” Nell lectures primly, the same lecture Robb gave her not two nights past when she expressed her concerns- That is to say, when she referred to Moat Cailin as just a few decades and a few tragedies away from becoming another Harrenhal. She tries not to hold much with ghost stories, but if any place was likely to develop a few, it’s Moat Cailin. The Twins now seems a far more attractive location, and she’s never even been there before. Freys or water snakes, what could be worse? 

“Come on then,” Dana is skirting her way back down the narrow, cramped stairwell, parts of it suffocated by roots, “we’ll pay our courtesies to your good-mother and hope she doesn’t send us packing to Winterfell.”

It’s just a jape, but the thought disturbs Nell all the same as she follows Dana. “No, she couldn’t-,”

“If you don’t think any woman could convince her son that his wife would be safer back home, you really are a fool,” Dana snorts, “but would she? I think she might have more pressing concerns at the moment, Nellie, such as the thought of seeing Riverrun decked out in scarlet and gold.”

By the time they make their way down to the center of the barely-there keep, Catelyn and her uncle have already gone into the Gatehouse Tower to greet Robb. Nell knows better than to go rushing in after them, and instead finds the nearest cooking fire to wait, where Maege Mormont oversees her youngest daughter’s attempts to remove her meat from the spit. “Damn it, Jory, stick it with the knife, then pull- don’t spatter grease on us all, lass!” Jorelle finally succeeds as Nell sits down with Dana across from them, and smiles briefly before taking a bite of her roasted rabbit. The youngest Mormont here is a walking contradiction; Jorelle is fifteen, sweet and shy at times, but also a fierce fighter, carrying short-sword and shield and capable of sending a knife spinning into a tree trunk from an ever-growing distance. Nell had never thought to encounter a shieldmaiden who loves to pick flowers just as much as she does to spar. 

“Good, you’re here,” Maege tells her approvingly, “I’ve a proposition for you, my lady.” She hands her a wineskin, which Nell nurses for a moment, then hands to Dana, who takes a grateful gulp, wiping at her mouth. There is something to be said for the largely relaxed formalities on the road.

“Of what sort?” Nell asks, looking to the She-Bear curiously. Maege looks most like Lyra; short and stout but packed with muscle and snarl, although her hair has gone to grey and her face is lined and weathered. Nell sometimes wonders whether all the Mormont girls share a father, or if they were all sired by different men. She is not as repelled by the thought of it as she should be. Some might call them bastards, although never to Maege’s face. 

Perhaps it is because they are Bear Islanders that it has always been tolerated, the thought of a Mormont woman choosing not to take a husband. They have certainly made noble marriages at times; Mormont women have been Lady Stark before her. Or perhaps it is because all of Maege’s children are daughters. As far as Nell knows, Mormont, Widowsflint, and Dustin are the only northern houses currently headed by women. Manderly will someday join them, when Wylis Manderly dies and Wynafryd inherits his seat, having no brothers.

“We’ve had no trouble thus far,” Maege looks around Moat Cailin, as if expecting Lannisters to come charging out of the treeline at any moment, “but once we’ve left the Neck- and the crannogmen’s protection- there’s no telling what may happen. Outside the North, we’ve no guarantee of a welcome from the rivermen- or safety.”

“But we’re coming to help their liege lord,” Dana protests. “Surely-,”

“Surely some of those river lords would much rather see the Tullys displaced and themselves appointed in their place,” Maege says darkly. “Nobody likes war with rivermen as much as other rivermen, girl. They’re a quarrelsome people, for all that fingers point at the North or Dorne when it comes to war. Best we all stay on our guards.”

“You speak wisely, my lady,” Nell replies diplomatically, “but I don’t see-,”

“You need a shield,” Maege tells her, blunt as ever. “Begging your pardons, my lady, but that bow of yours was strung for hunting things with four legs, not two. So I propose a sworn shield.” She claps a gloved hand on Jorelle’s slim shoulder, startling her; the girl chokes on her bite of rabbit. “Jorelle’s a bit of a frail one, compared to her sisters, but no one’s faster or quick of wits. You’d do us great honor, taking her as your guard.”

Jory, apparently neglected to be informed of this, flares scarlet, and jumps to her feet, brushing off her jerkin. “Mother! You ought to pick Dacey or Lyra, not me, I’ve not proven myself on the field-,”

“There’ll be plenty of bloody fields to prove yourself on, in time,” Maege says smoothly. “Just not these. Take a knee, lass, and say the words.”

Outraged, Jory’s hands go to fists at her sides, and Nell hesitates, unsure of whether to stop this or not, but Dana gives her a barely perceptible headshake. No. If she rejects this offer, Maege will take it for an insult, and whatever gratitude she might get from young Jory will be fleeting. The woman doesn’t want the girl fighting, that’s clear enough. Jory is fifteen, the same age as Robb, but still not yet of age. Perhaps Maege fears she’d meet a quick end on the battlefield, untested as she is. 

Jorelle sinks to one knee in the wet earth, taking her sword from her back, and presents it reluctantly to Nell, who rises graciously. “My sword and my life are yours, my lady. I swear by the gods to shield you from harm while in your service, and to obey your commands. Should I fall in your defense, know that I will rise again until I cannot draw breath.”

“I accept your sword, your life, and your honorable words,” Nell says, inclining her head. “You may rise.”

Maege smiles in satisfaction, Jory stares at the ground, scowling, as she sheathes her sword again, and Dana tugs on Nell’s skirt, standing up herself. A group of lords is exiting the Gatehouse Tower; her father, the Greatjon, and an unfamiliar man who must be the Blackfish among them. There is no sign of Lady Catelyn, who must have remained to speak with Robb privately. Nell nods to Maege, and sets off at a brisk pace, then stops as Jory moves to follow. 

“When we are camped, you must only keep me in your line of sight,” she tells the girl in what she hopes is a courteous tone. “I shall be safe enough in the company of our lords, Jorelle.”

Jory bobs her head, then turns back to her mother and Dana, still sharing their wine. 

Ser Brynden Tully is as tall as she’d thought he looked from a distance. His hair and brows are deep grey, but Nell imagines they were once the same rich auburn as his niece and great-nephew’s. But his eyes are kinder than she expected; a blue a shade darker than Robb’s. He stops in his tracks politely at her approach, and then, seeing the silver direwolf pin clasping her cloak to her shoulder, bows. “My lady. If I am not mistaken you must be my nephew’s new wife. My congratulations on your marriage.”

“Thank you, good Ser,” Nell smiles charmingly, and adds, “I wish we could have met one another in better circumstances, but I am eager to meet the rest of House Tully as well. Our prayers are with Lord Hoster and Ser Edmure.”

“As are mine,” the Blackfish’s wry smile wavers some, but then he says, “between our appeals to the gods, old and new, I have some hope that Riverrun will endure a while longer.”

“The Tullys are hardy folk, from what I hear,” Nell is quick to reassure, despite her own doubts, “I am certain that together we will be able to turn the tide against the Lannisters.”

“You have a young woman’s confidence, then,” he remarks. “Catelyn was much the same, when she had to see Ned off to fight. I hope you and Robb have as long and happy a life together as they had.”

Ned Stark yet lives, she almost says, but Nell sees an aging man’s acceptance for what it is. What war is this, for him? His third? A lucky man, many would say, to live through so many battles and sieges and emerge unscathed. Others would disagree. She has seen it sometimes in the northmen who march with them. The young ones are eager for bloodshed, but the older ones are already weary. Ready to do what is necessary, but weary all the same. Nell never wants to feel that tired, if she can help it.

They are interrupted by Lord Cerwyn, eager to make the famed Blackfish’s acquaintance, and Nell commandeers a passing squire to help her find some servants to set up camp for Catelyn and her uncle. She expects they will all be marching at dawn, and evening is quickly approaching. They will reach the Riverlands by the new year, she thinks, and the thought is almost startling. The new year. In a few short months she will turn eighteen. She could never have predicted any of this, at the start of the last year. 

She does not lay eyes on her good-mother until after she has eaten herself. Jory announces Lady Stark’s arrival, and Nell stands quickly, dishes rattling, suddenly almost nervous, although she has no idea why. She wishes Dana were here, but Dana went off on some lark with Lyra after scarfing down her meal. She hopes they’re not trying to hunt a lizard lion. Dana may have a crannogwoman for a grandmother because Lyam Flint took a Cray to wife, but that hardly awards some immunity to drowning in a bog. 

It has not even been a full year since Nell last saw Catelyn, but while Robb’s mother stands as tall and graceful as ever, there are fresh lines in her face, and a hint of silver in some strands of reddish hair, caught by the torchlight. She is dressed far more simply than Nell has ever seen her, as well, the hood of her cloak bunched around her shoulders. “My lady,” she says quickly, “it is so good to see you here, unharmed. We were so concerned that you might meet with trouble on your return to the North.”

“I did, in more ways than one,” Catelyn says plainly, “but you’ve heard about my dealings with Tyrion Lannister by now, I’m sure.”

Nell nods, wary. “And Robb has told you-,”

“That Bran has awoken, that he has summoned our banners, and that we march south again tomorrow,” Catelyn sits down with a sigh, motioning for Nell to do the same. “And of course, of his marriage.” She looks directly at Nell, face betraying nothing. “It is not every young girl, who might agree to wed under such conditions. I was unsure if I would return to find you back at the Dreadfort, or Barrow Hall.”

“I would never put aside our betrothal,” Nell says slowly. “Nor would Robb. A war makes no difference when oaths were made between House Stark and House Bolton years ago. Moving up the marriage seemed the only reasonable thing to do. I pray you will not take offense to it, my lady-,”

“Offense?” Catelyn asks mildly. “No. It was well done on both your parts. By all accounts the wedding celebrations were a success, and you wasted no time in coming here, when word came of my husband’s imprisonment. I would have been angered, had I arrived back at Winterfell to find Robb too preoccupied with enjoying a fresh marriage to march to war,”

Nell relaxes, but only a fraction. The last thing she needs is to be at odds with Robb’s mother, or dismissed as a scheming little girl who only has eyes on Winterfell. But surely, if that were the case, she would have insisted on staying behind and wresting what power she could there. Barbrey would tell her that her quest for approval or acceptance from Catelyn Stark is a fool’s errand. What does she care? Let her be suspicious. But it is not. There must be some accord between them now, or there never will be at all.

“Donella, why did you come here?” Catelyn asks her directly, and she freezes.

It is on the tip of her tongue, of course, the familiar stories and half-lies. Her devotion to her new husband, her new family. Her love of House Stark and the North. Her outrage at the Lannisters’ gall. Her sympathy for the Riverlands, her desire to see justice done. Much of that is even partially true. But it is not the real, hard truth of the matter. And if she lies now, she does not think she will ever be able to regain her footing with Catelyn Stark. The woman was able to smuggle Tyrion Lannister into the Eyrie and evade Tywin Lannister’s claws for this long.

“I came here so that I might have a son,” she says. “Because I am afraid Robb may die in battle, and because I do not wish to be a childless widow at eighteen, my lady. Because I do not wish for all of this to be for naught. Because I have pledged myself to House Stark, and much is expected of me. I do not think it unfair to expect things in return.”

Catelyn says nothing for a moment, and then to Nell’s shock, leans forward and takes her hand. She almost jerks away, but there is something surprisingly comforting in it all the same. She has a mother’s hands, warm and soft and faintly callused. “That is what I had thought, but I wanted to hear it from you.”

“You do not think me cold-,”

“I think you practical,” says Catelyn. “And sometimes practicality demands some ice. Would that I had your pragmatism at eighteen. I was still a child in many ways when Ned and I were wed. I was fortunate, in that. After he had gone, when my courses did not come… I was frightened, of course, but I was also excited. To be a proper wife and mother, to be part of something larger. But had he not sired Robb on me, then, had I gone all those months with no promise of an heir…” She shakes her head. “In some ways, it made things easier for us. When he returned, we had a child together. One he did not know, to be sure, but it was something to bring us together. To bond over. Even... “ she hesitates, “even when-,”

“Even when he brought back a natural son,” Nell murmurs, and Catelyn lets go of her hand, but does not look enraged or disgusted.

“Yes,” she says evenly. “Even then. But had I been childless at his return, and he with… with Jon Snow, I cannot say what would have become of our marriage. We would have gone on to have many children, I’m sure, but… Things might have been very different between us. So no. I do not think you heartless or cold, to think of yourself in this. I think Winterfell would prosper with you there to oversee it, but I have spoken with Robb, and he holds your counsel and support here in high regard.”

To hear it from someone else makes it seem a little more real, and Nell flushes slightly in spite of herself. “I- I am so pleased to hear that, my lady.”

“Catelyn,” Catelyn corrects her. “We are to the point now, I think. Marriage has made us kin. I am not your mother, nor you one of my daughters,” and her mouth creases in grief for a moment, before she continues, “but I hope we may come to treat one another as family. You are a clever, sensible girl. Robb could have done far worse for a bride, and not much better.”

“I am glad you are coming south with us,” Nell tells her, and to her surprise, truly means it. “Robb holds your counsel in high regard as well, my la- Catelyn,” she corrects herself, noting her good mother’s slight smile. “We shall desperately need it, as we enter the Riverlands.”

“Yes,” says Catelyn, smile fading as quickly as it came. “House Frey will be our first obstacle, I believe. They can be negotiated with, but it will come at a price, and Lord Walder is notoriously… demanding.”

Notoriously demanding. Nell keeps that in mind when she reunites with Robb, and he tells her that his mother advised he elect Father to lead the footsoldiers down the kingsroad to tangle with Lord Tywin, and not the Greatjon. The horsemen under Robb’s command will pin the Kingslayer at Riverrun, putting a river between the two Lannister and Stark factions. It is a clever plan, but then again, her husband’s cleverness does not surprise her as much as it would have even a few months ago. Robb is not always wise, but he has never lacked for wits. She only wishes it were him to lead the footmen, and that he let her father take the riders. It would be safer for him, for them all. But she agrees with his mother’s logic there; Nell loathes Roose, would receive the news of his death with a smile on her face, but he is an experienced and cautious commander. And it would serve them well to have the most brutal dog in the fight in between Tywin Lannister and the North. 

Besides, a larger part of her than she is willing to admit, leaps with relief and joy at the thought of a river between her father and her. She does not want him to lose, does not want them to fail, but were he to take a grave wound here or there, she would not suffer much grief for him. Perhaps, she thinks to herself, lying next to Robb under the furs in his tent, one of his legs flung over hers, the gods really will smile upon her, and Roose and Tywin will kill each other. If only Father were the sort to fight in the vanguard. Robb will. The thought chills her, hot as she is under the furs and in his arms. He always wants to hold her afterwards. She finds it bemusing, but not entirely unwelcome. Sometimes it is nice. No one has ever wanted to hold her before.

Notoriously demanding, she reminds herself, ten or so days later, when they’ve reached the Green Fork and the Twins. Her spirits would be high, if not for the sight of those two ugly castles, linked by the bridge. Her courses are late. That is not entirely unusual, and could simply be due to the stress and tire of so much travel and excitement, but still. They are late, and today is the first day of the new year. There would be more to hope for had they not had news last night of Edmure’s capture and Riverrun under siege. It’s not an overwhelming shock; they were not going to reach Riverrun in time to assist in any initial clash, that much was clear, but it makes this all the more frustrating. One bloody bridge and four thousand Frey men-at-arms in the way. 

She watches the linked castles silently as the lords argue, and glances at Catelyn. “Will they come out and treat with us, or do they simply intend to hold us off long enough for Lord Tywin to get here?”

“They will treat,” Catelyn predicts, brow furrowed, just as a sally port opens from across the moat. 

Not ten minutes later, Lord Frey’s eldest son, Ser Stevron, has agreed to take Catelyn in to treat with his father, leaving behind another son, Ser Perwyn, in her place. Nell did nothing but sit there in dull shock the entire time. In her imagination, of course, she would have trotted Roddy forward, and entreated- no, demanded- that the Freys let them pass, or all hang after they’d smashed Tywin’s forces. What sort of bannermen pay such open disrespect to their liege lord? Aye, they owe nothing to House Stark, but a Tully of Riverrun stands before them, and the Riverland’s seat of power is under direct assault. How could this be tolerated?

But the Freys, it would seem, make their own rules, and Nell sat there and watched, only grateful that Robb was not stubborn enough to insist on going in there himself. They’d never see him again; from what she has heard she is certain the Freys would sell him off to the Lannisters in a heartbeat, and then where would they be? Who else could they have sent in? The Blackfish is out with Greyjoy and his other scouts, and the rest are all northerners. Catelyn claims she has met Walder Frey before, so they will simply have to wait and pray for the best. They retreat along the riverbank, making temporary camp, and Nell tries to mask both her and Robb’s blatant anxiety by making conversation with Ser Perwyn around a fledgling camp fire. 

To his credit, Perwyn maintains his composure, despite being surrounded by less-than-enthused and currently bristling northmen, although he never takes his eyes off Grey Wind. He is still unwed at twenty six, which is unsurprising for a man who is the fifteenth son of Walder Frey and who stands to inherit precisely nothing. Still, he seems decent enough in a situation where most men would be openly resentful and vindictive, and speaks amiably about his siblings: Benfrey, Willamen, Olyvar, and Roslin, the youngest, a girl of fifteen. 

Nell tries to take his relative calm for reassurance. If the Freys meant to betray them or do some harm to Catelyn, surely he would be visibly nervous or disturbed. Yes, there are men like her father, who react to violence as though it were nothing more than a passing amusement, and there are men who crave bloodshed the way drunkards do ale, but most men, Barbrey has always taught her, are no more courageous or brutal than any ordinary woman. Having a cock does not make one feel invulnerable, although she imagines in some situations it certainly helps.

The sun moves lower and lower in the sky, and for the first time it occurs to Nell that she cannot see mountains or highlands in the distance, only trees and hills and streams branching off from the river. It is a very peculiar feeling. This is the furthest south she has ever been, and if- when- they reach Riverrun, that will be the furthest, and so on. The Twins itself might be an ugly, unwelcome sight, but the landscape is pretty, she will admit that much. Certainly green fields and hills dotted with late summer wildflowers is a welcome sight, compared to muck and mud.

Finally, just as dusk is beginning, there is some commotion and noise, and Nell stands next to Ser Perwyn and watches as Catelyn returns to them, accompanied by several more Freys and an entire column of pikemen. Robb calls for Grey Wind, and wastes no time in riding out to meet her; she looks unharmed and calm enough, from what Nell can tell, but she mounts Roddy all the same, waiting for them to return. After what seems an eternity, Robb nods and breaks away from his mother, shouts some commands to the nearest men, and gallops over to her.

“We’re crossing?” she demands, as soon as he is beside her. 

“Yes,” says Robb, and a smile of relief cracks its way upon her face.

“Thank the gods.”

“But there were terms,” Robb continues, and her smile vanishes. “We’ll leave four hundred here to fill up his garrison; Frey means to leave four hundred of his own, and the rest will march with us. Olyvar Frey will serve as my squire.”

“But you are not a knight,” Nell points out, then shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. Perwyn spoke favorably of the boy. What else?” Walder Frey cannot have allowed them to cross for the sake of a squire.

“Two of his grandsons, more Walders, are going to Winterfell to foster there, with Bran and Rickon. They’re little boys, Bran’s age.”

“But that is good,” Nell says in surprise. “They could use the company, surely.”

“And if Arya is found and returned to us, she will be betrothed to Elmar, his youngest son.”

Nell blinks. “Arya? But we’ve no idea where she is.” Even so, if by some miracle the girl is found and successfully brought back to them, Nell cannot imagine who is going to break that news to her. “How old is this Elmar?”

“Nine.” Robb frowns. “They would not wed until they were both of age.”

“A long betrothal might be for the best,” Nell says, instead of saying what she would like, which is that even if Arya were the sort of ordinary little noblewoman who would be pleased at the prospect of marriage, the idea of a Stark, a great house, wedding a Frey, and a twenty second son who will have no title nor any lands, is laughable. But if that is the cost…

“That’s not all of it,” Robb says. “Mother has promised Walder Frey my uncle as a bridegroom for one of his daughters.”

Nell wrinkles her nose. “How? Your mother has no authority to betroth a Tully lord-,”

“She thinks Grandfather will agree to it, and that my lord uncle will agree to anything, once we’ve freed him from Jaime Lannister,” Robb states plainly. “It is what Walder Frey really wanted, she says. Lord Hoster rejected him once before for a match.”

No surprise there, Nell thinks, and hopes Edmure Tully is the peaceable sort, who will not start up a revolt of his own at the thought of being pledged to wed a Frey woman. For all that men arrange their own daughters and sisters’ marriages, and obey their fathers blindly, many would rile and roar at the thought of a sister betrothing them without their consent. “Is that it, then?”

“And once we have Riverrun, he means to send some of their women to you, in the hopes you might take them for lady companions,” Robb finishes. 

Nell stares at him for a moment. “He means to foist some daughters or granddaughters on me so that I might make them marriages, is that it?”

Robb shrugs. “At least you will have plenty of company.”

They look at each other, and then Nell laughs. Robb cracks a slight smile, then glances around. “We need to start crossing soon. Be ready to ride on. There’s no time to waste, Riverrun is waiting for us.”

“As you say, husband,” Nell kisses him quickly on the cheek, then spurs Roddy on towards the waiting bridge. She has half a mind to be the first one over it, while those beady-eyed Freys watch, cooped up in their grey Twins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we reach the Twins and the Freys. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I didn't want this to devolve into predictable woman versus woman scheming, so I wanted to lay some groundwork for a stable relationship between Nell and Catelyn. Neither are perfect people and both have their respective strengths and shortcomings, and I'm more interested in them working together to help Robb than in pitting mother and daughter in law against each other. I also didn't want to swing too extreme the opposite route and have Nell immediately embracing her as a stand-in mother. 
> 
> 2\. I like the idea of female sworn swords a lot and I think Maege would be understandably eager to keep the youngest of her three warrior daughters brought on campaign out of the fight, while also getting some insight on Nell through her daughter's eyes. I also just like Jory Mormont, who in my head canon loves pretty dresses and wildflowers just as much as she loves swords and throwing knives.
> 
> 3\. The Freys. I didn't want to rewrite the Catelyn chapter from AGoT concerning the infamous Frey deal. The idea of Nell being brought along to bargain also seemed a bit forced to me, since she has zero cred in the Riverlands and zero experience with the Freys. As far as most people know, she's just Robb's young and sheltered wife.
> 
> 4\. The deal. Obviously Robb is not a marriage candidate. Is Catelyn overreaching in promising them Edmure as a bridegroom? Sure, she has no real authority to promise such a thing, as Nell points out, and is banking on her father and brother agreeing with her and not resisting the match. Were Edmure to flat out refuse, they'd be screwed. Nell of course does not know Edmure well enough to judge how likely he is to go along with his sister's plans. The rest of it is pretty much the same, and while the idea of Nell taking some young Frey women under her wing and trying to get them married off might seem somewhat shallow, match-making is serious business, especially in Westeros. It's no less a commitment for her to claim responsibility for these women and their futures (as well as their safety and reputations in her company) than it is for Robb to take Olyvar as a squire and send the Walders north to Winterfell. 
> 
> I hope this chapter was not too dry, as we are now getting into the proper thick of things. Thank you so much to everyone for being so patient and giving such reliable feedback and discussion in the comment section! I know this is already a fairly long fic and only at chapter 15, so I appreciate everyone letting the story take its course and coming back week after week to check in. Now I have to go calculate ages for approximately a thousand bloody Freys.


	16. Donella XVI

299 AC - THE WHISPERING WOOD

Nell dreams again of her mother’s hunting party the night before they reach the Whispering Wood. Her vivid dreams (or nightmares) had seemed to fade after leaving Winterfell, but she supposes it was foolish to think she’d ever be rid of Bethany Bolton. This time she follows the sound of the horn and finds them bathing in a black stream; their edges flickering in the wind and swirling snow. The water smells cold and clear and metallic, but the lingering stench of the forest remains. To her surprise, as she approaches them along the bank she can make out more of them now.

Mother stands waist-deep in the stream, methodically washing her hair; it is longer and wilder than Nell recalls it. Sara is perched on a lichen-crusted rock, roughly scrubbing a girl’s back; “Sit still, Jez,” she snaps at the girl. Jez glances directly at Nell, her lank, wet hair hanging in her face, and Nell puts the young face to the dog fighting over scraps outside the Dreadfort’s kennel. Her heart sinks further into her gut. Jez is perhaps fourteen or fifteen, with a heavily freckled face and hooded eyelids. She scoops water up and splashes it down her front, but the slash of her throat continues to weep dark blood. 

“Are you too proud to bathe with us?” Mother calls to her dryly. “Come in, sweetling. The water’s warm.” Behind her, another woman rises from her previously submerged position; now that she is standing, Nell can see the distinct swell of her belly, and the scabby wounds on her chest and arms. Nell knows if she looks at her, she will retch and vomit, dream or not, but the murdered woman simply puts a hand to her belly as she climbs out of the stream. Once on the muddy ground, she heaves up the hairy pelt of some beast around her like a cloak, and wanders off into the wood.

“Willow wishes for a son as well,” Bethany tells Nell, who has begun to cry again- why must she always weep in these dreams? “To avenge her, you see. Poor thing. I’ve not the heart to tell her the babe will never be.”

Unbidden, Nell reaches for her own stomach, but the skin underneath her shift is the same as it has always been; not perfectly smooth and taut, but far from bulging with child either. “Will mine?”

“Do I look like a witch?” Mother laughs, washing her hands in the stream. They still come back out slick with blood. “I cannot hand the future to you on a platter, girl. Every woman weaned would kill to know whether her babes might live or die. What makes you so blessed?”

“I will have a son.” If she pronounces it in a dream, then it must be so, she thinks wildly. It must. 

“I had sons,” Mother says. “Just not the sort your father wished for. They came to him clothed in their own blood, not that of his enemies.” 

“Don’t speak of him.” Nell wonders sometimes; if Father dies in battle, will she see him hear too? She prays not. “I hate him. Tell me, am I with child or not? Have you no care for your grandchildren?”

“I have no grandchildren, nor any children,” Mother retorts fiercely, stepping out of the stream, pushing her hair behind her shoulders. Nell studies the old stretchmarks on her belly and breasts, an old scar on her shoulder that looks like a bite mark. “I am no one’s mother, nor their sister, nor daughter nor wife. In death, we all belong only to ourselves. When will you understand, child?”

“You’re dead, aye,” Nell says raggedly, wiping at her eyes. “But you are still my blood. You still love me-,”

“I did love you,” Mother bends and plucks up her old red cloak, shrugs it over her shoulders and wraps it around herself. “But if you seek warm touches and tender looks amongst the dead, you shall go to your own grave disappointed. Go back to your wolf, and he might warm you, sweetling. He might even love you, if a Stark can.” Her smile twists in bitter humor. “My sister oft questioned whether they were capable of it.”

“Love is all well and good,” Nell snaps. “But he needs an heir. Can you not help me?”

“Can a corpse coax life into your womb? Have I really raised such a fool?” Bethany puts a hand to Nell’s belly, and it bleeds cold, rusty water into her shift. Nell jerks away in disgust. “You can hunt, aye, but you always look in the wrong places, Donella. Life cannot be molded to your demands any more than a man could tame the wilds, or snatch the stars from the sky.”

Behind her, the moon’s reflection ripples on the water, before it splits in half, disturbed by one of fidgeting Jez’s gaunt, freckled legs. 

Nell wakes up far too hot; and she can see that it is still mostly dark outside from the glimpse in between the folds of the tent. She rolls over, out of Robb’s arms, and props herself up on an elbow to study him. It is so warm here, south of Oldstones and Ironman’s Bay, that they do not need the furs. His face is contorted in his sleep, his lips move wordlessly, then bare in a sudden snarl, revealing bloody teeth. She recoils in shock, accidentally kicking him, and he jerks away with a grunt. 

“What-,”

“You’re bleeding, your mouth-,” She swats at his chest ineffectively, wondering if she should shout for help.

Robb bolts upright, a hand to his mouth, then grimaces and mutters thickly, “I bit my tongue in my sleep.”

“Were you having a nightmare?” she asks blearily.

“No,” he groans, lying back down. “I was-,” he hesitates, then murmurs, “I was dreaming of Grey Wind, is all.”

Nell glances around the darkened tent, but Grey Wind’s slumbering form is nowhere to be seen. He must be out hunting again. She nods, then lays her head back down beside Robb, who is looking at her. In the dark she is sometimes fonder of his face than in the daylight, she thinks, because she can pretend they are just a man and woman, not even husband and wife or lord and lady. It is always safer in the dark. 

“If it goes badly,” he says, reaching out and touching her should gently, “Promise me you will ride hard for the Neck with my mother. Don’t wait. At the first sign of trouble-,”

“I know,” she whispers, and takes his hand in her own. Their fingers wrap around each other. She likes the roughness of his hands, the old scar across his left knuckles, she likes it when he runs his hands through her hair when they are together. Somehow his hands seem older than the rest of him, although she knows that does not make much sense. “I will, I swear.”

“Good,” he sounds almost relieved. His mouth is slightly open and she can see his teeth; he’s licked the blood off them. If she kissed him she would still taste it, though. Her stomach roils and she rests her head on his shoulder. 

“Now you must promise me something,” Nell says, before they can both lull back to sleep.

“Alright,” he agrees, her amiable husband, even on the day he may die.

“Promise me you will not seek out Jaime Lannister,” she says, and he stiffens.

“Donella-,”

“If you meet him in combat, then by the gods, try your best to take his head off,” Nell whispers fiercely. “But do not leave your honor guard to go charging after him the moment you glimpse gold armor on the field. He’s been killing longer than you’ve been alive. He will want to end you quickly, so no one might say a boy of fifteen shamed him.”

“He’ll be arrogant,” Robb says after a moment. “He’s won all his battles thus far, so he will be arrogant, and he’ll make mistakes.”

“Then make sure you make fewer.” She touches his arm, and he nods against her head.

The wood is very, very quiet indeed. No fires, no shouts, no riding out. Not a single sound. They are waiting up in the hills with the Frey and Robb’s honor guard by duskfall. Nell feels her spirits lower along with the sun through the trees. What if the Kingslayer knows? They can never be sure. A raven may have gotten through. He might have captured and tortured some outrider into confessing the entire plot. Or one of the Piper men harassing the supply trains. He might know, and be waiting for them just as they are waiting for him. 

But it is still far, far too quiet to voice any concerns or qualms now. The horns should sound after the first stars have appeared, and then Robb will take these Freys and his guard and go down and kill or be killed, and she will stay here with Catelyn and Dana and Jory Mormont and thirty men. They’ve had no word yet of the forces under her father’s command, whether they tangled with Tywin Lannister or are all slaughtered on some riverbed or are marching down the Kingsroad with Lannister heads on pikes. 

Her courses have still not come. That is one month skipped, then. If she misses her moon’s blood again in a fortnight, she will allow herself to truly hope.

He promised, she reminds herself for the hundredth time. He promised to be careful. 

Before they reached the valley at midday, she crept off at dawn with Dana, Jory, and a sack. The closest godswood is within the besieged walls of Riverrun, but they settled for the oldest, biggest oak they could find, as deep in the wood as Nell dared go with only one sword and shield, and there she put her bare hand into the sack and coated the tree’s trunk and roots with the entrails of a fox she’d killed the evening prior. The smell was enough to make Dana retch and even Jory grimaced and turned away, a hand on her sword hilt, but Nell did not flinch or blanch. 

When she was done, they all knelt and prayed, hoping the old gods dared stray as far south as this. They must, Nell thinks. They are not so far from Oldstones, and some in the North like to say that Duncan’s sweet Jenny worshiped the gods of earth and sky and wood and bone, not the Holy Seven. Then again, when she asked Barbrey about it as a child, still young enough to be enchanted by tales of the Prince of Dragonflies and his witchy common bride, her aunt had only scoffed and told her that the only gods strange Jenny had followed were the voices in her head. The ones that told her she was a descendant of kings and queens, and not a lowborn waif, washing her rags in the river with the rest. 

“But she was so beautiful, he had to love her. He knew she was a princess in truth, even if she looked common,” Nell had argued childishly, unable to comprehend of anything else but this profound truth: that men looked at your heart before they ever paid any mind to your face or figure. 

“Aye,” Barbrey had said, “and every whore in White Harbor is a princess in truth, or so say the sailors when they’re deep in their cups and weeping for home. The Targaryens were not shining gods who deigned to live among us mortals, child. They were as lusty and stupid as all the rest.”

Whatever faith Jenny had, it did not serve anyone well. Nell prays this will be different. _Give me my husband and my child_ , she had told the bloody tree. _Preserve him. Keep his wolf at his side and his steel sharp. If you want to lap up blood from the ground, choose someone else. The Kingslayer. The Freys. Roose. Anyone but him. Do not take him from me now. Let him win this battle, and all the rest, and give me children and Winterfell and when you take him, let it be in another war, or when he is old and grey before a fire._

She tries not to think about how her mother’s pleas went unanswered. How they took her instead of her husband. Nell is not afraid to die. She isn’t, she tells herself firmly. But she can’t just yet, she has too much to accomplish. And Roose and his Bastard cannot outlive her. She will not permit it. She would drag herself, shrieking and clawing from the grave, and follow them like a wraith for eternity before she let herself go before either of them. 

Nell is not sure if she has ever felt a night so warm. Even on the sunniest, most gentle days of northern summer, the air always grew cold and sharp after sundown. Here in the riverlands she does not even need a cloak at night, and during the day she is sweating in even her lightest, thinnest gowns. Summer may be rapidly drawing to a close, but you would not know it here. She is sitting on an old stump by the stream when she hears the clink of armor and realizes Robb is approaching. Jory immediately straightens, Dana bows her head as though they were at a vigil, and Nell rises as Grey Wind comes loping ahead.

She would not say she is necessarily yet fond of Robb’s wolf, especially not when she wakes with him sprawled across their legs more often than not, but the wolf seems to have grown fonder of her, at any rate. He licks at her fingers, and she wonders if he can still smell the dead fox on her. “Take care of my husband,” she tells the beast with mock-severity, scratching under his chin like a cat. Grey Wind pants in appreciation as Robb reaches them.

“It’s time.”

“It is,” Nell says, and suddenly it occurs to her, that this may be the last moments they ever have together, the last time she ever sees him alive. If he dies tonight, all she will have to look back on is this. In a week they would- will- have been married three months. It feels more like three days. Does she really know him at all? War does not leave much room for heartfelt conversation. For the first time in her recollection, in his presence she is entirely speechless, faltering at her words like a timid little girl. He seems older than her, somehow, clad in armor in the moonlight.

“If you could give us a moment,” Robb finally says, and Dana nods a little too quickly and goes striding down-stream, Jory trailing after her and glancing back hesitantly, as if the Kingslayer were about to emerge from the treeline and surprise them.

When they are out of earshot, Nell moves forward and puts her hands on his shoulders. His mail is cold to the touch, despite the warm, breezy night. “Please don’t tell me you will come back to me. I can’t bear it when men say things like that to women. It always means the opposite.”

“My father told my mother as much, and he returned,” Robb says evenly, although his brow furrows.

“You are not-,”

“I am not my father, I know,” he embraces her, and her fingers prod at her favor tied to his arm, a scrap of dark pink silk. “I will try to come back to you. Is that better?”

“No,” she huffs, yet she finds his mouth with hers anyways. 

They break apart after a moment, color rising in their faces, before Robb almost gently brushes her hair behind her shoulder. “I prayed to the old gods to shield my mother and you tonight, if the worst comes to pass… and to the Seven.”

“The Seven have no care for a Bolton heathen,” Nell smiles thinly, but squeezes his gloved hand until her fingers hurt. “Go before I do something foolish like weep.”

“Alright,” he agrees, and starts back towards Olyvar Frey and his waiting horse. Nell clasps her hands together for a moment, and digs her nails into her palms until she winces. 

With his helm on, viewing him from a distance, he is unrecognizable, aside from the wolf at his side and the Stark cloak at his back. Jaime Lannister will be looking for that as soon as he realizes it is an ambush, she knows. And Robb will not hide behind his men or keep his head down. She has never seen the Kingslayer fight, but she has heard the stories. He was knighted at Robb’s age, they say, after killing a dozen bandits and saving some fair lady. He was trained by the likes of Barristan Selmy. If he meets Robb in single combat-

He won’t, she assures herself. He won’t, he won’t, he is impatient and cocky and Robb is more clever than they know. They will lead him a merry chase and tire him out and a lion is not much more than an angry tomcat when a thousand swords fall on him at once. 

But she is afraid all the same.

Robb rides down the line with his honor guard, and as she draws near one of the men at his back turns and grins down at her. It is Young Roose, her uncle, named for her father. Nell likes him no more than the rest of his irritating brothers, but at least he may prove useful tonight. “Will you not wish us good luck in battle, niece?” Niece. Young Roose enjoys such japes; they are near the same age, and he still calls her niece. He has been doing so since they were little children.

“Good luck, uncle,” she replies with a sardonic edge, and glances away as Young Roose tips his helm to her and rides on, brimming with pride and eager for the slaughter. Beside her, Jory waves childishly to Dacey as she goes by, ignoring Dana’s low chuckle. Theon Greyjoy is telling Daryn Hornwood something, likely some perverted jest about fucking lions until they piss gold, and when Daryn’s smile looks more nervous than anything else, claps him on the shoulder and smirks. 

She glances over at Catelyn, who is speaking in hushed tones with Hallis Mollen. And then, as Robb comes back down the line and assumes his position, she hears it. The deep echo of men and their horses and armor in the woods below. Nell swallows hard, and finally mounts Roddy, as Dana and Jory do similarly. If they have to flee, they will not have time to go running for their horses. She knows she can outride any man, she must remember that, if that is what happens. They would not catch her, she would not let them. 

She is almost too disturbed to try to peer down into the valley below them, certain that if she sees them, they will somehow see her, see all of them, and Robb will charging down to impale him and his men on rows of spears turned to face them. She studies Roddy’s dark mane, until she hears the bellow of the Mormont warhorn. Bile rises in her throat, and she almost coughs, but then Grey Wind howls, and while Nell is used to that sound, it sounds different now, carrying through the valley like a wind signaling a storm.

She forces herself to look up just as the horns and trumpets of the Umbers, Karstarks, Freys and Mallisters answer, and then so many men and horses are screaming at once, that if you told her that this was one of the seven hells septons preach of, she would have believed you, northern or not. She sees what seems a thousand arrows go singing out into the night, then fall, and Robb is crying, “Winterfell!” and men are answering, “Winter is coming!” and they are gone, moving downhill, a neat line of death.

Nell could not have told anyone whether it was five hours or five minutes, whether it was a heartbeat or a lifetime. She knows it must have been much longer, because the fighting does not stop until just before dawn. But to sit there just listening and waiting, eyes closed at times as if in prayer, which is what her good mother is doing, is too much to bear. Nell rides instead. Not down, of course, and not up, but back and forth, the length of the ridge, while men stare and scowl at her, and Dana frets that they might be glimpsed. At this point Nell does not care. A glimpse will not kill her. What will kill her is having to sit there patiently and wait to see if her life is over or not. 

She must have ridden the ridge a hundred times when at last the screaming stops, and all that remains are Grey Wind’s howls, wafting on the wind. That gives her courage. She has to believe that Robb is alright, or at least not dead, if Grey Wind is still howling. She lets Roddy walk a gentle pace, cooling off, until finally there is movement coming up hill. “What banners?” young Jory is suddenly snapping at Hallis Mollen, a man twice her age, and only sheathes her sword when he announces, “Stark.”

A sound escapes her when she sees Robb’s face, but it is nothing compared to the cry of shock from Dana at the sight of Jaime Lannister being dragged up to them. Nell ignores the stab of exhilaration at the thought of having Tywin’s precious son for a hostage, and searches the faces of the jubilant, filthy men around Robb instead. There is Dacey, wincing and massaging one shoulder, her shield nearly split in half. There is Theon, running a hand through his dark hair, which comes away covered in pine needles. There is the Smalljon, blood-spattered and all but beaming. There is Robin Flint, helping along a limping Daryn Hornwood.

Later, she will hear how Jaime Lannister, when he knew the battle was lost, endeavored to make sure the North still felt his rage, and went screaming like a madman for Robb, smashing through his honor guard. Had Robb had fifteen men and not thirty, he might have. She will hear how his greatsword found a home in Edd Karstark’s pale neck, after lopping off Torrhen Karstark’s hand and leaving him sobbing and spraying blood on his knees, after unhorsing Daryn Hornwood and nearly killing him, where it not for Young Roose, who charged him with a howl and a mace from behind-

How the Kingslayer turned and grinned and cut her irritating, boyish, damnably named but damnably loyal uncle down, just before the Smalljon and Patrek Mallister rushed him and put an end to it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been waiting so long for a chapter set in 299 AC.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I just thought the idea of a young Nell being entranced by the stories of Targaryen princes and their lady (or not-lady) loves was cute, okay?
> 
> 2\. 'Did you just kill off Roose Ryswell so it wouldn't get confusing between Old Roose and Young Roose?' Of course! No, I'm kidding, I actually plot things, I swear.


	17. Donella XVII

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell had never seen a battle before the Whispering Wood, but she had at some point assumed that battles were fought, came to a bloody end, and had some sort of resolution- that there would be a point in which the jubilant lady threw herself into her triumphant lord’s arms, and that he carried her off right then and there while the crows pecked at the corpses behind him. Now she knows better, for she has no time at all with Robb before his men have regrouped to flush out the rest of the siege around Riverrun. 

She understands that they cannot afford to waste the surprise and considerable advantage granted to them, having taken Jaime Lannister captive, but that does not mean there is no stinging sensation, either, as she watches Robb procure a new shield, a new warhorse, and climb resolutely back into the saddle. All without so much as a glance her way. It’s not that her feelings are hurt, she tells herself irritably. He has far more important matters to attend to than his wife, who is behaving like a fretful child, and not the iron-willed northern woman she ought to be. 

When she watches him ride out a second time, the favor she tied to his arm hours ago now stained and crusted brownish-red with blood, she understands that she is afraid. It seems silly. How can she feel more afraid now than she did before they’d won the first battle? If anything, she should be relieved. Grateful. Falling to her knees and thanking the gods. They have the Kingslayer. They have leverage now. And soon they will have Riverrun; Lannister’s forces are not going to be able to defend their own siege without their commander. 

But Robb is gone again and she is left in the still very quiet valley, watching the sun rise higher in the clear blue sky and smelling death all around her. Young Roose looks even younger in death; he had chestnut brown hair and did not grow a beard, unlike her older uncles. Roger and Rickard are serving under her father. They may be dead as well. Nell touches the muddied armor and looks at Young Roose’s mace, lying in the ground where he dropped it when he died. They were never close, but she thinks he was a decent man. More amicable than hotheaded Roger and never a whoremonger like Rickard. 

At least he left behind no wife nor children; the third son of Rodrik Ryswell was never in high demand as a bridegroom. And he was still young; many men are yet unwed at nineteen. Nineteen. She vaguely recalls being taller than Young Roose when she was twelve and he thirteen, and how he’d tease her constantly instead, to make himself feel better. He threw a clod of dried dirt at her once when she was visiting the Rills; it spattered across the back of one of her new gowns, and Nell had proceeded to ruin the rest of the gown in the process of thrashing him. She’d gotten him by the ear and an arm wrapped around his throat, and had been shoving him face-first into a puddle, screaming and kicking, when Sara and Rickard came running to break them apart.

And she thinks about how she prayed for the gods to take anyone else, anyone but Robb, and how she’d thought, Roose. She hadn’t meant him, of course, she’d meant Father, but she doubted they cared. It could have been Robb. Young Roose could have stayed his hand and spared his own life, let the Kingslayer carve up Daryn Hornwood instead. Or Lannister could have cut down both of them, and killed Robb as well, before he could be put down. It is all a matter of chance, in battle, men say. You could be the greatest swordsman to ever live, and still slip in the mud and lose your life for it.

When she looks back up at her surroundings, she sees the mountains to the north of her and the forest to the south, and beyond that, she knows is Riverrun and if she listens very closely she can still hear the distant echoes of men and horses screaming. Then she starts back toward their camp, to see what can be done for the wounded. It is hot, properly hot, not the mere glimpses of heat she’d felt in the North. She has to braid her hair as tightly as possible and pin it at the nape of her neck, and even then the sun bears down on them all day long. The casualties thus far have been minimal, but Dacey is not pleased that she will need to keep her left arm in a sling for the next fortnight, and Daryn has to be threatened with being chained to a post, to keep him off his sprained ankle. 

For the first time in her life, Nell runs to fetch water and wash bandages alongside Catelyn and Dana and Jory. Her hands are bright red by dusk, tendrils of hair plastered to her forehead, and her throat is so parched that she is eagerly gulping down water herself when the first scouts come back with the news. By now the sun has finally sank below the trees, and the heat has retreated, and Nell allows herself her first smile in over a day when she hears. The siege is over. The westermen have scattered, fleeing back to Tywin, no doubt, and Riverrun has been preserved. They’ll cross the river tomorrow. 

The prospect of properly cooked food, sleeping in a bed again, and being able to bathe in total privacy is enough to raise everyone’s mood, despite the lingering stench of death in the air. When Robb returns with his guard, he is even smiling himself, although she can see the naked relief in his eyes, when he tears off his helm. He’s done it. Whatever his doubts, his fears, they’ve survived the first two battles- and not just survived, but triumphed. They’ll sing of this- a fifteen year old boy foiling Tywin Lannister’s plans to crush the heart of the Riverlands. Nell does not even think to let her hair down or take off her apron when she embraces him, and only realizes how bedraggled and worn she must look when she notices all the eyes on them.

But Robb is covered in blood and dirt himself, so she supposes it does not matter that they are both far from presentable. War is not pretty and shiny like in the stories, after all. She is starkly reminded of this when she sees Dana greet her own father, albeit it with far more reluctance. Artos Flint scowls at his daughter’s tentative greeting, and barks at a passing squire to fetch him a horn of ale. Dana’s wounded expression flattens on her long face, and she turns away, greeting Maege and Lyra instead. 

“I should bathe,” Robb tells Nell, who takes in his face; his hair is slick and darkened with mud and water and blood, and one of his gloves is split open. 

“I’ll join you,” she says, impulsively, and is shocked at her own gall. Robb looks as though she just informed him she’d given birth to twins while he was gone. But they are married now. Husbands and wives bathe together all the time. Certainly when on the march. It is hardly a great scandal to suggest such a thing. She thinks. He makes a motion that seems like a nod of acceptance, and she glances at Jory, who has gone bright red, from her ears to her neck, and hopes her new sworn shield does not think she must join them as well in this.

They bathe in one of the many burbling streams coming off of the Red Fork and jutting through the wooded valley. The idea of heating water for bathing in the south is ludicrous, and the water is cool, but nothing like the frigid waters of the Little Spear or the Weeping that Nell so often bathed in as a child. She wastes no time in wading in; it comes up to her hips, and then sinking down to soak her torso and head. When she surfaces, Robb has joined her; she stands up too suddenly, moves to cover her chest, hesitates, eyes him furtively, and then they both seem to realize how ridiculous this is, and get in their looks, admiring or otherwise.

It would perhaps be more romantic were there not guards stationed perhaps forty feet downstream, politely facing away or taking a piss, but there nonetheless. 

“Look at your back,” Nell says, when she sees it; his pale, freckled back is a mass of purpling bruises, dappled like shadows in the twilight. Beyond that and some scrapes on his arms and legs and a gash along his jaw, he is unharmed. She wades over closer to him, water trickling from her matted, thick hair. “From when you were unhorsed?” Three arrows took down his prized mount in the first battle. Robb called that stallion Blue, after his roan coat. Hardly the most creative or symbolic name, but then again…

Grey Wind is happily lapping up water in the shallows, or nosing around for fish. She can’t be sure, she only knows he’s very, very big now and very, very wet. 

“Yes,” Robb stiffens when her hand finds his spine. “I was lucky to walk away from it.”

“Don’t discount yourself,” Nell admonishes him, cupping water in her hands and pouring it down his hair. It’s getting so long now, past his ears. She’s not sure if she likes it like this, but she doesn’t mind the beard at all. His mother says he looks like a younger Edmure Tully with it, but Nell thinks it makes him look more like his father, makes his eyes look darker and his face look longer, narrower. “It was well-planned and well-executed. You fought using your head, not just your sword.”

“And it could have gone so wrong,” Robb blinks away the water, then takes her gently by the arm and turns her around, away from him. “You’ve got a leech on your back.”

She freezes and squeezes her eyes shut like a child, trying to hide her blatant disgust while he picks it off and flicks it away. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Robb. For… for what happened with the Karstarks, and my uncle. They fought bravely.”

“They died defending me.” The leech is gone but he does not let go of her. After a moment he rests his chin on her shoulder, and she leans against the sodden weight of his head. “Torrhen bled out on me. He was right beside me. A few feet more, and-,”

“Don’t,” Nell tells him. “You can’t. You’ll go mad if you think about it, so don’t. You lived. We won. We have the Kingslayer. All who doubted you, who mistrusted you-,”

“It was more the Blackfish’s plan than mine.” Gods, how can he still be so slow to acknowledge it? She would almost rather he were arrogant right now, cocky and bold and proud. At this rate, Theon will be doing all his bragging and boasting for him. 

“But you saw it through,” she extricates herself from his grip to drag him down into the water with her, where they both huddle, up to their shoulders in the light current. “You gave them courage. And faith in our cause. You were right there with them, in the thick of it all. They respect you, now. They would die for you.”

Robb finally meets her eyes, and she sees something like recognition in them, before he says, “The whole time, I was thinking- I was thinking of what would happen to you and Mother, if I failed. If I died. So I couldn’t… I couldn’t even consider it. Do you understand? Everyone is looking to me, now more than ever, and I still feel like a lucky fool.”

“Then be a lucky fool,” she scoffs. “A lucky fool who will be the pride of the North by the time all is said and done. If you don’t feel worthy of their pride, than work twice as hard to meet it.”

He does smile slightly at that, and she thinks he might kiss her, and they might even- might do other things, and for once not out of duty, but then someone is shouting for him, and her, and they hastily clamber out of the water. There’s a raven, apparently, from King’s Landing. Nell is combing her hair, waiting restlessly, while Robb goes with his mother and the Greatjon and Maege Mormont to read it. When she is big with child, she thinks, she will able to press such matters, insist on being present for meetings, demand to be heard and included. When there is a Stark son nursing at her breast, no one will dare tell her otherwise. 

But she is not there, and she is only in her robe when she hears the scream. Jory keeps her from bolting out of the tent, instead blocking the entrance, sword unsheathed and shield raised, but there is no danger. When Nell finally insists on being brought into the makeshift pavilion, framed with logs and barrels, she finds Robb helping his mother to her shaking feet. She has never seen Catelyn quite so white; her lips are moving but no words come. Dana comes rushing up with Lyra, looking around wildly, as the Greatjon swears in rage and kicks over his chair; it shatters from one booted blow. Maege Mormont, for a first, is entirely silent and still, the letter in her hand. 

“Robb?” Nell finally asks hoarsely. He does not even look at her, escorting Catelyn to a seat; Nell tries to read her lips as she goes, but-

“Lord Stark is dead,” Maege Mormont tells her, her voice hollow and toneless. “He was executed as a traitor by the boy-king’s command.”

“What?” Dana asks dully, as if she hadn’t heard at all.

“No,” Lyra is saying furiously, “Mother, no, that can’t- they wouldn’t-,”

No, she realizes. That is what Catelyn Stark is mouthing to herself in horror. No no no.

She shares a bedroll with Dana in her own tent that night, for the first time in weeks.

Grey Wind prowls around the hills, howling until sunrise.

The following day is far too beautiful. There’s a fine mist and the sun is shining far more gently than it was the day before. The light reflecting off the water makes everything seem vivid blue-and-green. The breeze is gentle, and the river laps softly at the sides of the boat. Nell has never rowed into a castle before, but Riverrun is exceptional in that regard. It is perhaps a third the size of Winterfell, half the size of the Dreadfort- she thinks it comparable to Barrow Hall, but it is stout sandstone, whereas Barrow Hall is long and narrow wood. 

Nell sits beside her good-mother and watches the breeze ruffle Robb’s hair and Grey Wind’s fur. Theon perches, restless as a crow, beside him, and Nell gazes up wonderingly at the water wheel churning away, just before they pass under the mud-encrusted gate. She narrowly dodges a splatter, and ducks her head just to be safe until they’ve come to a halt. Edmure Tully is far younger than she expected, perhaps twenty two or twenty three, with a full head of hair and a well-trimmed beard. He does look a good deal like Robb, although Nell thinks Robb may grow to be taller than him within the next year. 

She lets Theon help her out of the rocky boat after Catelyn, and stands to the side with Dana, who leap onto the stone dock rather than give Greyjoy the brief pleasure of being able to grip her bodily by the waist. Their introductions are very brief; Lord Hoster is unwell, it would seem, and his daughter is eager to be at his side. Nell wonders when the last time Catelyn Tully Stark saw her father was. She knows Robb visited Riverrun at least once as a child, but that must have been years ago, when Bran was just a babe. Her stomach gives a sharp twist; it has been bothering her all morning, fits of nausea and the occasional cramp, and now she wonders-

“I am going to pray in the godswood with Lord Karstark and the others,” Robb tells her quietly; Karstark is mere feet away, a big man bowed with grief. Two sons dead in one night, the welfare of the other unknown. Nell does not know what might be like, to raise three sons to manhood or near approaching it, to leave a daughter behind, and then to have half of it ripped away. Perhaps she could make a match for Harrion, if he survives, with one of those Freys Lord Walder is intent on dumping at her feet. The Karstarks will need to rebuild.

“We’ll come along,” Nell is starting to say, but a sudden wave of sickness coils up and seeps in her gut, and for a moment she hesitates, convinced she’s about to vomit. 

Robb pauses. “Are you alright?” How can he ask her such a thing? His father is dead, and he is standing here patiently inquiring after her health. She should be the one fussing over him. But she does not know what to say. How can she? Should she stoke his desire for revenge? Counsel him to think things through, to be patient and wait the Lannisters out? Demand he take the Kingslayer’s head in turn? She does not know what’s expected of her. She had never anticipated this- none of them had.

Ned Stark was far too valuable as a hostage to be killed, they’d all assumed. Joffrey did not share that line of thought, it would seem. It’s cold and horrible, but it’s true. How old is Robert’s spoilt heir? Nearly thirteen? He is a child, still under a regency. Whose mistep was this, to allow the boy to decide Stark’s fate? The Small Council must be in an uproar. Nell had never thought of the queen as particularly cunning, but even proud Cersei Lannister must have realized how the folly of executing Lord Eddard- what do they have now, to bargain with? Sansa? If they wed her to Joffrey- her father’s murderer- now it will only stoke the North’s rage even further. They once marched on King’s Landing for Lyanna’s sake. They might very well do it again.

“I’m fine,” she says thickly, swallowing hard, but Dana has taken her firmly by the elbow.

“My lady got very little sleep last night,” she tells Robb plainly. “I’ll show her to her rooms while you go to your prayers, my lord. Let the men pray alone first.”

Nell means to wrench away, but she feels so sick and tired that she just nods instead, hoping Robb does not take offense. But he just turns to Karstark and the Greatjon, and Riverrun’s nervous steward leads her and Dana to her new rooms, overlooking the godswood. Birds are chirping faintly outside the opened windows, and her bedchamber is light and airy, with hanging tapestries and an enticing bed. Nell spares very little thought for any of that, rushing into the privy instead. She doubles over and vomits twice, although it is mostly spittle, and then claws at her skirts, pulling down her smallclothes and thin stockings-

Oh.

“Dana?” she calls hoarsely through the door, hunching her shoulders in misery and trying not to look at the fresh blood on her fingers. “I- could you fetch some rags from a maid?”

When Dana returns with them, she shoulders open the door, then takes in Nell’s state. “Your courses came?” 

Nell is too busy frantically wiping and coiling fresh linens around her hand to reply immediately, but is infuriated with how her voice cracks when she finally says, “I- I thought… they’re almost never late like this, and it’s so much, I-,”

“Sometimes,” Dana says warily, watching her, “my mother once told me that sometimes, when it’s… off, you know, a woman might lose a babe very early on, and not realize it, because her… well, it’s not much different from your moonblood-,”

“No,” Nell snaps raggedly. “No. It’s not- don’t. Don’t ever say that. I didn’t lose anything. It’s just late, and heavy, is all. It’s alright.” That can’t be it. Even if it was… even if she’d missed three months, not just one, and suddenly this had come, she would not be willing to admit it. She will not be her mother. She will not be a woman who loses more babes than she births. They just have to keep trying. 

When she’s done Dana helps her out of her faded grey gown and into a fresh shift to sleep in, and Nell tries to ignore the pain in her belly by counting the fish in the nearest tapestry. All the while, she is worrying that it might suddenly grow much worse, that by even referencing a miscarriage Dana may have brought it to life. She will not be examined by a maester here and have them report back to Robb or his mother- No. She can’t even think about it. The sheer humiliation. The shame. Barbrey warned her, that any man in grey robes was not to be trusted. How easily they could pit a family against one another with their whispered suggestions.

But the pain does not grow much worse, and eventually she dozes off, and although she only meant to nap, the temptation of a soft bed after weeks on the road is too much to resist. Nell sleeps like the dead, and when she wakes the sun is much lower in the sky outside, and there is a soft knocking at her bedchamber door. Jory opens it, permitting Catelyn to enter, and Dana, who had also fallen asleep in one of the cushioned window seats, jerks awake as well, rubbing at her eyes.

Nell is mortified; what must Catelyn think of her, sleeping like this while Robb prays and meets with his men- but her good mother only takes one look at her, and asks simply, “Your courses came?” and all she can do is nod.

“It’s alright,” Catelyn tells her calmly, although despite her even tone Nell can see the deep grief and even anger in her blue eyes, and wonders if she has told her brother about his betrothal yet. “No one would expect a child to be easily conceived during hard travel, Donella. The best thing you can do is to be well-rested and eat.” She pauses, and a strange look is there on her weary face, and Nell has the sudden dreadful sensation that there is new, terrible news.

“I would send for a tray for you, but I came to tell you that Robb needs speak with you.” She hesitates, then adds, “Do you think you are well enough to dress?”

“Yes,” Nell says forcefully, shoving back the bedcovers, ears burning. “Yes- of course, I feel much better.” She does not, not really, she is still cramping and there is a familiar stabbing sensation between her legs, but what can she say? No, and go back to sleep? If something else has happened- to Sansa, or to his brothers at Winterfell, she’d rather hear it from him.

Riverrun’s godswood is much smaller than Winterfell’s, but it is also full of birdsong and the babbling of streams, not the eerie silence and whispering pines she is most familiar with. In some sense the silence might be better. The background noise just sets her more on edge, especially when she sees Robb, sitting on a low stone bench, alone. He’s finally changed out of his armor, and in fresh clothes that must belong to his uncle; the sleeves of the tunic are slightly too short for him. But he is all in black, or very dark blue. 

Mourning colors. Catelyn will likely follow the seven months of formal grief as prescribed by the Faith, and Nell will not fault Robb, if he wishes to follow that as well. She does not hate the Seven, for all that she might roll her eyes at septons screeching about hellfire and demons in the trees, and if it brings him comfort to embrace some aspects of his mother’s faith, what of it? Life is often very short, and men should light their candles and hope for the best, whether they are in a sept or a godswood.

“What’s happened?” she asks immediately, as he stands. “Robb? Please, just tell me-,”

The look on his face… she braces herself. 

“Nell,” he takes her hands, and she almost wrenches away in her growing, raw fear. “Nell, listen to me. My mother told me you were feeling poorly, and I’m sorry to tell you like this, but I- it is better you hear it from me first. Before everyone is…” he trails off, and shakes his head. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. Truly. I didn’t know- I didn’t think it would come to this-,”

“Robb Stark,” she hisses through gritted teeth, “gods help you if you don’t tell me now. Please.”

“They’ve named me King,” he blurts out, letting go of her hands, and a shaft of late afternoon sunlight frames him before her, tall and solid, illuminating his auburn hair and his fresh beard and above all, the absolute shock in his blue eyes.

“What?” Nell whispers woodenly.

“The Greatjon- no, I called a council meeting, and we’ve had word that Renly Baratheon seeks the throne.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she exclaims. “Good, let Renly have it-,”

“Stannis has the right of it,” Robb says grimly. “And I mean to see Joffrey Baratheon dead for what he’s done to my father.”

No, she thinks. No this is not right. This was about rescuing his father, his sisters, not about Baratheons and revenge, and who sits the Iron Throne- 

“But the northern and river lords, they’ve rejected both. They pledged themselves to me instead.” He squares his shoulders. “As the King in the North. And not just the North- the river lords all knelt as well.”

“You-,” You can’t be a king, she wants to scream, you are barely a soldier, you are my husband, how can you be a king, you are fifteen, I cannot be wife to a king, how are you to rule- who will you rule-

“I could not reject them,” he tells her, and for a moment she realizes this is it. It is gone. He is a king. He is a king, her king, and she is not speaking to Robb her husband, who she bathed with yesterday and who she wed not three moons ago in a very different godswood. She is speaking to Robb Stark, the King in the North. And there is nothing left for her to say or do, because he is the king. He woke this morning a boy of fifteen, and now he is a king. She wonders if she is dreaming. Or having a nightmare. 

“They will crown us tomorrow,” he says. “I’m sorry, Nell. This was never my intention. But we must move forward. It’s as you said, yesterday. They would all die for me, so I must work doubly hard to be worthy of their pride. Of their loyalty.”

“Crown us?” she finally manages to ask. The birds are still singing, and the air is sweet and damp with the smell of dewy wildflowers in the late afternoon sun. “I- I don’t understand, Robb- Your Grace.” She wonders if she should go to her knees before him, but her legs do not seem to be working. 

“As my queen consort,” he says, almost mildly surprised by her sudden slow wits. “You did not think- Nell, we are married. If I am to be king, you must be my queen.”

Her lips move, but no words come out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. We've finally reached the end of AGoT. We made it, everyone! 
> 
> 2\. Nell's shock/horror in this chapter should not be taken as a wholehearted rejection of the idea of Northern independence or Robb's capabilities. She's eighteen, emotional, and in shock. The idea of becoming a queen- even if only a queen consort- is going to take some adjustment.
> 
> 3\. I apologize to any of my more squeamish readers, but given the subject matter and POV, issues such as menstruation and discussions of miscarriage, childbirth, breastfeeding, etc are going to come up. I will try to be careful with the tagging.


	18. Donella XVIII

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell had thought a crown might feel heavier, but then again, this one is made of branches and leaves, not iron or gold. The last King of Winter handed over his crown to Aegon the Conqueror on the banks of the Trident, when he chose peace and longevity over a short and bloody war. As a girl she was taught that Torrhen’s sacrifice for his people was always remembered- it is no small concession for a man to give up a crown and the title of king- but so was his kneeling. His own sons nearly rebelled against both him and the Iron Throne. His daughter was forcibly wed to an Arryn, much to her own family’s disgust, for the Vale was no friend to the North at the time. And they say his bastard brother Brandon never forgave him, and always held that he could have killed the Targaryens’ dragons while they slumbered, with magic arrows from a weirwood tree.

She does not know if weirwood could truly kill a dragon, but it seems to make a fine enough crown. Riverrun’s smith is already hard at work crafting Robb’s crown, she knows that much. She does not know if there will be one for her as well. The crown she wears now is as purely symbolic as the one adorning Robb. A stand-in, a promise. The act of crowning him is more important that what he wears atop his hair. Nell bows her head as the mild weight of the wreath settles onto her hair, and remains kneeling at her husband’s feet, hoping the grass stains on her skirt will not be too apparent. This is just the way of it; Catelyn crowned Robb, although she looked as though she were draping chains on him instead, from the grave expression on her face. Now Robb crowns her. He did not have to; they declared him king, not the both of them their rulers. 

Nell is queen consort. She understands what that means well enough; she is not ignorant. These lords pledged themselves to him, not her. Had Robb wanted, he could have let her remain a lady. If their marriage were tense, or bitter, he could have taken the opportunity to publicly distance himself from her. She is not blind, nor deaf. All these river lords (and perhaps a few of the northern) know well enough that she is not with child, and while it is still the early days of their marriage, what of six months from now? A year? A barren wife or a fruitless marriage is very easily annulled, and what better to replace it than a tie to a strong house from the Riverlands? A Vance, perhaps, or a Blackwood or Bracken, or a Frey. So she is very grateful, in some sense, that he did not hesitate to crown her alongside him.

But in the other sense-

Robb takes her hands and brings her back up to her feet, amidst the approving shouts and cheers, and Nell turns and smiles, while all along feeling as though she is falling, plummeting, not rising. “THE KING IN THE NORTH!” the Greatjon bellows, and the applause and whistles go on and on, and while there is a small part of her that feels a rush of excitement, the larger part of her shrivels up in dread and apprehension. This is not what she wanted. This is not even what Robb wanted. But it is not easy for a man to refuse a crown, not when men have laid their swords before him, not when there seems no way to press but forward. And they can hardly change their minds now. Kingship is ideally not a temporary position. But gods, if only it had not been so public- had the Greatjon raised the matter in private, not before all those men and women, Robb might have been able to negotiate around it, to politely, firmly refuse, to insist that he would remain Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, as his father before him. But his father is gone. His father is gone, a vicious child sits the throne, and the Riverlands are burning. 

Yet all Nell can think is that somewhere out there, beyond the pink sandstone walls of Riverrun, glowing in the morning sun- Somewhere over the horizon sits Tywin Lannister and his army and possibly the Imp and the remains of the Kingslayer’s men as well. And she can only think- here is a battle-tested, skilled man of past fifty, who sits there with the knowledge that a green boy of fifteen humiliated his renowned son in battle, took him captive, ambushed the well-trained western army, and that boy, that child, now stands in a godswood full of cheering men with his wife and his wolf and a crown of leaves on his head. And she thinks of what that might do to a man like Tywin Lannister’s arguably considerable ego. His daughter is queen. His son was- is- a Kingsguard. He was Hand of the King for near two decades. 

We are a nasty, jagged thorn in a lion’s paw, she thinks, and he knows he must either yank us out or let us dig deeper and breed rot in his blood. Nell thinks of what her father would do, were he shamed and bested in such a manner. So now it really no longer is a question of ‘if’ they win. They must. They must, or Riverrun’s charming water wheel wheel will be churning blood. Their best chance will be if they can vanquish the Lannisters while the Baratheon brothers tear each other apart over the throne, if or Renly’s supposedly massive army threatens the capitol. Tywin Lannister may want his son back, but he will want Joffrey’s future as king secured more. If either- or both- of the Baratheons threaten King’s Landing, the Old Lion may retreat, and with any luck, either Stannis or Renly can defeat them and they can bargain with who is left.

Nell hopes it is Renly. She knows next to nothing about Stannis Baratheon, but she has heard he is not inclined to compromise. If the younger brother were king, he might leave well enough alone, and let the North have its freedom. For all her considerable anxieties and doubts about the Robb as a king- her as a queen- she does not think the call for succession entirely unfounded. Robert did next to little to support House Stark in the months before his death. Was the man such a fool, to not have foreseen that their might be trouble should he die before Joffrey reached his majority? He was wed into the Lannisters for years. Surely he was aware they would never tolerate Ned Stark as his son’s regent, or even his Hand. So why should they now pledge themselves to either Stannis or Renly’s cause? They owe them little or less. 

And should they choose wrongly… it might be all their deaths either way. 

She wishes there were a clear path ahead, an easy solution. But there is none. It will be treacherous and shaky wherever they walk. She has no wish to follow Robb blindly, but she has no more of a map of the future than he does. Instead Nell takes his hand, as she did at their wedding, and when they first declared their intentions to go south to fight, and leads the way out of the sun-dappled godswood with him, mindful of every single step and the slightly crooked crown on her head, the leaves brushing her forehead and the twigs digging into her scalp. Riverrun is joyous; people smile and wave at the sight of them, servants whisper and redden when their king and queen walk by, there are fresh flowers in her bedchamber and her maids sink into low curtsies when she enters a room, and only flush and laugh nervously when Nell stares after being called ‘Your Grace’ for the first time. She is not ‘Her Grace’. She was quite content to be Lady Stark. She wanted the North, not an entirely new kingdom. 

By the end of the day, they have word from Father of the Green Fork. They’ve lost just under five thousand men. Halys Hornwood is dead, and Medger Cerwyn, Harry Karstark, Wylis Manderly, and Donnel Locke have all been captured. Her father retreated easily enough with the rest back towards Moat Cailin. Robb is reluctant to immediately summon them all back to Riverrun and leave the Neck open for attack. Nell knows it could have been worse. The footsoldiers could have been completely decimated by the Lannisters. There is yet some hope of trading their Lannisters for the hostages.

But out of duty she goes with Robb to tell Daryn, who has been ordered by the maester to remain off his feet for at least the next week, the news of his lord father’s death. Daryn remains very still and very pale in his seat as he hears it, and nods stiffly, his mouth a firm line. “I should write to my mother and half-brother immediately,” is all he will say, and then he cannot even seem to look at them at all, and they leave him be, although when Nell glances back, Jory has lingered to give her condolences, as Daryn’s shoulders begin to heave and shake, and his hands turn to clawed fists in the bedsheets. 

Tywin Lannister is said to be retreating to Harrenhal. Nell does not know what anyone would want with that hulking ruin of a castle, but it must be better than an attempt to follow her father’s forces up the causeway and smash through the Neck. With no immediate battle on the horizon, and with Robb more concerned with settling his lords here than making any sudden moves, there is little to do but wait. Nell could stand some waiting now. She would be leery of any rush to go tearing after Tywin Lannister either, were she Robb. They have the Kingslayer, safely confined to Riverrun’s dungeons. Better to approach this carefully and bide their time.

But things are different now. When Nell had the run of Winterfell, that was one thing; she was lady of the keep in Catelyn’s absence, and so her word went unquestioned, and she felt largely free to do as she pleased. This is different. Riverrun is much smaller, much more cramped with so many people coming and going each day, and entirely unfamiliar. She does not know the household servants by name, does not know the history of the castle, does not remember Lord Hoster in his prime or Lady Minisa’s gentle graces. She barely knows her uncle by marriage, Edmure, and Nell admits she does not help matters by inadvertently walking in on him and Catelyn having a formidable shouting match over his pending betrothal.

Hoster Tully, who they whisper has been on his death bed for months now, may have agreed to it, but while duty compels Edmure to obey, it seems he will not be obeying quietly. Truth be told, while Nell might be exasperated by this- of course Catelyn had no right to promise such a thing, but would he rather be wed, or dead?- Dana says she would rather suffer Edmure Tully’s company than Theon’s any day, and Jory is quite besotted with the man, although Nell does not think he has ever looked twice at her young shield. All the same, it would be very fair to say that victorious though they might be, in the wake of an uneasy alliance with the Freys, her father’s losses at the Green Fork, and Ned Stark’s death, tensions waste no time in appearing. 

And Robb- Robb is a king now, and does not feel he can cry, so he rages instead. Nell has never seen very much in the way of temper from her husband before, and so three days after their coronation, when she is late to dine with him because she had to settle a squabble between two bickering maids over who had the right to attend the queen before bed, and he snaps in reply to her dry summary of events, she is shocked. Her courses are still flowing and she knows by now what that can do to a woman’s emotions, but she recoils as if slapped all the same at even the suggestion of a raised voice from him. It is jarring. They have not bickered since they left Winterfell.

Robb, to his credit, immediately looks shamed, and Grey Wind leaves his side and approaches her with a snuffle, as if the beast could make amends for a man’s curt words. Nell stays where she is, standing behind her chair, and jerks away from Grey Wind’s wet snout, before asking, very quietly, “Do I have your leave to sit, Your Grace?”.

Robb immediately stands, reddening, for he had been sitting and brooding even before she walked in, a good fifteen minutes late and hardly apologetic about it. An apology is brewing behind her lips all the same. Truth be told, she wants to snap right back at him and stalk out. How dare he take that tone with her. She is his wife, his queen, as he claimed it, and not one of his men in need of a lecture. 

But he is also her lord husband, and now her king, and while he may not realize it, she does. True, she was well aware that he had more power than her inherently when he was to be lord of Winterfell. But that has been magnified, if anything, by their new titles. He has gained power, reach, supporters. Has she? Of course not. His title means everything to him. Hers means very little, for it changes very little. Does he not see that? When he was a lord, men still thought to argue with him. Now he is a king, and men may still want to argue with him, but they will spend far more time weighing their words with him. The same applies to her.

Robb makes to pull out her chair for her, as he should have done, in the first place, but stops at the cold look on her face, and simply says, “Yes.”

“Thank you,” says Nell, and she sits, before him, at that, which one should not do with a king, but she suspects some exceptions may be made in this case.

Robb returns to his seat, Grey Wind goes under the table to hunt for scraps, and neither of them say a word for the next several minutes, until finally he admits, “I’m sorry. I should not have spoken to you like that. It was…,”

“Unkingly?” Nell suggests, in between a bite of her chicken. “Your Grace, I must request that you chasten me after I have eaten, next time. It’s difficult to take a reprimand for tardiness on an empty stomach.” She is only daring this much because she knows him, knows he will likely soften at her sarcasm, because it is familiar and sometimes even warm to him. When her father was displeased, her mother never said a word at all in response, because her father was not a man who softened when his wife looked at him or smiled wryly. 

Once, Nell recalls, she’d done something wrong, and he’d bid her come to the table but forbidden her drink or eat anything. Nell had sat there miserably for over an hour, stomach gnawing and growling, fidgeting in her seat, casting increasingly desperate looks at her mother, who had barely touched her own food. Finally Bethany had spoken, and asked if he might at least permit his daughter some broth. “She’s learned her lesson,” she’d said, “give her some thin broth and bread crust and send her to bed early, husband.” 

Roose had continued eating for a moment as if he had not heard her, and when he was finished chewing, looked up and replied, “She may have learned hers, but you have not learned yours, wife. Go to your rooms. I will join you when I’ve finished here.” Nell was too young then, of course, to know why or how a man might order his wife to bed, and to a girl of seven that seemed a light punishment indeed- she never minded being sent to bed early, for her bedchamber was one of the few places in the Dreadfort that she really felt safe. She did not understand then that nowhere was safe for Bethany. Not the godswood, not the dinner table, not her own bed. 

Her mother had sat there a moment longer, rigid and stiff, and then had downed the remainder of her wine, and flung the empty, embellished cup at the wall as she went, like she was a child herself, throwing a tantrum. The sound had echoed so very loudly in the feasting hall; servants had stopped and stared, their own cups to their lips. Nell remembers watching that cup roll to a halt on the floor, badly chipped and dented. Her father had sighed heavily, and ordered her to pick it up and bring it to him. Nell had, carefully avoiding his pale eyes, and he’d inspected it, placed it back on the table, then gotten to his feet and almost ambled out after his wife. It was the leisurely pace of a man in no particular rush. 

After they’d gone, Nell had gone back to the table and ate as much as she could before the servers could come to take it away, gulping down hot stew and scorching her tongue and shoving bread in her mouth, and trying very hard to ignore the distant cries from where Roose had caught up to his quarry. It did not really matter, for she’d vomited most of it back up later that night, her conscience rebelling against her stomach. 

Robb would never treat her like that, she reminds herself now, as he softens, just as she’d predicted. Never, even if he was enraged, even if he had good reason to want to punish her, he would not. He swore. He swore before the gods. But she knows now why her mother threw the cup against the wall. Because she knew it would make no difference, that no amount of demure obedience would change things for her. So why go quietly at all. And it is funny, but she still feels that mix of guilt and hunger now, all these years later. She still feels it was her fault. If she had been a better daughter, a good girl, he would not have hurt her. It is nonsense, but she feels it all the same. 

“I should not be reprimanding you at all,” Robb says now. “I’m sorry. It is just- I didn’t think it would be like this. For us.” It is somewhat of a lame statement, but Nell doesn’t disagree with it. She did not think it would be like this for them either. She had not been anticipating some wedded bliss where they would be embracing one another tenderly and watching the sunset, but a year ago she would not have believed anyone who told her that she would be seeing her eighteenth name day in the Riverlands, plotting their next attack. War would have seemed absurd then, after ten years of summer and peace. The idea of her betrothed leading an army into battle would have induced hysterical giggles from her. 

She can almost hear herself now- Robb? Little Robb Stark, with his shaggy hair and freckles and his wooden swords? Then even the idea of being married to Robb had seemed distant and fantastic, some sort of flight of fancy that would never be realized. Perhaps part of her had never really thought it would happen, had been convinced something would go wrong. Well, something has gone wrong. Many things have gone very, very wrong. They’ve had one blow after another. But she still hopes, naively or not, that this marriage will not be another thing to dread or regret. 

“Neither did I,” she says, prodding at the trout on her plate. “But these are our circumstances. I know it is important to you that we still see some of each other, beyond in bed.” Robb chokes on his next bite, as she continues impassively, “And I have no desire to sit in on all your war councils, but we should try to keep one another informed. You will be busy with your lords, and I will be busy with my ladies, but I will ask that you-,” she hesitates, then takes a fortifying sip of her mead, “that you keep in mind that I am not just a consort. I can play the part well enough, but I have- I should like to think I have given you good advice, thus far.”

There is a moment of silence, and then Robb acknowledges, “You have. You and my mother both. I am grateful to be in the constant company of two wise women.”

Nell rolls her eyes a little at that, but smiles all the same. “You flatter me, Your Grace.”

“It is the first thing my mother said of you, Your Grace,” he retorts, and that does give Nell pause. Robb clarifies; “When… when my father-,” he freezes for a moment, as if stung, and then says in a quieter voice, “when my lord father first welcomed you into Winterfell, when I was thirteen, and you fifteen, I overhead them a few days later, speaking of you. My mother said you were very clever, and that you should make a very efficient lady of Winterfell someday.”

Nell feels her visibly warm at the second-hand praise, to her embarrassment. “That was very kind of her. I was just a silly girl then. What… what did your father say?”

Robb glances to the fire in the hearth for a moment, then says with a very faint smile, “He said that you were much more well-humored than he’d thought a child of Roose Bolton’s would be.”

She laughs aloud at that, her chuckles ringing across the quiet room, and Grey Wind comes out from under the table to rest his head on Robb’s lap, who just pets him and watches her with an odd look on his face.

A week after their coronation, her bleeding had entirely ceased, to her relief, and the Frey maids have arrived. Nell had known there would be more than a few, but she is still shocked at the sight of a dozen of them. If Walder Frey truly has a dozen girls every generation to marry off, no wonder he is flinging them at any passing hedge knight or upstart lord. 

“Gods be good, it’s a horde,” Dana declares, as they watch them all disembark from their boats. “You’ll have to make them pass some sort of test, and send the rest back.”

“This isn’t a children’s tale,” Nell hisses back, ignoring Jory’s snickers. “And you are not to go picking any fights, Dana. I swear. The very last thing we need is one of them crying to their grandfather-,”

“Great-grandfather,” Dana corrects under her breath, “Possibly great-great grandfather. Only three are his daughters.”

Nell dismisses that in favor of stepping forward to greet the women, very conscious of the fact that she still does not yet wear a crown atop her head. Instead she has dressed much more lavishly than usual, and nods graciously at all of them. Most of them attempt some sort of curtsey or tittered greeting. How in the world is she ever going to keep track of all them? Most of them look similar as well, to make matters even worse, although the oldest among them must be Tya the Maid, who is near thirty, and the youngest, clinging to a sister’s skirts, can be no more than seven or eight.

There seems to be some hushed argument among them over who should introduce herself first, but finally one girl is pushed forward. “Roslin Frey, Your Grace,” she says, in a soft, shy voice. She is small- as a rule, the Frey women are all fairly short, but Roslin is indeed petite, but pretty, despite the obvious gap between her front teeth. She has the best skin and nose of the lost, and her hair is long and thick. Nell very much suspects Edmure will choose her for a bride, just on looks alone, although she could not really blame him- he perhaps has the right to be shallow about it, if he must choose a Frey at all.

“My mother was Bethany Rosby, Lord Walder’s sixth wife,” Roslin continues evenly, despite the flush rising in her pale cheeks, “and these are my kin. Tyta, my elder sister-” Tyta is the tallest of them all, although still shorter than Nell, with a skinny, slightly gawky build, and a long nose. Her hair is very dark, just a shade shy of black, and Nell is not shocked when Roslin names Tyta’s mother as a Blackwood, Lord Walder’s second wife.

“Arwyn and Shirei, my younger sisters-,” Arwyn looks very similar in appearance to Roslin, although she has a rounder face and her hair is curly, and Shirei is a miniature of her, a timid little girl gaping at Nell with wide hazel eyes.

“Shirei is very attached to me, Your Grace, but she will be no trouble,” Arwyn is quick to assure her. “I- it is only that I have looked after her since our lady mother’s death, and I could not leave her behind.”

Nell is not sure she would be comfortable leaving a little sister behind at the Twins either, given the rumors among the other river lords of incest and debauchery.

“My nieces, the Waldas-,” Roslin’s nieces are older than her, to everyone’s amusement. 

One Walda is slender and hard-faced, the other large and smiling. Both have pin-straight dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. “You may call us Fair and Fat Walda, if it pleases you,” the hard-faced one interjects, and Nell thinks she may end up referring to them respectively as Sour and Sweet. 

The rest are quickly rattled off as Alyx, Marianne- who insists she is technically a Vance, despite making her home at the Twins- Zia, Serra and Sarra- who are identical twins with identical voices, to make matters worse- and Marissa. Nell greets them all cordially enough, and hopes they don’t mind sharing beds, for they certainly haven’t enough room for all of them. 

As she leads them on a tour of Riverrun, she exchanges increasingly desperate glances with Dana, realizing that she will have a permanent audience wherever she goes now. There are so many of them, and they all talk at once, and there’s always something to argue or giggle over, and suddenly Nell almost wishes she had had sisters, for this is the only time in her life that she’s been with so many other girls at once. 

She is only rid of them all after hosting them for supper, wherein all the laughter and whispers die out completely when Grey Wind wanders into the room, and Shirei lets out a muffled shriek and scrambles up onto Arwyn’s chair, nearly knocking them both over. 

“My husband’s wolf,” Nell says calmly enough, rising from her seat, and without really thinking about, whistling softly. She has never done such a thing before, and for a moment Grey Wind simply looks at her with his deep golden eyes, and she wonders if he is about to turn his back on her and go. But then he comes over to her side, and the Frey girls gape at her in shock, and Nell allows her hand to settle behind Grey Wind’s taut ears while she smiles serenely. “You have no need to fear him. His teeth are for Robb’s enemies.”

After dinner, she says her goodnights to Dana, lets Jory off-duty to visit with her mother and sisters, and finds her way back to Robb’s bedchamber. Her moon’s blood is over, and she finds her mood improved at the prospect of it being just the two of them once more. She finds him half-dressed, slumped over in an armchair, dozing, although he jerks awake as they enter the room, and turns startled blue eyes on her. “I- oh,” he starts to get up, but she waves him off, sitting down on the bed instead and removing her shoes. 

“You will have to make your introductions to my new ladies in waiting tomorrow. They are quite eager to meet with you, after Grey Wind’s stunt.”

He exhales in amusement, still facing away from her. “The little girl was frightened, wasn’t she?”

Nell pauses, confused. “You saw Grey Wind spying on us?”

Robb is silent, then says quickly, “I- I thought that’s where he might have gone. He does like you, you know.”

“Do you like me?” Nell calls lazily to Grey Wind, who jumps on the bed beside her. “Not like that!” she pushes him back down boldly, something she would been far too wary to do just a few months ago. “Great beast.”

But Robb has gotten up and is peering out the window now at the darkened sky. “Come look at this.”

Nell gets up, reaching around to start to yank out her bodice laces as she joins him at the window. “Is a storm coming?”

But the night sky is clear. So clear, in fact, that the great red star cutting through the blackness is incredibly bright. Nell has never seen a comet before, and freezes beside him, watching it slice through the velvety sky, trailing a bloody tail behind it. 

“It’s brighter than even the moon,” Robb utters hoarsely.

“It’s beautiful,” lies Nell. It is terrifying. She has seen shooting stars, of course, and every possible phase of the moon, knows her constellations, but she has never seen anything like this. It’s so vivid, it feels like a waking dream. 

“They must be able to see it in King’s Landing,” Robb says, and she knows he is thinking of his sisters. 

Nell rests her head on his shoulder. “And in Winterfell.” She wonders if Maester Luwin is showing it to Bran and Rickon or Beth at this very moment. Bran would be amazed. Rickon would would want to climb up a tree and try to snatch it from the sky.

They watch it for a minute longer, and then Robb turns away. “Perhaps it’s a sign of good fortune.”

“Perhaps,” Nell agrees, sweeping her hair in front of her shoulders. “Good fortune with my stays, Your Grace?”

“I’ll try my best,” and he kisses her neck, to her shocked delight, and laughs aloud when she gasps. 

Good fortune, she tells herself later, when they are finished and he is lying beside her again for the first time in a week. She rests a hand flat on her belly, and still sees the red of it when she closes her eyes. Good fortune for them, it will be. It must be. She wakes a few hours later to find him shaking with suppressed sobs beside her, and does not even fully open her eyes, just entwines her legs with his and wraps her arms around him until he stops holding them in. 

The comet and his tears are still there the next night, and the one after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to just leap into Catelyn's first ACoK's chapter, since the pace of the last chapter of this fic was very breakneck already. Hopefully this was a bit of a breather but still eventful. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. This entire thing was avoided in canon because when Robb did marry, he was already a king, but I did want to raise the question for Nell of weighing her burgeoning relationship with him against his crown. She sees herself as being very practical indeed to consider the fact that if theirs was an unhappy or mistrustful marriage, Robb might not have been nearly so quick to elevate her alongside him. She has also, I think, already gotten to the core of a problem that really frustrated and tormented Cersei to no end: the Queen Consort (especially to an active King) has very limited power, and what power she might hope to have is mostly expressed through her children. So Nell does not quite see this as a bonus for herself right off the bat; as far as she can tell, Robb's reach of power and prestige has just immensely expanded, but she's in the same place she was to start with. 
> 
> 2\. Robb is not grieving in what I would call a healthy manner, but given the rigid gender and social norms of Westeros, he believes that letting himself break down and cry only in the dark, in bed with his wife, is the only acceptable way to express this intense loss and fear. The other way, of course, is through anger, which is very much socially acceptable (even encouraged) for Westerosi men. Being angry and vowing vengeance is an approved way to show emotion without compromising their masculinity, but openly crying or being seen as 'weak' or 'womanly' is not. While grief often brings people together, it can also tear them apart, hence Nell's pretty raw reaction to him snapping at her or even showing momentary coldness.
> 
> 3\. We will be seeing a lot more of the Frey girls and their respective personalities and ambitions. Yes, there's a shit-ton of them. Yes, we may see some other women of the Riverlands as well.


	19. Donella XIX

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell has been coming to the godswood every afternoon since the white raven arrived from the Citadel, but there’s still no trace of autumn to be found. The trees are green, the grass is lush, and the air is as warm as ever. The only sign of summer’s end may be slightly cooler evenings, but she supposes that could just be her growing used to sleeping inside Riverrun’s occasionally drafty rooms, as opposed to the spring-heated stones of Winterfell. She’s surprised by how much she misses it; just as much as she does Barrow Hall and her aunt. And Sara. She’s reminded of Sara more than ever, surrounded by young girls. Is this how she felt, running after Nell and Dana, trying to pound some wisdom or at least good sense into their flighty heads?

To be fair, the only small child among the Freys is little Shirei, who is too shy to be much trouble at all, but only Roslin, Marianne, Tyta the Maid, Alyx, and the Waldas are of age. Good-natured Arwyn is just fourteen, as is cheeky Zia and the twins, Serra and Sarra, and little Marissa is the youngest of them all, thirteen and only flowered a month past. Nell has little interest in arranging marriages for children; aye, she could haggle for long betrothals, which is more effort than most of their fathers would make, but the Frey women are hardly in high demand, particularly the ones who are not even daughters to Lord Walder.

But it is not her duty to act as their mother. If their grandsire wants them wed, they will be wed, whether or not she is the one to arrange it or not. It will certainly not help Robb’s cause for her to drag her feet. The Freys are quick to take offense and would be most displeased to think that their queen was in any way dismissive or neglectful of their interests. Their queen. It has been three weeks since their crowning, and she is still taken aback when addressed as ‘Your Grace’ or referred to as ‘our good queen’. She does not see a queen when she peers in the looking-glass. It is not a matter of shallow insecurity; Nell knows she is no Cersei Lannister, the Light of the West, but she is hardly some homely waif, either. 

It is just that a queen should be certain she is a queen, she thinks, and these days she is anything but certain… of anything. Cersei Lannister was born to be a queen. She was not a Targaryen, but her father would have- and did- do whatever he deemed necessary to wed her to a prince, then to a king. It likely came as no shock to her, that she was to wed Robert Baratheon, only a comfortable relief, satisfaction that everything was as it should be. Nell does not look at herself, or even at Robb, ruling over his lords, and think ‘all it as it should be’. What she thinks is what she suspects Catelyn thinks- that they should be back at Winterfell, settling disagreements in the winter town and keeping the smaller houses in line.

But they can’t go home. Not now. Someday, she tells herself, when she is trying to sleep at night. Someday they will. When the Lannisters have been put down by either Stannis or Renly and the realm has some semblance of peace once again, they will go home to Winterfell and everything will be ordinary and expected once more. She would not even care if Robb had to bend the knee and give up their crowns to do so, although she would never dare say such a thing aloud. She would gladly hand a Baratheon her crown in exchange for his sisters and peace and Winterfell. Would it smart at her pride, just a little? Of course. She is hardly a vision of humility and grace. Some part of her does derive a certain measure of smug satisfaction in thinking that she is a queen, that the day may come when Roose Bolton has to kneel to his own daughter, and when he asks for her mercy, she will offer him none. She would jump at the chance to offer the Bastard a queen’s justice. She would make the Dreadfort’s walls dance with men swinging from nooses. 

But none of that is enough to counterbalance the ache in her temple from her new crown. It is not even that heavy, really, a slender circulet of iron and bronze, a smaller, sleeker version of Robb’s, but she feels its pressure from the moment she wakes to the moment she falls asleep, even when she has taken it off. Robb insisted to the smith that it be nearly identical to his own, which is itself a supposed close replica of the crown Torrhen gave up to Aegon the Conqueror. No Stark king ever wore a crown of gold or silver, nor jewels around his head or neck. Nell has reluctantly put her own garnets and rubies and pearls away. 

She has taken it off now, shining dully in the sunlight, to examine the runes decorating it for the umpteenth time. The godswood is full of women, most of them Freys; Marissa and Shirei are splashing in a nearby stream, giggling and kicking water at each other, while Roslin has brought out her harp to continue the lessons she’s been giving Arwyn. Nell is debating asking for some tutelage of her own; she always did think the high harp was a beautiful instrument, and bemoaned the fact that few northern ladies could play it. The south may often be reviled as thin-skinned and obsessed with shallow decadence, but Nell is of the mind that the North could use a little decadence, once in a while. There’s something to be said for beauty, after all. Look at the Lannisters, who found the tallest rock in the west to sun themselves on. 

Marianne, Alyx, and the twins have formed a sewing circle, with Tyta the Maid correcting their stitches, and the Waldas are sitting with her and Dana, gossiping and occasionally exchanging useful tidbits of information. Nell has determined to make them both, along with Roslin, her dear friends, if only because the three of them exert the most influence over the others. Fair Walda’s high cheekbones and long lashes hide a very sharp wit, Roslin’s sweetness rusts away at all indifference and apathy, and Fat Walda’s looks may often be mocked, but she seems to know everything about everyone, often without them realizing it.

“Could you not have at least had sapphires and rubies in it?” Fair Walda sighs, leaning over and brushing her long blonde hair out of her fair. She runs her fingers along the circlet. “For the Tully colors, of course, if you are to rule from Riverrun.”

“There’s no jewels to be found in winter,” Dana says pointedly, glancing over to where Jory is sparring with Lyra under a weeping willow, ducking and weaving around her sister’s blows, giggling and shouting as though they were playing a children’s game. “That’s what the long-swords are for. The Stark kings knew that wealth was no protection at all when the dark nights were long and the wildlings grew bold.”

“And the Others came a-hunting from the Land of Always Winter?” Fat Walda laughs. “I used to love those stories, truly! Walda, you always cried though, remember?”

“They were meant as warnings,” Nell says, although she smiles, because it is easy to forget the cold this far south, and lecturing the Freys about the looming presence of winter. 

“Walda was always fond of stories that’d make your toes curl,” Fair Walda drawls. “Although- I suppose you cannot see your toes, cousin-,”

“Is it true that Lord Bracken is sending his daughters here, Your Grace?” Alyx calls over to Nell, nudging at Tyta all the while. “And they sent Hendry out to meet them?” 

Robb gave the river lords leave to go forth and reclaim their keeps and lands from the Lannisters shortly after their coronation. Catelyn and Ser Brynden were against it, but Edmure and most of his northern lords were for it. Nell had thought it might be better to let them go; the territory here is far more compact than in the North, it would take much less time than the same movements would in the North, and furthermore, were this the North, no Stark would dare keep his men from reclaiming what was theirs. It is not an easy thing to tell battle-tested men to sit still and bide their time while their people are slaughtered, their lands burn, and their keeps are overrun with the enemy. 

Lord Bracken in particular- he’d lost not just his keep but his wife and daughters. Stone Hedge was reclaimed after a short, bloody battle, nearly burned to the ground. All but two towers will need to be rebuilt. It will take years. And his family- the Bracken women survived their brief imprisonment, but they did not go unscathed. Word is quickly spreading that the Mountain raped one of the girls. Jonos Bracken did not admit so much in his letter, but he did ask her to consider taking his two eldest girls on as ladies in waiting. Nell agreed, on the condition that he strongly consider a match between his nephew Hendry, who she’d asked to stay on at Riverrun on some pretense, and Tyta Frey. 

Hendry is twenty five, heavyset and dark-haired like his lord uncle, but he is reserved and kind. He will never inherit Stone Hedge- that will pass to the eldest Bracken girl, Barbara, and for certain now that Bracken’s bastard son died reclaiming the castle. Hendry and Tyta can often be seen walking the battlements, despite his Bracken blood and her Blackwood blood. Nell is quite smug about the entire thing; Tyta had long since given up hope of marriage, and Nell does not so much care whether Jonos Bracken only agrees out of greed for influence or love for his daughter or a general apathy as to who Hendry weds, only so long as he does agree. 

Which he will, she is sure of it. Everyone is quick to court a queen’s favor and hesitant to refuse her in the early days of her husband’s reign. Give Robb a few more years with a crown and they will all be quarreling and ignoring one another, but for now there is a forcible, taut peace, because if they fight amongst each other from the start, the Lannisters will truly tear them to pieces.

Tyta is bright pink now, although she does not look up from her position hovering behind Serra, correcting her needlework. Alyx grins all the more. She has the most distinctive looks among the Freys, for her mother is Betharios of Braavos, and Braavos is a land where nearly everyone is descended from escaped slaves of the Valyrian Freehold. And the Valyrians, it is well known, enslaved whoever they could, whenever they triumphed in battle, in order to keep their mines functioning (and their dragons fed, some claim). So Alyx is olive-skinned and black-haired, although she has the same smile as Zia and the same ears as Marianne. 

“If Hendry marries Tyta, shall he be a knight at last?”

“Enough,” Tyta scolds, swatting at her, but Alyx simply winks.

“If his uncle sees fit to accord him a share of the dowry and he can prove his worth in the next battle,” Nell says evenly. “And yes. Lord Bracken writes that Barbara and Jayne shall join us. We will be very welcoming, of course- they’ve been through a terrible disturbance, to lose their home like that.”

“I heard the Mountain made Lady Lucinda choose which of her daughters he’d ruin,” Fair Walda murmurs to Dana, “as punishment for the rebellion. Isn’t that awful?”

“Horrible,” Nell agrees curtly, “as is speculation. We are very fortunate to be spared the worst of the war, here.”

“Of course,” they are all quick to assure her, ever-so-grateful, so thrilled to be in her company. Nell hates it at times. It is not that she even dislikes them all, it is just exhausting to be surrounded by people who either refuse to speak freely or who she feels watching her every move, debating, weighing their options, eager to know what they can get out of her. She knows this is how Robb must feel, constantly, and it is worse for him because he is the one who must make the decisions, who must take the responsibility when men suffer and die on his account. 

The braid of hair around her wrist itches; it has been bothering her for the past several days, but she cannot bring herself to untie it. She’s afraid she may lose it somewhere within the still unfamiliar setting of Riverrun, and never find it again. Nell tugs at her sleeve instead, then glances up at the still visible comet painted across the sky overhead. It no longer unnerves her just to look at it, but she will breathe a shy of relief when it passes, all the same. Many say it signifies red for revenge, red for House Tully, red for Lannister blood. Catelyn confided in her just the other day that she feared it was the reverse- good tidings for Tywin and his men.

Nell is not sure what she believes of the comet. She thinks of it as a half-closed red eye, a god lazily regarding them from somewhere beyond. A parallel world, almost, in the same sense that she will live on in the wind and rain and earth and trees, when she is dead. Not here… but not entirely gone, either. Woven into the fabric, just not touching the other colors. But whether it means them well or ill, she dislikes the feeling of being observed by a passive outside force. The days of the gods granting men magic swords or magic crowns or enchanted castles are long past, but now it seems they are in the days of gods content to watch the bloodshed and do nothing at all. 

Her mother once told her the gods saw and heard all, they just did not care to intercede. That they would rather deal with men after death than during their lives. And septons will tell you that the Seven love and care for all, but mere men cannot understand the divine plan that is mapped out for their lives. And if you ask Dana, of course, they have at least one god’s vessel with them currently- Grey Wind. Nell is less sure of that in the mundane light of day than she is when she wakes at night and sees twin yellow orbs watching her every move. 

“There’s Lady Catelyn,” Marianne says suddenly, and Nell looks around to see her good mother cutting through the godswood, head down, likely on her way to visit her ailing father. Nell has been in with Robb several times to see his grandsire, but Hoster Tully barely recognizes his grandson, never mind knows who she is. It is almost preferable that way. Nell feels distinctly uncomfortable in there. She’s unused to the very old and poorly as it is- the oldest person she’s ever met was Old Nan, who despite her extreme age and failing sight, was still quite capable of doling out a beating to a mischievous kitchen boy with a ladle. 

Because of this she does not go rushing over to join Catelyn, although she knows this must mean that Robb is done holding his audience in the Great Hall. Nell slowly rises, brushing stray leaves and twigs from her skirts. “You must excuse me, but I needs speak with my husband before the day grows any later.” She and Robb have not been able to share a meal in the past two days, and she doubts she will see him much tonight, although they diligently try to make time to climb into each other’s beds, no matter how late the hour. Nell usually does not mind much. At the very least they cannot get into an argument during that. 

“Your crown,” Dana reminds her with a snort, as she almost leaves without it. The responding chorus of giggle is far from encouraging. 

Nell sets the cursed thing back on her head, calls for Jory, and is off on her way. She finds him in the Wheel Tower, which is where Robb goes when he does not want to be bothered and when he does not want to be overhead. The constant groaning of the wheel and sounds of the water assures that. Jory takes a knee to tussle with Grey Wind, who bounds over to her with a playful growl, and Nell gives their nonsense a wide berth as she slips inside, where Robb can be found, crownless, head in his hands, a steadily growing puddle near his feet.

“The roof is leaking again,” Nell observes, even as she sidles up beside him.

He groans once in response.

“Did it really go that poorly?”

“I thought it went well enough, up until my mother saw fit to remind me that I care nothing for my sisters, am a tremendous fool to have let the rivermen go back to claim their castles in the first place, and that it is madness to send Theon anywhere.” His voice is muffled and cold. 

Nell exhales, then folds her arms under her chest.”Did Ser Cleos agree to deliver our terms to the queen?” She calls them ‘our’ terms because that is what they are- it was Nell who told him to give up his hope of getting Ice back- even should the Lannisters ever come to accept a rival kingdom, they would rather melt the sword down and scatter it on the wind than they would deliver it back. It was Nell who told him that asking the Lannisters for ten highborn hostages was pointless. Their main hope was to trade Willem Lannister and Tion Frey for Sansa and Arya, to exchange the hostages at Harrenhal for the hostages at Riverrun, and to see their claim to a new kingdom recognized. 

“He did,” Robb acknowledges, “but Mother tells me we will never get back the girls for the queen’s cousins. She thinks I should have offered the Kingslayer.”

“You could have,” Nell agrees, “but it would mean chaos here. Your own lords might rise up against you. Many men would rather see him dead than safely back with his kin. Lord Karstark. Mine own uncles. Edmure. Cersei might have agreed to such a thing, but even then, never independence. She might trade Sansa- and Arya, if they have her- for her brother, but Tywin Lannister is not just going to retreat back to King’s Landing without a fuss.”

“She said I thought the girls weren’t important,” he finally glances up at her, and Nell can see the pain in his eyes. 

She squeezes his shoulder roughly. “She should not have said that, but she is still grieving, Robb. Your father… it has barely been a month since the news. She likely blames herself for your sisters going south in the first place. People say things they don’t mean when they’re angry at themselves.” She ought to know that best of all, she thinks with a jab of guilt. 

“It was a mummer’s farce,” Robb admits. “The Lannisters will never agree to Northern independence, they will never give us back Father and the others' bones, they will never release my sisters. But I had to make the demands nonetheless. What kind of king would I be, had I not?”

“A trifle more efficient one, but a heartless one,” Nell says quietly. “Even if you could convince Cersei to exchange Sansa for the Kingslayer, it would not guarantee peace. If it comes down to it, I think Tywin would rather see us all dead and ground into the dirt than have his son back with him, if he had to choose.” 

“Jaime Lannister offers me nothing but mockery when I visit his cell,” Robb snaps. “So I cannot blame his father for being reluctant to free him from us. I have treated my prisoners fairly, have I not? A far cry from what the Lannisters have been doing- there’s been word from Darry. They’re gone. The Mountain slaughtered them all after retaking the castle on Tywin’s commands.”

Nell draws back in stunned shock, a lump in her throat. “That cannot be- Lyman Darry was nine. He had far more worth as a captive than dead to them.” A boy of nine, who wore a chainmail shirt over his child’s clothing and had a helm specially crafted to fit his small head. He had blonde hair and freckles and a dimpled smile, and before he went back, leading men into battle, a skinny little boy with a squeaking voice, he told Nell that she was ‘the most beautiful queen he’d ever saw’. She’d laughed, and warned him against flattering women twice his age. 

“He killed them all,” Robb says bitterly. “And the same with every village he’s come upon.”

“When the time comes,” Nell tells him, “we will see Clegane’s head on a spike on the walls of Riverrun, I promise you.”

“Would that I could promise these people the same thing,” Robb shakes his head, “but we sit here, and we wait. I cannot march on Harrenhal. It is what they want. This is- provocation, almost. They commit atrocities in the hopes that it will force us out onto the field in a hurry, with little to no plan beyond revenge.”

“You cannot go to Harrenhal,” Nell agrees frankly. “It is cursed. Everyone knows it to be true.” She pauses. “But if we had the Ironborn to raid down the western coast… that would see Tywin Lannister leave quite quickly.”

“I must send Theon, or no one at all,” Robb says, grimacing. “Mother is against it, of course. She never liked him, nor trusted him. But- what, shall I send a Frey? A Mallister? Would the likes of Balon Greyjoy and his brothers be impressed with Ser Stevron? With Jason Mallister, who killed Theon’s brother, Balon’s heir, at Seagard? Shall I have war with the Isles as well? Gods, who could I send but Theon?”

Nell does not know. She wants to say there is some excellent suggestion at the tip of her tongue, but there is not. Send a riverman, get nothing, if not more fighting. Send a northerner… gods be true, imagine sending the likes of a Flint or a Mormont. They’d have reports back of Bear Island or the Finger burning within weeks. “I do not think Balon Greyjoy will help us unless you promise him a quick slaughter and a crown of his own.”

“I will regret it eventually, but I would give it to him now if he asked for it, all the same.”

“I think he will reject our offer,” Nell says grimly. “I think he will wait our war out, wait to see who lands on the Iron Throne, and who is ruling the North and the Riverlands when all is said and done, and then he will rebel again himself while the winners are preparing for winter. It may be years from now, but he will. But I am no fortune teller. The only one with anything close to a chance of convincing him would be his own blood. The Ironborn are self-contained. We’re greenlanders to them, fit for conquer or saltwives, not equals. Theon must be the one to ask him. He may be refused, he may be thrown back into the sea, but…”

“I trust him,” Robb says. “He saved your life. He helped save my life, in the Whispering Wood. He has been like a brother to me since we were children. I know he is not…” he trails off helplessly.

“He must learn to curb his tongue before someone yanks it out,” Nell clarifies, and Robb chuckles at that. “But,” she hesitates… “He has never given you nor I cause to doubt his loyalty. You could keep him here, but you would always wonder whether it might have been worth the risk to send him. And our people, the rivermen- they will never accept his command in battle, will never fight by his side without suspicion. He may be worth more in politics than in war.” She pauses, then adds dryly, “Women certainly find him persuasive.”

“He’s already had Alyx,” Robb tells her flatly. “Better you hear it from me than her.”

Nell curses, loudly, ringing off the narrow, damp walls. “Nevermind. I take it all back. I’m going to bloody well throttle him before he goes tomorrow.”

“From the way he told it, it was just as much her idea-,”

“I wanted to betroth her to a Vance,” Nell snaps. “The thirdborn son. Gods. Now I needs make sure she’s had her moon tea, lest Kirth discover a squidling in her arms a few months after the wedding.”

Robb chuckles and pulls her into his arms at that, and they stand there for a few moments, before a few droplets of water hit their heads from the leaking roof. 

In the end, her thoughts of the Iron Isles are quickly diminished by the report they have that night from the Blackfish’s scouts. Stafford Lannister is gathering an army at Casterly Rock. Now there is no question at all of engaging with Tywin. Robb will have to move west to meet Stafford’s men before they are hemmed in by the west and south both. Catelyn’s plan to treat with Renly seems an unexpected boon, despite Robb’s reluctance to give credence to the younger brother and not the elder. If they could combine forces with the Reach and threaten the capitol, the Lannisters would immediately withdraw from the Riverlands in order to protect Joffrey’s claim.

Nell holds up her pointed glare at Theon until the very last moment. Finally, as Robb embraces him, she says, “I owe you a debt of blood, my lord. See to it that you live long enough for me to repay you.”

“Is that a command, Your Grace?” If Theon is nervous, he does not show it, smirking widely from his seat in the boat. It is near identical to the look on his face when he saved her in the wolfswood. He must be thrilled, she thinks suddenly. He is a man grown but he has never before been permitted to go out into the world on his own. Unlike every other lord his age, he was denied his majority. Perhaps that explains much, how a man of twenty might still be so reckless and impudent. He was never given the chance to prove himself as anything but a hotheaded boy. 

“No,” she answers tartly, “my command is for you to sail back to Seagard with a fleet of longships and a host of your father’s finest reavers.”

He laughs at that, and is still snickering as they row out under the gates. Nell watches him, and briefly takes Robb’s hand before anyone else can notice.

Hendry Bracken arrives with his cousins a few hours later. Nell is introduced quickly to both Barbara and Jeyne, who are sixteen and fifteen and look as though they could be twins. The only difference between the two is that Barbara is slightly heavier, and her hair is thick and long. Jayne’s hair has been chopped off around her ears, and there is a hollowness to her face that Nell has only ever seen in older women. Later, she will learn that her hair had to be cut because Gregor Clegane caught her by the hair when she tried to run, and ripped so much of it out with just one sharp pull that you could see the bloody shine of her scalp.

But Nell does not know this when she meets them, because Jayne Bracken does not speak. She has not spoken at all since that night, and so Barbara speaks for her when she gives their courtesies to Nell, leading her sister in a neat curtsy as if she were a child. When they straighten back up, a door nearby slams shut behind a group of Tully men-at-arms walking by, laughing among themselves, and Jayne grabs both of her elder’s sisters hands in a mute plea. Barbara wraps her arms around her and rests her chin on her head, soothing her with murmured assurances.

When Nell tries to sleep that night, she dreams something very different than usual. She can still hear the hunting horn, but her mother and the other women are nowhere to be seen. She is in the godswood, and she can smell smoke on the night air, but cannot see the fire. She is also naked, save for the crown on her head, and freezing, and bound to a weirwood tree. The ropes bite savagely into her arms and thighs, and the bottoms of her feet are sticky with sap and blood. Leaves are caught in her hair; dead ones, drifting down when she shakes her head. The wind howls through the branches above her, and if she concentrates she can just barely make out shapes in the trees. Men or beasts, she’s not sure, and it may not make a difference.

Nell opens her mouth to shout for help, for Robb, for Mother, for Sara- but she cannot bring herself to form words any more than Jayne Bracken could. Hot tears prick at her eyelashes, and worm their way down her chapped face. Something sharp and heavy settled on her shoulder, clawing at her skin. A mailed fist, she thinks in terror, but then it caws in her ear, harsh and shrill, and she realizes it is a crow. It leans down and pecks at her left breast, hard and sharp. She jerks and shudders in agony, closing her eyes in horror, and when she opens them again the crow has taken flight, winging away into the smoke and mist. Her bonds melt away like snow, and as she stumbles forward, the shapes grow clearer. The dead hang and sway from every tree; men, women, and children. Bethany, Sara, Willow and Jez- Young Roose stares sightlessly at her, and the Karstark brothers share a limb, brushing corpses in the wind. 

Little Lyman Darry dangles from a great oak; a man would have to be especially tall to set him that high. She reaches out and touches his blackened feet, then claps a hand to her bloody breast as the pain surges again, driving her to her knees. Somewhere, the crow is still screaming, and the horn grows louder and louder, and the smell of smoke burns at her nostrils and eyes. 

When Nell wakes, her eyes are swollen and her nose itching because she has been weeping in her sleep, but her breasts ache something strange and fierce, before finally fading away. It feels as though her bodices had been laced too tightly. Her courses are promptly absent the following week, as Catelyn prepares to leave for Bitterbridge and Robb begins to chart a path west in his maps, and she finds she can no longer eat anything at all in the mornings. It seems too good to be true, so she says nothing, until the night before her good mother is due to depart, when Grey Wind rests in his head in her lap as she sits and sews, his snout pressed firmly against her belly.

Nell knows this is madness, but she looks down at his grey face, and murmurs, “Truly, can you smell it?” and gets her answer in his golden eyes. 

Then she feels a different sort of sore aching in her chest, as if she’d been crying or laughing too hard and she has to set her needle and thread down, hysteria bubbling merrily in her throat and her hands trembling. When Catelyn comes into the room, all she has to do is look at Nell and the wolf, and she knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It only took us nineteen chapters to get into autumn, huh?
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. In canon Fat Walda keeps up a remarkably optimistic attitude for someone dealing with Roose and Ramsay on a regular basis, so I liked the idea of her being into spooky stories as a kid.
> 
> 2\. "Why is this Hendry guy still a squire if he's twenty five?" Many men never actually became knights due to lack of funds.
> 
> 3\. I've always headcanoned Braavos as being fairly ethnically diverse compared to most of Westeros. 
> 
> 4\. I gave Jonos Bracken's wife a name just to shorten down the massive list of Unnamed Wives/Mothers/Sisters/Daughters in canon. 
> 
> 5\. "Aren't the terms pointless anyways, since the Lannisters don't actually accept them?" Sure, but Nell and Robb have no way of knowing what the success rate is going to be here. Both admit that they don't really think these peace-terms are ever going to be accepted, in any part, and that it's more so for Robb to be able to say 'look, I tried to reason with the Lannisters' than anything else. 
> 
> 6\. The Theon Problem. "Nell doesn't even like Theon. Why would she agree with Robb's plan to send him to the Iron Isles?" So there's going to be a lot of hard choices presented to Nell as a main character in this story, and what I have tried to keep in mind while writing her is A. she doesn't know she's a character in a fantasy story with overarching themes and tropes and B. she does not have the gift of foresight, nor is she a deductive genius who can conclude everyone's motivations with a single glance and C. while Nell is pretty quick-witted and decisive, her ability to impact events is always going to be hampered by her gender/situation in Westeros. 
> 
> I would argue that one of the reasons most 'fix-it' or 'self-insert' fics revolve around a male protagonist is because it's a lot easier for a man in Westeros to have his opinion valued, respected, and heeded. Nell is not a warrior, is not a battle commander, and ultimately knows that while she can certainly try to influence various decisions, she's not going to be just able to rattle off orders the way Robb is and be instantly obeyed. 
> 
> So why does Nell agree that sending Theon is their best bet? Well, mostly for the reasons mentioned in the text- she agrees with Robb that sending anyone else is probably going to be ineffective at best, completely backfire at worst. She thinks Theon may be much more useful to them as a sort of ambassador than as a soldier. She has far less of a relationship with him than Robb does, but he did save her life, and that does bring in a measure of trust and respect, however begrudging. 
> 
> 7\. I'll continue to try to keep the tags accurate. I don't want to inadvertently spoil anything in an effort to assure people that this won't be identical to canon.


	20. Donella XX

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell is advised by her good mother to wait a week, then go to Maester Vyman. “I believe you are with child,” Catelyn tells her kindly, “Grey Wind certainly thinks so- but if you are, it is still the early days. You must not blame yourself if it does not quicken, Donella. It’s very common for a woman to lose a babe early on. After Bran I-,” she pauses then, blue eyes dulling, and then shakes her head, “we had thought there’d be another babe, a few years before Rickon, Ned and I, but- it was not to be. These things are natural parts of life. I went on to have another healthy child. So will you, no matter what happens.”

“I won’t lose it,” Nell vows, as if she had any control over such matters. Yet men seem to think so often enough, as if women sat around their witch fires and determined which babes would live and which would not, and which would be sons and which would be daughters. She supposes it is a comfort to them, to blame the woman. They do not have to grieve it so much then, if blame can be neatly assigned to their wives. All the same, she asks, “Don’t mention it to Robb, please? I should like to tell him myself, after the maester’s inspection. Good news has been in short supply as of late.”

“That it has,” Catelyn sighs, warming her hands before the fire. Her good mother’s hands are always cold now, as if her husband’s death leeched both the joy from her heart and the warmth from her flesh. But she looks visibly brighter than she has in weeks, at the thought of Nell’s child. “I am sorry I will not be here to help you, Nell. But with any luck, I will be back well before the babe is due. I will not lie- it will be difficult, at times. Your firstborn always is,” and from the look in her eyes Nell knows she is thinking ‘still is’, “but it will be wonderful sometimes too. Many times. Children remind us what is important, truly.”

“My son will be very fortunate to have you for a grandmother,” Nell says honestly, and Catelyn smiles. She is not smiling that next morning when she leaves for the Reach with twenty men, and she does not look back as the boat grows smaller and smaller on the horizon, drifting down the blue-green stripe of the river. Nell watches alongside Robb and Edmure until it is no longer visible at all, then rushes off to vomit in the nearest privy. 

A horrifically long week later, she reluctantly presents herself for examination. Vyman is not a lecher the way some maesters are, but he is old, and wrinkled, with the brittle, at times quavering voice of a man long past his prime. Nell lies flat on her back with her skirts hitched up around her waist, and tries to distract herself by making eye contact with Dana, who is dutifully standing guard to preserve her chastity as a wedded woman. Dana’s increasingly dramatic expressions almost make her laugh, until she winces, then struggles not to jerk or pull away until the maester’s inspection is over. When he steps back, Nell quickly sits up, pulling down her skirts and struggling to look as calm and composed as a queen ought to.

“I believe you are with child, Your Grace,” Vyman says politely, and Dana lets out a mangled cheer that she turns into a cough for the sake of dignity at the last moment.

“Thank you, Maester,” Nell says in her most regal voice, as if she’d been entirely certain of it herself all along, and not terrified just a few moments ago that she’d somehow imagined or conjured it all up in her head. “Do you know how far along?”

“Five weeks, by my estimation. You should expect the soreness, vomiting, and fatigue to continue for some time. Some cramping and even light bleeding is entirely normal,” he warns her, then adds in a more delicate tone, “especially after… relations. It’s important to continue to eat and rest, even if you feel ill at times. And absolutely no riding, Your Grace,” he adds definitively, ignoring the appalled look on her face, “only if necessary, and even then, side-saddle and a very sedate pace.”

“Oh dear,” murmurs Dana in bemusement, as Nell digs her nails into the bedspread, then nods begrudgingly. 

“Very well. I should like to inform the King myself, Maester. When further… examination is necessary, I trust you will know where to find me.” She’s hardly looking forward to eight more months of this poking and prodding. It’s a bit absurd; she was so desperate to be with child, that now that she finally knows she is, all she feels is a dull sense of surprise. Perhaps it will be different once the babe has quickened and she can feel it moving about inside her. As of right now, this still feels very strange, like a dream or some elaborate jape. 

She keeps up the act until he has left, and then turns to stare at Dana, who is making muffled noises of mirth and joy. Dana wordlessly reaches out, grabs her shoulder, and shakes it, then tears her other hand away from her mouth. “You’ve done it. Gods be good, let them say a single word now- Queen Nell, wedded, bedded, and soon to wean a Starkling. And I’ll be their favorite auntie, of course.” Laughing, she embraces Nell, sending both of them toppling until Nell extricates herself from Dana’s long arms and sits up, flushed. 

“Don’t be silly. It’s hardly for sure. I won’t rest easy until I have him in my arms.”

“You can’t think like that,” Dana scolds. “Look at Lady Catelyn- only a fortnight wed, and she went on to have Robb, didn’t she? Of course it will take. You’re healthy enough, and it’s good luck to be here- this is where your husband was conceived and born, was he not? The same for his son. Or daughter,” she adds, although she frowns at the look on Nell’s face. “Oh, come now, even if it is a girl-,”

“A son first, and then Robb can give me as many daughters as he pleases,” Nell says, standing up and straightening her skirts. “A whole pack of she-wolves, if he likes. I’ll call them Catelyn and Arya and Sansa, whatever he wants. But first a boy. I will not have another Serena Stark.” She huffs, then glances sharply at Dana. “And not a word- I mean it! Even once I tell him, I’ll announce it to the rest of the…”

“The court?” Dana offers archly. It still sounds strange. To have their own little court here. Well, perhaps not so little. But it is not something Nell ever thought she’d be referencing so casually- the court, her ladies in waiting, His Grace, Her Grace- she still trips over her own tongue at times. She supposes she will be quite used to it all by the time the babe comes. A little prince. They already call Bran and Rickon such- the princes in Winterfell, and so this one will be the prince in Riverrun. 

If they ever did get Sansa back, she’d be so thrilled to learn she was finally a princess, and did not even have to marry a vile creature like Joffrey to become one.

“I’ll announce it to the rest of the court when I choose,” Nell finally settles on. “I could not bear it if I had… to retract it.”

“Alright,” says Dana. “But let me be happy for you, at least. If you cannot be happy for yourself,” she is only teasing, but it stings nonetheless. Nell is not happy. Well, relieved- but relief is not the same sensation as joy. She feels better, of course, is grateful to whichever god decided to grace her, and has already resolved to make a sacrifice to the godswood soon, but she is not thrilled, euphoric, either. She knows she should be. This is the culmination of everything she was ever raised to be- beyond her betrothal, beyond the wedding, this is her purpose, to bear children and raise them to honor their house, but- She does not feel so drastically different as to be smiling down upon her belly, imagining little hands and feet and a mewling infant in her arms.

She has never particularly enjoyed children, especially not infants. Aye, she came to care for Robb’s brothers, but- Nell cannot remember the last time she was around a babe. Perhaps when her uncle Roger had his youngest, little Robb Ryswell, named for her husband. But that was four years ago. Little Robb is a squalling infant no more. Of course she will love them, she thinks. If Mother could love her, a babe begat in a bed of blood and misery, of course she could love this child, a child so desperately wanted, needed. They will have Robb’s blue eyes and perhaps his nose and chin as well, and she will love them dearly. 

She just worries that loving them will not be enough. That she will not be good to them. That she will be selfish, and cold, and judgmental, and all the other things she has ever been counted as. Many women love their children. It does not make them good. She imagines even Cersei Lannister loves her children. There is no inherent redeeming factor in motherhood, despite what some believe. A woman is not purified by the act of pushing out a babe anymore than a man is rendered good and honorable by the act of pushing his cock into something. 

She does feel for Catelyn at times, truly. It cannot be easy to have borne and raised and loved a son, only to see him succeed his father at fifteen and count himself a man and a warrior before you have even gone grey. It cannot be easy to have to obey Robb the King, when she knew for all those years and years Robb the Boy. Nell does not know what she would do in that situation. It is not easy to accept that children have grown up… certainly not when they are not even of their majority yet. But Robb will be of age by the time the babe is born, not that it matters at this point. He will be a good father regardless, she thinks. He is very used to children, from his siblings, and he would love them immediately, whole-heartedly. 

It is all she can do not to hunt him down right then and there, but she forces herself to wait out the rest of the day instead, although she wants to scream when Olyvar Frey reluctantly informs her that His Grace cannot join her for dinner this evening. Instead Nell nods placidly, and eats with Dana, Arwyn, and Marianne instead, discussing the newfound hint of crispness in the air. An autumn child, she thinks. Nell was born in the Year of the False Spring, when the southerners mistook a few months of warmth for the end of winter. When the Kingswood Brotherhood mistook the Kingsguard for fools. And when Rhaegar mistook Lyanna Stark for his wife. It was a year of rash mistakes, all things considered. 

When Robb is still not there, when she goes to his rooms, she realizes she cannot wait any longer. She will not sleep a wink otherwise; she will toss and turn, kicking and bumping whoever her bedmate is, all night. Nell straightens her shoulders, and orders her way into the smaller solar that Robb has been using for private meetings with his lords, and to study the maps. The guard posted is hesitant, but far more hesitant to refuse his Queen, and Robb is alone, to her relief, hunched over the desk, squinting wearily in the torchlight. Grey Wind is restless, pacing by the door; at the sight of her, he practically springs to her side, grazing his snout along her legs and belly, even as she pushes him away.

“I know,” Robb says tiredly, without looking up. “I’ll come to bed soon, Nell, I promise.” In the dim lighting, with his long hair and beard, he appears temporarily years older, a man for true and not just in ambition, serious and grave. He looks like his father, truth be told, and it startles her for a moment, until she recovers enough to clear her throat, very pointedly, until he at last looks up, running a hand over his brow. “Nell-,”

“I came to inform you that you need not come to my bed, nor me to yours, unless we wish it,” Nell says crisply, but unable to hide the twitching edges of her mouth, like parchment or dead leaves curling up in the sun. “You’ve secured yet another victory there, Your Grace.” 

He stares at her in befuddlement for a long moment, then glances at Grey Wind, who has sat down beside her, refusing to move until she pets him. Then it dawns on Robb; his face shifts as if the sun or moon had just passed directly over it, and he blurts out, “So that is why you smelled different.”

Nell is not sure what she was expecting, but that was not it. “I smelled different?” she demands incredulously, not sure if she should laugh or look affronted. “Robb, when have you been smelling-,”

But she never gets the rest of it out, for he has come around the desk then and embraced her so soundly that he momentarily lifts her on the floor. She gasps, locking her arms around his neck, their foreheads clash painfully together, and Grey Wind barks, startling her even further, but he is kissing her then, and she turns until he has backed her into the desk, and a few maps go fluttering to the ground like fallen leaves when she is sitting on it, still kissing him, and enjoying it perhaps more than she ever has before. It feels almost freer, somehow. Free of expectations, because they’ve met them. She wonders if other things might feel freer now too. Easier. Finally he stops, and to her dismay she is almost pouting at him like a child for it. 

“Thank you,” he says, as if she’d just handed him Tywin Lannister’s sword. “Thank you, thank you-,”

“I haven’t done anything,” she laughs, uncomfortable, although she supposes she had, supposes he is thanking her for never complaining nor shying away from his bed, for being the one to initiate more often than not, for not making him feel as though he were fighting a secondary war in the bedroom, trying to coax a wife into lying with him often enough to beget a child sooner, rather than later. But she will accept it nonetheless; she is not foolish enough to reject a husband’s gratitude, whatever shape it comes in.

“How long?” he asks then, breathless, and she smiles almost shyly.

“Five weeks. Maester Vyman confirmed it today. It will not be so very long at all,” she says, like a mother promising a child an eventual treat. “It is I who should be thanking you. You… to give you a son will make me very happy, Your Grace.” That is what a woman says when telling her lord husband- her king husband, she reminds herself sharply, that she is with child. She learned that not long after she had flowered, all the little minutiae and details. 

A wife never hides a pregnancy from her husband. A wife never bemoans a pregnancy to her husband, even if it is her eighth babe and she still has one at her breast. A wife never presumes, never complains, nor scolds. She is always very happy, very pleased, very proud, and it is always- it is always a son, when speaking of heirs, particularly when her lord or king requires one with all haste. She does not speak of her symptoms nor her pains nor her true feelings about it- that is for one’s ladies, other women, who understand. 

And if to say such things is like chewing ground up glass, then that is just yet another thing to be endured. A women’s war is in the birthing bed. Nell has heard it a thousand and one times. A wife does not speak to her husband of her trials there no more than a man would explain battle strategies nor siege tactics to his wife. It is a private affair, ruled strictly by sex. Gods, some men go into marriages having little to no idea how a woman’s courses work, never-mind the details of pregnancy or childbirth. 

But Robb does explain things to her. He told her the details of the Whispering Wood and the Battle of the Camps and although it was not easy for him to speak of it, he did tell her once, in broken whispers in bed, what it was like to feel dying men bleed out on him, both friends and foes. What it felt like to have your shield battered, but to have to raise it again and keep moving. What it feels like when a horse throws you in full armor to the ground. What it feels like when a warhorse is impaled on a lance or spear and shudders and crumples, and you must fling yourself out of the saddle or go under it and die as well. What it feels like to walk through a field, afterwards, and not know where the ground begins and the corpses end. She knows he told her more to assuage his own conscience, to feel that he could speak of it, explain it, justify it, to someone else. It was not all some gracious desire to educate her on the art of war. But he told her nonetheless. 

He has never looked at her and seen a simple-minded woman who must be kept in perfect, pristine ignorance, lest some ancient order come undone and the world split at the seams. Sometimes she almost feels that he looks at her and does not see a woman at all. Not that he thinks her a man, but- He has never condescended to her, never patronized her, not the way some- many- men treat their wives. It is not always even cruel, but a sort of- as though they were a little child or a lapdog of some sort, to be patted on the head and complimented on their shiny new ribbons, and then sent off with a treat. Soft of heart and soft of mind.

Well, nothing about Nell has ever been soft, and Robb knows that. Sometimes she thinks he even likes it, even when her manners verge on impudent, even when she is infuriated with him. That is the oddest thing, that makes her feel so strange. That he could like that part of her, and it would not even be- it would not even be the lazy sort of amusement one might spare for a puppy or kitten sharpening their claws, that sort of thinly veiled humor- oh, she thinks she’s in charge, does she- But that he might genuinely appreciate it. 

“You have no need to thank me,” he is saying now. “I am just- I hadn’t thought it might happen so quickly. But I’m glad, truly. You’ll be an excellent mother.”

So quickly, she is thinking- it has seemed like eons and eons for her, but for him this has barely been a few sunny days. In reality, they have been wed for not yet four months, and perhaps that is not so long at all. But it feels longer. Part of her is annoyed that for him it was barely a consideration, although she knows he’s had far more important things to worry over, and the other part of her is relieved that he hasn’t been thinking of it half so frequently as her, that he wasn’t beginning to grow impatient or frustrated already, thinking something must be wrong with her, or him. 

“And you will be an excellent father,” she replies, and means it, and then they share the same sort of secretive, giddy smile, which she can last recall from that day in the godswood when she proposed they move up the wedding. A smile of perfect understanding. Something has come loose and is rattling about in her chest. She forces it to come to a halt. There’s no need to act like some insipid child over some warm words, passionate kisses, and a shared smile. It is just the emotions of it all. In the morning she will wake and everything will be as it was. 

But the next morning she wakes in his bed, and the giddy feeling has not yet faded. She feels good, she realizes with a start. Not just content or satisfied, good, eager, as if there were bees buzzing under her skin. She wants to kiss him awake and feel him smile against her mouth. She wants him to refuse to let go of her, to refuse to leave this bed, this room. She doesn’t care about anything else, she doesn’t want to let the early morning sunlight in, or listen to the birds or the constant rushing of the river, she just wants to lie here next to him in the half-light and watch the shadows play on the wall and feel the rise and fall of his chest under her head. He stirs slightly and roots his hand languidly in her hair, and she takes his other hand in her own and squeezes, hard, almost gleeful. 

“Ow,” he mutters, and she laughs. 

There are words on the tip of her tongue but she doesn’t want to say them and risk ruining it all, so she swallows them down instead. 

“We leave in a fortnight,” he murmurs then, and ruins it anyways.

Nell lets go of his hand, and rolls onto her stomach to brood, face muffled in her pillow. Part of her knew this was coming, of course. Robb cannot just sit here and wait for Stafford’s army to pin them from the west while Tywin grows well-rested and bolder behind the menacing walls of Harrenhal. But that does not take out much of the sting. She is selfish. She wanted him here, with her. She is hungry for his praise, she will admit. 

She wanted him here to watch her grow bigger and bigger with child, to tell her that she was still pretty, still wanted, that she was still worthy, even more worthy now that she was bearing him a babe, she wanted- Well, she wanted him here to be the one to admire and applaud her efforts, rather than she his. He has his war, this is hers, with herself. Fighting to bring this one thing to fruition. But men do not tie their favor to women’s arms before they enter their confinement or go into labor. Perhaps they should. Perhaps they should do more than pace in their solar or go hunting. 

She remembers her mother’s last pregnancy. She’d been six. The babe had come far, far too early; there was no hope of its survival. The maester had been working to save her mother instead. Roose had returned from his hunt while they were carrying out the soiled and bloody sheets. Nell had been crouched at the end of the corridor, playing with one of the kitchen cats, who had promptly fled upon hearing him come up the stairwell. He had barely spared her a glance as he passed. Nell had stayed where she was, drawing spindly figures in the dust on the floor, listening to him converse with Maester Uthor.

“I’ve stopped the bleeding for now,” the maester had told him. “But she will be abed for several weeks, to give her body time to recover, my lord.”

“It is her riding,” Father had said dismissively, almost exasperated. “She thinks to shake my seed out in the saddle. I ought to forbid her from the stables, but it is endearing at times, I must admit. They warned me she was half-horse when I wed her. Of course, the Ryswells have as little sense as a stallion in heat at the best of times.”

She wonders what he was doing during her birth. Claiming his rights to some smallcrofter's wife? Hunting boar? Each must have measured about the same in entertainment for him. She does not recall her father ever having held her, or sat her on his knee, or even put her small child’s hand in his. Mother was always there, a shield between the two of them. Nell can recall countless times when a look was all it took; her mother sensed some mood of his, or feared some impulse, and would call her over sharply and gather Nell into her arms, smelling of horse and dog and leather and pine needles. 

Robb will hold his child, she knows. Even somber Ned Stark was warm with his sons and daughters. Robb would easily put a toddler in his lap or spin a shrieking child around in his arms or let them rest on his back or shoulders. If he is there. If he lives to see them born. If he returns. She rolls back over to face him. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I will- I will try to write, when I can. I cannot say how long it will be. If we have aid from the Ironborn, perhaps only a few months. However long it takes to dismantle Stafford’s host and rouse the Lannisters from Harrenhal. They will come, if we invade the westerlands. They would not be able to bear it- Tywin is too proud.” 

“They may decide to pay you back in kind and attempt to take Riverrun a second time,” she mutters.

“The bulk of the rivermen will remain here. I don’t want a massive army on horseback. It will only slow us down, and attract too much attention.”

“Tell that to Renly.”

“I may, if my mother treats with him successfully.” He leans over and gently kisses her brow. “I would rather you went to Seagard, and from there back up the Neck.”

“When you crowned me, you afforded me the rights of a queen consort,” she warns, refusing to fall for this gallantry. “I shall decide where I hold court in your absence. And I will keep it here. You are King of the Trident now, are you not? Should your wife not stay and rule it while you fight?”

“You could still rule from Winterfell. Or even from the Twins. Your father-,”

“I should rather my father not lay eyes on this child before you,” she snaps, and he looks intently at her for a moment. Grey Wind leaps up onto the bed, startling her, but not him. It is always as if he knows what the wolf is going to do just before he does it, now. 

“Very well,” Robb finally says. “I’ll not fight with you before I go. Promise me you will not leave sight of this castle.” He momentarily slips into his king’s voice. “No, swear it. The Mountain and his men are still out butchering on Tywin’s commands. I could not- if something were to happen to you and the babe-,” a king’s voice should not crack like a boy’s, but his does. “If anything were to happen to you,” he says at last. “I could never forgive myself.”

“Nothing will happen to us, I swear,” she says, propping herself up on her elbows to kiss him. “Tell me nothing will happen to you, the would be conqueror.”

“I’ll come back,” he vows. “I will, Nell.” He pulls her into his lap, framed by his legs, and they sit there for a little while longer, his hand splayed flat on her belly, his chin resting on the crook of her neck. She closes her eyes so nothing can leak out, and hopes the babe, minuscule as they must be, will remember the sound of his voice, if nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff? In this fic? I wanted to do a more Robb/Nell-focused chapter before he leaves. 
> 
> 1\. Nell's insistence/obsession with bearing a firstborn son is not just rooted solely in the history of Serena Stark, but for anyone unfamiliar- Serena was the elder daughter of Rickon Stark, firstborn son of Cregan Stark (the one who married Black Aly). As Rickon had no sons, when he died rule of Winterfell passed to Serena, who was first married to an Umber, then to her father's own half-brother, Edrick. We can probably infer that had Serena been male, this incestuous marriage to a man likely a good deal older than her would not have occurred. There is no record of a female Stark ever ruling Winterfell/being Warden of the North of her own right.
> 
> 2\. I would like to think that removing the tremendous political/societal pressure to conceive a child is probably going to improve a couple's sex life.
> 
> 3\. Nell is able to successfully argue 'I'm staying right here, thank you very much' point not just because Robb doesn't want to fight with his pregnant wife, but because now that she has the title of queen- albeit queen consort- the idea of abandoning the river lords and rushing back home to Winterfell is not as palatable, especially with Catelyn gone as well. A major part of Robb's new kingship is that he is not just ruling the North, but the Riverlands as well, and those people expect a degree of devotion/loyalty in return for seceding from the rest of the seven (six? five?) kingdoms.


	21. Beth I

299 AC - WINTERFELL

Beth has never seen an autumn before, and now that she has, she’s not sure how she ever lived without it. There are so many things Beth Cassel has not seen nor done- she has never been further south than White Harbor, she has never been further north than Long Lake. She has never swam in the ocean, she has never danced with a prince, she has never been to court and seen the lords and ladies in all their finery. She has never worn her hair up as befitting a woman grown, only ever in tumbling curls tied back with a worn ribbon or tightly braided, looped around her ears. She has never worn stays nor silken slippers nor jewelry round her freckled neck. She has never known a mother nor siblings, only ever Father. 

It has only ever been Father and her, the only Cassels left after the Kingslayer killed cousin Jory. Beth loved Jory. She called him nuncle sometimes and he would carry her around on his back and danced with her at every single feast. He told the very best ghost stories, when Father had fallen asleep early, too tired from training. Jory made them scary enough that she wanted to roll herself up under her covers, but he always gave them happy endings. In the end, the monster was always slain, or turned good by a fair maid’s kiss, and the sun always came up again, driving all the shadows and evil away. 

She remembers the Kingslayer as a beautiful man in gold, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. But he was a monster all the same, wasn’t he? The very worst kind of monster. They were supposed to be ugly and horrible to look at, like the Hound or the Imp or the creatures in Jory’s tales. They weren’t supposed to be golden men who wore white cloaks. It seems wretchedly unfair. You should be able to see a monster coming, she thinks. You should be able to hear him growling deep in the thickets and smell him on the wind and see his teeth and claws gleaming in the dark. It’s not fair if they look good, and beautiful, and true. It’s not fair at all. 

Beth had cried herself to sleep when Father told her Lord Stark was only taking Jeyne south as a companion for Sansa and Arya. That hadn’t seemed fair either. Jeyne’s father wasn’t even a knight. She was just the steward’s daughter. She was no more a lady than Beth was, sprouted up in the same uncomfortable garden plot- not an elegant lady like Lady Catelyn or Sansa, destined to marry some fine, handsome lord, but not a common servant, either, destined to scrub pots and sweep floors. 

Beth isn’t common. Father is a knight, something rare enough in the North. He had to forsake the old gods in order to take his vows, something his own father never forgave, but he is an anointed knight all the same, and surely that counts for something. Even so, Father did not have her anointed in the sept when she was born, for Beth’s mother, his very last wife, was a Burley from the mountains, and Anya Burley would not have her daughter given the oils of the Seven. Beth does not really think of her as Mother, for Anya died when she was three, and Father does not like to speak much of her. Beth was not even sure what she looked like, until Jory showed her a rough miniature sketch, carefully tucked away among Father’s things, when she was six. 

She had curly hair, like Beth, and the same round face and snub nose. Jory says her hair was auburn too. Lucky, the wildings would call it. Mayhaps Beth is part wildling. That would be exciting, at least, although she doesn’t think she should ever like to meet one. Osha doesn’t count; she’s not wild at all, not really, now that she’s grown her hair out and wears dresses or skirts like the other serving women. Not that Beth would ever get the chance- Father never lets her go anywhere or do anything. Beth knows it is because all her sisters died young, years and years ago, but she still thinks- well, she is ten now, her name day was six weeks past, and is ten not nearly a woman? To be sure, she has not flowered yet, and Osha says she will not for some years now, but ten feels older all the same. Important. Special.

After all, in all her ten years of life, Beth never did see a season come to an end before now. The weather is not so drastically different, not here in the North, where even summers have their frigid snows and harsh winds, but the air smells different, sweeter and crisper, fresher, almost, and when she looks out her bedchamber window and down into the godswood across the way, the trees are changing, patches of yellow and orange and scarlet emerging through the usual sea of green. Only the weirwoods remain undisturbed, as if they don’t care at all that summer is over. The weirwoods don’t care for much, she thinks. She offers her prayers to them all the same, but they never seem to hear her. 

She prayed and prayed that Lord Stark would change his mind and take her south too- it was the only thing she ever wanted, truly, to go to court and be a lady and wear pretty summer dresses- she did not even have to stay, not forever, because the North has always been her home, but she just wanted to see for herself. So she could tell her own children someday about her adventures as a girl, how she was a lady in waiting to Queen Sansa before she was ever a queen at all. How beautiful and lovely and perfect everything was, how lucky she had been to be there. Now she never will get the chance. Father says it was for the best; had she gone, she might be imprisoned, or dead, or worse. 

Sansa isn’t queen; she might never be queen of anything at all. Father says the Lannisters are holding her hostage against Lady Catelyn and Lord- King- Robb. Father says they are holding Arya captive too, or she is dead and they will not confess it. She heard him talking about it with Maester Luwin once. And Jeyne… no one knows what has happened to Jeyne. Beth did not always like Jeyne- she was always so jealous, always annoyed if Sansa paid anyone but her any attention, so smug about being Sansa’s best friend, but Beth would run and play with her all the same, for only Jeyne really understood. She had no siblings nor a mother either. Father says the Lannisters murdered Jeyne’s father as well, so wherever Jeyne is, she is all alone now.

Beth thinks that would be the most terrible thing. To be all alone like that. She has promised Father she will never, ever leave him- not even when she is wed. She will make her lord husband- for he will surely be a lord, just not a firstborn son- come here to Winterfell instead, and when Father is too old to hold a sword or shield she will sit him by the fire and tell him stories until he falls asleep every night. And she won’t ever leave. As much as she wanted to go south, Winterfell is home. Winterfell is special. Winterfell is where Father was born, where Grandfather was born, and it has been home to the Cassels since the time of Cregan Stark, the one they called the Old Man in the North, even before he was old and grey. 

That is why their house sigil is the wolf as well- or wolf heads, really. Ten white wolf heads on grey, the inverted colors of House Stark. Jory told her it was because they originated from a bastard of House Stark, although no one will admit it. Jory said that when Lord Bennard refused to vacate his regency and allow Cregan to rule the north as a man grown, and there was war within Winterfell, Bennard’s own bastard son turned against his father and trueborn brothers to help the rightful heir take his seat. Turncloak, his own mother called him, but he was well-rewarded for his loyalty, and his own son took the name Cregan Cassel. There have been Cassels in this castle ever since. That is how Jory would tell it, anyways.

Sometimes Beth thinks Father must be sad that he has no sons to carry on his name, but perhaps her husband can take hers, or at least one of their own sons. That way there will still be Cassels. She would name her firstborn son Jory, she’s already decided. She will tell him all about his namesake and how brave and loyal he was, how he died defending Lord Stark, how he was not afraid of monsters, even monsters dressed in gold with longswords. And if she has a daughter she will name her Anya, for the mother she never knew, and she will tell her how she is a descendant of the First Men and the mountain clans and wildlings and bastards but that she is a lady all the same, for her father is a lord. 

So because she has never seen a harvest feast before, she wakes up smiling, and is still smiling while she breaks her fast, crunching her charred bacon between her teeth and kicking her legs back and forth under the table. Father is not smiling; he seldom smiles since the news of Jory, seldom smiles since Lady Catelyn named him castellan and he returned to protect Winterfell. They still take their meals together, but he is busy all day now, either in meetings or training the new recruits. Beth does not think much of the new soldiers. They are mostly scrawny boys, not handsome and broad-shouldered the way Alyn was. Nearly all the strong, experienced men went south to fight the lions. Father says they need to be ready for when winter comes, because the cold and the dark steal strong and weak men alike.

Beth has never seen a winter, of course, although she seen countless snowstorms and blizzards. Old Nan tells her that is nothing compared to the true winter, when no one dares set foot outdoors for years on end, when men scurry underground like mice and babes wither and falter at their mother’s breast and little children vanish into the woods and never return. In the old days the people would make sacrifices to the gods for a shorter season. In the old days all sorts of foul and wicked things were done in the winter and never spoken of again once spring came. Maester Luwin called the comet ‘the sword that slays a season’. Beth hopes there will be a sword to slay the winter as well.

“Father,” she says, as she gulps down the last of her cider. “Mightn’t I go out and check the rabbit traps with Turnip and Palla?”

Beth did not spend nearly so much time with the children of servants before Lord Stark took Sansa and Jeyne and even boyish Arya away, but she hardly has a choice now. Who else would she play with? The Walders? Little Walder’s a fat bully and Big Walder scares her sometimes, he’s so quiet and watchful. She trains her eager stare on Father, who sighs around his mouthful of food, then nods. “You may, but be back in time to greet our guests.” 

The Tallharts and Cerwyns are already here, although Beth often squabbles with Eddara Tallhart, who always wants things done just her way, and can’t even look wistfully anymore at poor Cley with Lord Medger a Lannister captive. Lady Jonelle arrived back in the North not a month past, and Beth has heard tell that Cley spends all his time training at swords now, longing to go south to fight to free his father, while his sister runs the household for him. Were she a boy, Beth would have wanted to go south to fight too, although she knows Father would never have allowed it. She’s never held a real sword, but he taught her how to break free if someone grabbed her by the arm or the hair. Father says women aren’t meant to be warriors the way men are, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t protect themselves, either.

“I will,” she chirps, dashing into her small bedchamber to grab her cloak. She nearly skids by him, then presses a brief kiss to his grizzled cheek, heeding his call for her not to run on the stairs at the very last moment. 

Palla and Turnip are waiting by the hunter’s gate with two of the meanest dogs, the big ones that only really heed Palla or her father’s commands. They are not going very far, but Beth is glad for the dogs all the same. There’s been reports of more wildings south of the wall, although thankfully none near here. Beth knows most of them wouldn’t be nearly foolish enough to stray onto Stark lands, not with news of the direwolves spread well across the North, but it still sends a prickle down her arms. She puts on a brave face instead, as though they were going on some grand adventure for House Stark and not a brief walk to check some snares.

“If’n I saw a wildling, I’d set the dogs on them,” Turnip says boldly as the gate shuts firmly behind them. It’s not cold out, not really, but there is a cool breeze stirring the fallen leaves on the forest floor and plenty of chestnuts and acorns crunching underfoot. Beth giggles while Palla, who is thirteen and tall, her stringy blonde hair confined to a loose braid, just rolls her eyes. 

“Aye, you’d set the dogs on ‘em, Nip? Go on, give Dasha a command then,” she prods with a snicker, nudging him towards the grey bitch. “See how well she listens. Might be she’d rather have you for supper instead of rabbit.”

Turnip sticks his tongue out her in response, then yawns and rubs at his eyes. “Me da says we’ll be up all night cleanin’ pots. Lookit my hands,” he shoves his cracked and callused red palms in Beth’s face. “They sting all the time now, from the cold.”

“Ask the wildlin’ woman for a poultice or potion,” Palla suggests. “They’re all wood witches, ain’t they?”

“Witches aren’t real,” Beth says primly; she rather feels it is her sacred duty to educate them, as the closest Winterfell has to a lady at the moment. After all, Palla can barely write her own name, and Turnip can’t even name his letters- he says they all look like blurry shapes to him. “That’s just one of Old Nan’s stories, you know. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.” Jeyne said very much the same thing to her, which is the same thing Sansa said to Jeyne, a year ago. That is the way it always went. Sansa said something and Jeyne repeated it and Beth always felt like the stupidest one of the lot. 

Except when they were doing needlework or dancing with Arya, who was always the worst at that. Beth never called Arya names the way Jeyne sometimes would, but she did use to laugh. It was just silly. Who ever heard of a lord’s daughter refusing to act like a lady? She would have given anything to switch places with Arya Stark, to have the very best clothes and dolls and hair ribbons. But Arya didn’t care about any of that. What a waste. She does miss Arya sometimes, though. They used to play together when Beth was little; she remembers making a snowman with her, and how Arya gave it a stick sword and a pinecone nose. 

“How would you know what’s real an’ what’s not?” Palla retorts, to Beth’s dismay. She’s just the kennel girl. She should be saying ‘yes, Beth’ and that’s that. Father says Farlen never thinks before he speaks. Palla probably got it from him. That, or her mother. Everyone knows Farlen’s wife ran off with a freerider three years ago. When she’d gone, Palla didn’t leave the kennels for a whole fortnight. Maybe she was just sick of helping to look after the dogs, Beth thinks. She would be. They’re not even pretty, nice dogs. They’re all for hunting or guarding. But Palla acts as though they’re the finest in all the land. She names them all and always has some wriggling puppy in her lap. 

“You’re only ten,” Palla adds, with an impudent, lofty edge. “I’m a woman flowered now, you know. Father’s goin’ to wed me to Red Delyn’s oldest boy when I come of age, an’ then I’ll have a farm all mine own. We’ll have dogs, an’ chickens, an’ sheep-,”

“All of Red Delyn’s sons are ugly,” Beth says under her breath- it’s true, they’re all pox-scarred and thick-bodied, everyone knows it. When she marries, he’ll be handsome as any southern knight. And she won’t have to spend the rest of her life working on some miserable farm out in the middle of nowhere, either. Turnip laughs, then yelps when Palla clouts him round the back of the head with a scowl.

“See if I care,” Palla snaps. “At least I’ll get a husband. Who’re you marryin’? An Umber? They’re all half giant on their mam’s side, Old Nan says-,”

“We got some!” Turnip cheers, interrupting their argument as he dashes forward. Sure enough, the snares have landed them three rabbits and two squirrels. One of the rabbits strangled itself to death on the rope, but the other two are still alive and wriggling. The squirrels seem to have accepted their fate, although they begin to thrash again at the sight of the slavering dogs. 

Palla undoes the snare and lets one of the squirrels loose; the two hounds tear after into the underbrush, barking and snarling. Turnip pulls out an impressively large knife, and turns to the rabbits with a hungry look, before Palla plucks it out of his hand. “You’re too little. You’ll cut yourself to the bone with this, Nips.”

“Not! Fair!” he growls, jumping to reach it as she holds it over her head in exasperation.

“Beth, get the sack ready.”

Beth hates this part, but she did agree to go, if only to get out of the castle for a little while. She sighs and holds open the stained bag as far as it will go. Palla shoves a still whinging Turnip away, then crouches down and slits the rabbits’ throats, one by one. Then she wipes the knife on her faded smock, hands it back to Turnip, and frees the dead rabbits from the snares, dumping each one into the bag with a solid thud. Beth fights not to cringe away at the coppery smell of blood. 

“Don’t you think it’s mean?” she asks when they’re done, and the dogs have returned looking far less hungry, red on their teeth. 

Palla shrugs, and looses the second squirrel, which looks far too skinny and shriveled to be good for eating. This one manages to scurry up a tree before either hound can reach it. “Maybe,” she says. “S’not like we’re killin’ them for fun. You think too much, Beth. Lots of things are easier if you just don’t think. Can’t go around cryin’ over every dead rabbit.”

A twig snaps suddenly nearby, and they all tense and look around. Palla reaches silently for the blade, and Turnip grabs at Beth’s hand; she doesn’t immediately shake him off as usual. 

“If I was a wildling, you’d all already be dead by now,” Benfred Tallhart tells them bemusedly, emerging from behind a tree. 

“Dead, dead, dead,” his little sister proclaims, not three steps behind him. 

Beth huffs in annoyance, Palla wrinkles her freckled nose, and Turnip says, “Only ‘cause the dogs know your smell. Otherwise they’d have been barkin.”

“That must be it,” Benfred smirks; he’s big, and blonde, and wears a hare skin around his shoulders- and on the end of his lance, although he’s not carrying one right now. The Wild Hares, Beth has heard Ser Leobald call them. Roaming around looking for wildlings or bandits to fight, since they couldn’t go south to the war. Fools, Father would call them. Reckless young fools. 

But not that foolish. “Father sent you to keep an eye on us, didn’t he?” Beth accuses.

“He sent me,” Benfred acknowledges. “Dara just couldn’t stay behind.” 

He elbows his sister; Eddara kicks him in the shins in response, then puts her hands on her hips. “I want to go back through the village,” she declares. “They’re crowning the harvest king and queen.”

Beth brightens at the thought of that, despite her irritation. Doesn’t Father know she’s old enough now? She doesn’t need to be watched over every moment. They weren’t in any danger out here; she can still see the grey walls of Winterfell through the trees! Doesn’t he trust her? She’s not a silly girl. She’s always been sensible, or at least she’d like to think so. She’s never blatantly disobeyed him or given him any cause for concern. He’s going to have to accept that she’s not a baby anymore at some point. 

“Let’s go see it, then,” Palla grabs the sack of dead rabbits from Beth and pushes it into Turnip’s skinny arms. “Go run back to your da with this.”

“Why can’t you go?” he cries, indignant.

“Because I’m not like to be beat by Gage for leavin’ him to do all the choppin’ an’ cookin’ himself!” Palla retorts. 

Grumbling himself, Turnip takes the sack and the dogs, glancing back warily as they prowl after him, and makes his way back towards the gate. Beth settles in for the very long walk around the castle towards the winter town. But after a little bit she doesn’t mind; Eddara finds a long stick to drag along the dusty trail, Palla wipes her hands on her smock and flirts with Benfred, and Benfred prattles on and on about all the gossip concerning their guests. 

“The Hornwoods came while you were out catching rabbits,” he says as the distant thatched roofs and ancient chimneys of the winter town come into view. “Well, just the Lady Hornwood and some of her men. She’s having a right fit about the Bolton bastard- so are the Karstarks.” He scowls. “They didn’t come, though, just sent a steward like the Glovers. Lady Hornwood says the Bastard’s tripled his garrison by her reckoning in the past four months, and the Karstark steward’s going on about their hunting parties crossing the Last River and poaching game from Karhold territory. Women, too,” he adds darkly, although Beth doesn’t understand. What does he mean, poaching women?

“If he’s only a bastard, how can he command the Dreadfort’s men?” she questions, kicking a rock out of her way as they come down the hills, skidding and sliding a bit in the long grass and wet mud. “I thought Lady Nell was her father’s heir.” Beth misses Nell; she gave the best advice for needlework and her Flint friend knew the best stories. She wishes they’d stayed. Nell and Robb’s wedding was like something out of one of Old Nan’s tales, the pale bride with the crimson veil and her fair lord and his ferocious wolf waiting for her under the heart tree. It had been magical and beautiful and a bit frightening. She can’t imagine having Lord Bolton for a father; just the sight of him always unnerved Beth. There was no hint of a smile or laughter or even anger in his eyes. No hint of anything at all. 

“Roose Bolton named him castellan before he marched south, the fool,” Benfred says blithely. “You have to wonder if the man’s mad, giving a bastard rights like that, without a trueborn son to put him down. They say Snow’s a savage, if you believe the stories.”

“Oh, we don’t believe any stories here at Winterfell,” Palla mutters sarcastically, glancing at Beth, who flushes but maintains her composure.

“Well,” she says in what she hopes is a firm, mature voice, like a proper lady. “He wouldn’t dare try anything, even if he’s got all those men. Not when Lady Stark left my father in charge.”

“Not with Benfred around,” Eddara is quick to correct. “Your father’s not even landed, Beth. Benfred leads a whole group of lances. Uncle Leo says-,”

Beth is about to say something very unladylike, and tell Eddara exactly where her stupid family who are only masters, not even lords, anyways, can shove it, when they reach the village, just in time to see the procession set off for the wolfswood. It’s not even midday yet, but the villagers will stay in the wood, praying and fasting and dancing round the oldest weirwood they can find, until sundown. Then they’ll come back to light the bonfires and have their own feast. Embers will drift up into the night sky, yearning for the yellow harvest moon overhead.

The harvest queen and king lead the procession, riding matching chestnut palfreys, crowned with autumn leaves and salvaged antlers. They pick a different young man and woman every autumn, but this autumn so many of the men are gone that the harvest king is a boy of ten or eleven, sitting stiff and straight as if he were a man decades older, scarlet leaves brushing against his brow. The harvest queen is a plump girl of fifteen or sixteen, her colorful crown in stark contrast to her dark hair. She’s not beautiful, not like the queens in stories; she has spots on her face and big ears, but in the pale autumn daylight she’s striking nonetheless, holding onto an old scythe bound in ribbons and the last wildflowers, because the king isn’t strong enough to carry it himself without falling off his mount. 

The villagers are singing Autumn of My Day, and it’s so mournful, somehow, that Beth almost feels like she could cry. Even prissy Eddara is chastened and quiet, and Palla stands shoulder to shoulder with Benfred just behind them, watching the crowd walk by, singing and ringing bells and beating drums and wearing their finest clothes. Beth hums along with their chanting as they pass by, and then it grows fainter and fainter as they disappear into the wood, the dead leaves and snarled branches muffling their music, and obscuring them from view. When they return, hours from now, they will come bearing lanterns and candles dripping with wax and oil and light, and the twilight will shrink away, and the dark will cower from their bonfires and their laughter and feasting, if only for this one night. One final rebellion against the coming winter, Jory once told her. That is what the harvest festival means for the people, both high and lowborn. One last toast to the light, and then a sad acceptance of the encroaching night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise? I apologize if it's a jarring shift to go from 20 chapters of Nell's POV to a sudden Beth chapter, but I promise we're not about to do 20 chapters straight of Beth Cassel, either.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I was initially very uncertain of where/when I wanted to introduce a secondary POV. I knew I wanted the chance to introduce it before things in the North really start going downhill, but I also didn't want to interrupt the flow of action in the Riverlands. So bringing in Beth right after Nell learns of her pregnancy and Robb sets off for the westerlands seemed like as good a place as any. I know this chapter technically didn't have any real bearing on the plot beyond Beth hearing rumors about Ramsay getting pretty cocky and pissing off his dad's neighbors, but I did want to set Beth up as a character we will be hearing from.
> 
> 2\. Beth. Writing from the POV of a ten year old is very hard. Especially in ASOIAF, where some ten year olds sound like ancient sages and other ten year olds are still playing with dolls. I decided immediately that I wanted her to be a very stark contrast from Nell in many ways. Beth is sheltered, idealistic, and deeply devoted to her father, who she has a very positive relationship with, despite his protectiveness and her more adventurous dreams. Beth is also in some ways quite lonely, and often feels out of place; she's not a highborn lady, but she's not one of the smallfolk, either. While the Cassels are considered part of the nobility, they're not landed and they do not have the title or rights of lords. Everything they have, they owe to the Starks, which could be a pretty precarious position to be in, given recent events. I've read several fics where Beth is essentially treated as a maid, which seems like a pretty big misunderstanding of her position in my view. She takes a great deal of pride in *not* being a servant, in the fact that her father is a knight, even if she doesn't worship the Seven, and in the idea that she will go on to marry above (but not too drastically above) her station. 
> 
> 3\. I completely made up the Cassel family history. There is no canonical evidence for them being descended from a bastard of Bennard Stark. I got the idea from their colors being the Stark ones inverted (white on grey, rather than grey on white). I doubt we're ever going to hear much about their origins in canon, so I'm not too worried about that being completely wrong. I did not make up the fact that Ser Rodrik married multiple times, had multiple daughters, and that all his wives and daughters died (presumably young) aside from Beth. Because of this I reasoned that she is probably the most precious thing in his life, and even Beth is aware that with Jory dead, there's a good chance that her line will come to an end with her.
> 
> 4\. I like the kids of Winterfell. I wish we had got to see more of them in canon through Bran's POV before everything went to shit. I also wish the main series showed us more of the lives of the smallfolk. (I know we get into the lives of servants through Arya's POV in the books but I'm not sure how typical of an experience serving at Harrenhal under Tywin and then Roose is compared to your average peasant's life). We don't get any religious practices in the North mentioned in the books beyond meditating/praying under a heart tree and sacrifices to the old gods, so I decided to add some harvest celebration stuff. Given how long the seasons are in this world, it seems like the ending of one season would be a Very Big Deal, for both the nobility and the commoners. 
> 
> 5\. Ramsay's nonsense. Daryn Hornwood is still alive and well, so there is not an immediate crisis over the Hornwood line of succession. Does that mean people aren't still eyeing up those lands? Of course not, since Daryn's survival in this war is hardly guaranteed and Lady Donella doesn't seem to have much in the way of defenses against greedy neighbors. That said, Ramsay's not a moron, and if I were him I would be less eager to make any blatant moves so long as the risk-reward factor isn't looking so great with Daryn still alive and kicking and House Stark still maintaining a firm grip on their ruling power. But it's still, you know, Ramsay, so he's amassing men and starting shit at the borders of the Hornwood and Karstark lands, pretty much testing what he can get away with and knowing that most of the houses are in a fairly weakened state. 
> 
> 6\. Timeline- chapters will continue to be in chronological order, even with multiple POVs. So when I jump to Beth, it will still always take place after (or about the same time as) whatever just happened in a Nell chapter. This is to avoid major confusion on all our parts.


	22. Donella XXI

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell first sets foot in a sept a fortnight after Robb leaves with the majority of the northmen. She may have never stepped inside Winterfell’s small sept or even glanced in the direction of White Harbor’s during her visits to the city, but she is not completely caught off guard. Sara educated her on the ways of the Faith as well, since she was to marry Robb, a southerner’s son. Granted, Robb went on to favor his father’s religion, certainly when he married her and led the northerners south for war, but he still offered his prayers in this very same sept before he left. Nell had waited outside, a hand momentarily resting on her belly. 

She was certainly not showing then, and she is not showing now, but from the occasional glances the Waldas spare her, she is certain at least some of her ladies are beginning to suspect. It is difficult to disguise her sudden aversion to certain foods, and her frequent absences due to sickness. If she concentrates while studying herself naked in her looking glass, she thinks she can make out a slight outward curve of her stomach, but it is completely hidden under dresses and skirts. She wishes Robb had been here long enough to see it. Part of her even misses Grey Wind’s familiar hot weight spread across her covers at night. 

Robb had spent the dawn before he set off sitting next to her in bed, for as long as he dared tarry, studying her as if trying to memorize the sight. “You’re not going to return to find me with extra limbs or a pair of wings,” she’d mocked him, then kissed his neck very carefully while he breathed deeply, his hands moving up and down her spine as if trying to pluck out a tune on the harp. “Come back in time for the birth,” she’d ordered him in a whisper then. “I shan’t be able to celebrate a victory without you.”

“Eddard,” he’d told her, solemnly but hopefully at the same time. “If- if it is a son, I should like to name him for my father. We don’t have to call him Ned, but-,”

“Eddard,” Nell had smiled smoothly, to show him how unworried, how calm she was. “Our Edd.” It will be, she’d promised him silently then, and known he’d understood, an Eddard. A son. Robb was going to cleave the Westerlands in two and route Stafford and rouse Tywin and in return she was going to give them a healthy, strong son, a prince. Prince Eddard. It had a certain regal sound to it, she’d thought, and still thinks. And would that not restore some joy to her good mother? Her firstborn grandchild, named for her husband? It would be wonderful. It was going to be wonderful. It would begin to set things right again. 

Of course, even with a son, it will not magically cease the fighting and see them all back home before winter comes. Nell knows that. She was raised wiser than to pin all her hopes on a babe with the right parts. But she cannot help but cling to it all the same, the way a drowning man might a raft. She feels so useless sometimes, so helpless, tucked away behind the walls of Riverrun, unable to go out riding and hunting as she used to, unable to see men like the Mountain or Lorch hanged, unable to simply force them all to do what she thinks best, wisest. Her worth cannot solely lie in arranging marriages and sewing new clothes for the winter, surely. 

But when she is a mother, she thinks, she will be something to someone, other than Robb’s Bolton wife. She will be the future King of the North’s mother, forever, irrevocably. Friends come and go, marriages fail regularly, even when they produce children, but one cannot unmake a child, unmake a mother. Nell likes the idea of that. She still does not feel much attachment to the babe yet, but that is only natural, since it has not yet quickened. She will soon, she regularly reassures herself. She will, and once she feels them move in her and pushes them out and holds them in her arms, she will love them just as fiercely as she’s ever loved anything. As much as her mother loved her. 

All very sweet thoughts to have, to be sure, but it did not stop her from crying when Robb went. Not in public, of course- she’d rather be dead than ever hear whispers about their queen weeping in front of an audience- but afterwards, when she had a few precious moments alone, she did. Embarrassing, heaving sobs. She was almost perplexed by them. Yes, she cares about Robb, wants him to be safe, is afraid for him, but- It’s not love, she reminds herself sharply. It’s not. Love is something safe, comfortable. People can fall in love when they have nothing else to worry about. It’s not like a parent’s love for a child, romance is different, it’s a choice one makes. 

She is absolutely no condition to go about ‘falling’ or ‘slipping’ or even ‘easing’ into anything like that. Robb doesn’t love her, and she doesn’t love him. He cares for her, of course he does, anyone can see that, and he is protective of her, enjoys her company, wants her to be happy, but that is because he is a good man, who would feel much the same for any woman he were wed to. He was raised to be like that. If they had ever been free to choose, she knows he would not have been close to her first pick, nor she his. 

And that’s alright. But he doesn’t love her. He may, eventually, when the war is over, and she is not adverse to the possibility of it happening for her as well. Barbrey always told her women loved far more easily than men, that it was important to never let yourself love a man whose affections you were uncertain of, to protect herself. He might love her after she gives him a son, and sometimes, at night, she even lets herself dawdle on the fantasy of it all. Perhaps he even told himself he loved her, before he left. But he did not say it, and that is just like Robb, who would never want to lie to his wife. He might have thought it, it might have crossed his mind in the pleasant haze of emotions surrounding the news of the pregnancy, but people think all sorts of things and that does not make them true.

So there was really no reason for her to cry so. It would have been mortifying for anyone to see her in such a state. It has to be the babe. Pregnancy addles a woman’s emotions, it’s well known. She’ll be weeping at the thought of the dead fish on her plate, next thing she knows. She can’t say much for her enjoyment of this much far- neither the pregnancy nor the wedding ceremony playing out before her. But she is the queen of the North and the Trident and all the Riverlands now, and these are her people, and these are their gods, and so she is sitting in the first pew in between Edmure and the Bracken sisters, watching Hendry take Tyta to wife.

Sitting inside a sept itself is a rather curious experience, and she is not the only guest to look perplexed. Dana keeps shifting in the row behind her, and Jory is standing stiffly in the dappled, rainbow shadow of one of the stained glass windows, regarding the marble altars with a mixture of fascination and wariness, as if the statues might come to life at any moment and attack. To depict the old gods in such a form- or any form- would be akin to blasphemy for a northerner. The gods are just that. Gods. 

They do not take the shape of man or woman or even animals, although one can certainly find signs of them in a flock of birds winging across the sky at sunset or the rushing of a river or children gathering wildflowers deep in the wood. But they are not- people. They do not have separate identities, not really. They are simply present, numerous and individual all at once. One cannot pluck a single grain of sand or drop of rain or snowflake between their fingers. The same goes for the old gods. 

For southerners, their faith must be clearly outlined and delineated, with strict lists of vices and virtues. The old gods revile some acts as well- slavery, incest, kinslaying, broken oaths, be they vows of loyalty or even guest right, but it is not the same as confessing one’s sins to a septon or praying for penance. The old gods do not seek penance. They take their retribution where they can find it, and there is no fiery hell waiting for the men who have dishonored them, only a foul end and a slow rot, ultimately nothingness.

Still, Nell can see a certain appeal to the artistry and solemnity of the sept itself, as much as she is bored by the septon’s dry tones and the whisper of his robes and the smell of the incense. Riverrun’s sept is small, but it is beautiful all the same, and clearly tended to well, with fresh flowers and candles burning brightly beneath every altar. There are even shells and reeds from the rivers left at their stone feet in offering. The bride and groom stand betwixt the Father and the Mother, although to Nell the figures hold no special meaning and seem just a marble man and woman, looking down at a smaller, flesh and blood version of themselves.

The Father is stern and tall, with a mature man’s thick beard rippling down his chest and a set of scales held aloft in one hand as if in warning. The Mother is soft and almost plump in her rendering by comparison, smiling serenely, one hand on the swell of her belly under her flowing robes, the other outstretched as if to beckon a child closer. The Father’s eyes are deep green emeralds, almost black from a distance, and the Mother’s are twinkling sapphires, glowing bluer and bluer in the pale lighting of the sept. 

After so long staring at them, it’s beginning to unnerve her. Nell imagines southerners must feel like this in a godswood, although Riverrun’s godswood is little more than a splendid garden, especially in the light of day. Finally, the service concludes as the septon pronounces them wed, and Nell catches her wandering thoughts in time to smile politely, ignore the ache in her temple from her iron circlet, and applaud along with everyone else. There are far more people there for Hendry than Tyta, aside from the Frey women already present, and Nell is glad of it. There is to be a small feast and some dancing, hardly enough to satiate an entire horde that would descend from the Twins. 

After the happy couple, Nell is next to leave the sept, taking Edmure’s offered arm. She has warmed to Robb’s uncle; although he often comes across as younger than his twenty four years. She supposes that is due to being born so long after his sisters. They were both women wed sent off to live with their respective husbands when he was still a child himself. Manhood came slow to him, coming of age in peace times, with apparent little pressure to wed immediately from his ailing father. Nell has heard rumors that Hoster Frey was once pushing for a Martell match for him. Perhaps he ought to have pushed a little harder, for then Edmure would not be betrothed to a Frey.

Nell reminds herself, as she half-listens to the chatter around her, that she must press him to publicly make a decision soon, or Lord Walder may grow impatient. She is certain it will be Roslin, judging by how much time he spends around her, often under Nell’s own chaperonage. She thinks that should be a happy enough marriage. Edmure has the Tully pride; he would rile at a more severe, haughty, or even commanding wife. For example, had Nell wed Edmure she is certain it would have been a disaster. Robb is not one to simply roll over and bark for her, but he does listen, is willing to admit he was wrong, which is more than many men could say to their wives. 

But Roslin is not all sweet meekness and mild as milk, either. Nell does not think any of the Freys are, even the more reserved girls. They are not a very demure family, after all. Roslin has brothers to protect her, but she can stand her ground when needed. Nell has seen her go toe to toe with Fair Walda or Zia more than once, particularly when it comes to cruel words or gossip. Roslin is honest, above all. Nell almost admires her for it. That girl could not tell a lie if you had a sword to her throat. 

At the ensuing feast she dances with Edmure and with Hendry and with Lord Bracken himself, and a few other knights, but it is terribly warm in the hall and she is eventually able to beg pardon to any future partners and resume her seat. Dana is looking at her as if she might faint, which only makes Nell scowl briefly at her and raise an eyebrow in challenge. “Fine,” Dana mutters, shrugging in surrender, “but don’t come crying to me if the room starts spinning round because you wouldn’t loosen your bloody stays… Your Grace.”

Nell debates throwing a roll of bread at her, but is then sidetracked by absolutely insisting that Alyx dance a round with Kirth Vance. She and Alyx came to a quick understanding when Nell helped her brew her own moon tea. “I am not a septa,” she’d told her, and a few of the older girls as well, “women have needs as men do, and I know you are not all trembling maids still. I will not shame you or dismiss you outright if you slip into bed with a squire… or an Ironborn. But if you cannot be discreet, do not expect me to rise to your defense. You will go straight back to the Twins if you wish to play games with stupid boys. I’ll not stand idly by and watch you get with bastards. Do what you will, but do it quietly, sparingly, and for the love of the gods, wash it down with moon tea.”

Their actions reflect back on her, as bothersome as it might be to play the governess. She will not be known for keeping loose ladies around, and she will not have some fool Frey complaining that their queen did not guard his daughter or sister’s virtue well enough. Even now she is careful to sit straight-backed and serene in her seat of honor, trying to pretend as though she does not feel like a child playing make-believe in Robb’s absence. 

When she stood by his side as his queen consort, it was one thing. Robb earned that crown, as much as she might dislike it. She has done and little and less to warrant her own. Were she still just Lady Nell, she might relax and laugh and talk with everyone else. Instead she is the only royalty in the room, a title she was not born to and did not snatch up through conquest, either. Many little girls dream of being a princess or queen, aye, but eventually they reach an age where they understand that the list of queens and princesses who got their happy endings is very, very short. Look to Rhaella Targaryen, or Elia Martell, or even the exiled princess, Daenerys. And they were all born to their high titles, yet met such miserable ends. 

That will not be her fate, though, she thinks firmly. Not her. She will live to see an, if not happy end, at least a peaceful one. And whether her son is Lord of Winterfell or King of the North, he will know her. She has thought about the birthing bed a few times here and there, but it easier to just glance over it in her head. Most women would go mad if they spent all their pregnancies dwelling and dreading such a thing. It is a battle, as everyone says, and there is no point in brooding over it. One lives or one dies. Her own mother lived through so many doomed births; it was never her death. She will be fine.

One of the few positives of being queen, however, is that one can leave a wedding before the bedding ceremony without it seeming discourteous. Queens are expected to be chaste and gentle-mannered, are they not? They can hardly expect her to join the throng of women trying to yank off Hendry’s clothes, shouting and shrieking with laughter. Since Jory is among said women, pink-faced and giggling, Edmure abstains from the ceremony himself in order to escort her and Dana back to her rooms, ever the chivalrous knight, for all his fondness for drink. Perhaps because of this, Nell softens a bit more towards him as he goes on about how Hendry was so nervous he nearly vomited before they entered the sept, and when they reach her door, she lets Dana slip in ahead to make sure the torches are lit, than turns back to him.

“Speaking of illness, if you find me increasingly sickly these next months, you should not be alarmed,” Nell says frankly, then seeing his confused look, chance a small smile. “I am expecting a child. Your great-nephew, if the gods are good.”

“Truly?” Edmure is almost childishly delighted, although they barely know one another, and she flushes all the same. He moves as if to embrace her, then hesitates, and instead kisses her on the cheek instead. “That’s wonderful news, Donella. Robb must have been thrilled-,” he frowns, “he does know, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” Nell replies dryly. “I am not so cold-hearted as to leave my own husband in the dark, Ser.” Then she exhales in amusement. “I had not wanted to pronounce it to the court until I was a little further along, but many will have seen that I did not touch much of my wine tonight.” Maesters are nowhere near as united on their opinions on drinking during pregnancy as they are about horseback riding, to her annoyance, but Barbrey always told her, on the advice of a midwife, that water or milk was best for the babe, and that she should avoid spiced liquors in particular. Then again, they also say too much cinnamon or peppercorn will make a babe come early.

“In the morning, when we hold audience,” Edmure suggests. “It would be a boon to people’s spirits, surely. Roslin has mentioned that some of the women in particular were distraught to see the northerners go west. Although I’ve assured her,” and here he does straighten with pride a little, “that we shall never fall to the likes of any Lannister. Riverrun is quite secure.”

“It is, but they’re are afraid all the same,” Nell admits. “I cannot blame them- particularly not the Bracken girls. What Barbara and Jayne endured… It is horrific. They are terrified it will happen again, that their security will be ripped out from under them. They felt safer here when Robb and his men remained, when we had a direwolf roaming the halls, frightening as it could be.” I felt safer here, she thinks, and ignores the ache in her chest. Her fretting like an old woman will not bring Robb back any sooner. She should be praying for his victory in battle, not wishing he were warming her bed again. 

“But you may have the right of it,” she acknowledges. “It… it is not just my child, it is their future king, someday long from now, I pray. They should know.” It is a risk, she thinks. She is just nine weeks gone. If she loses it… But she can’t think like that, she can’t. The pregnancy has been annoying but normal thus far. She is young and healthy. And there will always be risks. Women lose babes at birth all the time. It will help her as queen, for them to know she is fertile, that she carries an heir. And she cannot deny there is a certain smug appeal to the thought of Tywin Lannister finally hearing news of it in a few weeks time, when they hold his own prized son in their dungeon.

After Edmure has bid her goodnight, still smiling over the thought of it, Nell steps into her chambers, removes her crown with a sigh, and massages her scalp while Dana brings in two of her maids to help them both undress for bed. It is a little odd to go back to her girlish days of having a friend for a bedmate, rather than a husband, but at least Dana does not talk in her sleep the way Robb sometimes does. He says the strangest things, as well. She wonders what in the world he dreams. She hopes they are nothing like hers. 

“You think the Vances will agree to take Alyx, then?” Dana asks her once they are both reclining, her in the window seat, watching the river run silver in the autumn moonlight, and Nell lying back on the bed, her hair a tangled mess under her, listening to the breeze occasionally rattle at the roof. “Kirth seemed besotted enough with those Braavosi looks.”

“Alyx is charming,” Nell says mildly, “well-spoken, and clever. I should think that would be enough for him to overlook the fact that her father is a seventh son and her mother a merchant’s daughter.”

“Short betrothals for these Freys, aye?” Dana snorts. “Seems almost preferable, if you ask me. I had to spend years listening to you harp on about _Robb Stark_ and how you were never going to humble yourself for _Robb Stark_ and how _Robb Stark_ had best learn to be a biddable husband-,”

“Yes, your point has been made,” Nell rolls her eyes. “Excuse me for being a bit preoccupied with my future marriage as a young girl. However did you bear it? I know marriage is such a dirty word for you-,”

Dana sucks in a breath at that, which Nell ignores. “You do not have to wed a northman, you know, if none of them have been to your liking. You are my first and foremost lady in waiting. I am certain we could arrange a match for you here in the Riverlands- a firstborn son, truly, Dana, I would not pass you off on some man’s spare-,”

“No,” says Dana shortly. “Nell, I’ve told you-,”

Nell wrinkles her brow, propping herself up on her elbows. “You are hardly getting any younger- neither of us are.” Her eighteenth name day came a few days after Robb left, and Dana will be eighteen herself in a few short months. She has been of age to wed for years now. Nell hardly is of the belief that any woman over sixteen is an old maid, but come nineteen or twenty without even a betrothal, and people do begin to whisper, particularly if the woman does not stand to inherit anything herself. “You could have as long a betrothal as you desire, truly-,”

“I said I will not,” Dana snaps, and the silence between the two of them is sharp indeed.

Nell sits up all the way. Dana is avoiding her eyes, staring out the window, her chin resting on her knees. She looks younger like that, a girl, really, and Nell lets her shoulders relax. “I didn’t mean to pressure you. I only- you are my dearest friend, Danelle, a sister, truly, and I want to see you settled and happy, if I can. You deserve to be lady of your own keep, with your own servants and household, not spending the rest of your days following after me.”

“I should make a piss-poor lady of any keep,” Dana says stiffly. “That was for my sisters, not for me. I am not- you were born to do things like this. Rule. You have the blood of the Red Kings. I’m one Flint of near a hundred, Nell. There’s a dozen girls near identical to me, truly.”

“That does not make you any less capable or wise,” Nell retorts. She rises from the bed and draws near the window, puts her hand on Dana’s skinny arm. “You are too hard on yourself. I know it might seem intimidating, but- But you are a highborn lady, you were raised for such things. No man could count himself ill-favored to have you as a wife. You’re witty, and fierce, and loyal-,”

“I would not be suitable, trust me.” Dana still will not look at her, but then she shakes her head a little. “I’m sorry for my insolence, Your Grace.” She is only half-jesting.

Nell embraces her instead, and after a moment Dana returns the favor. “Your apology is accepted, my good lady.”

She sleeps well enough that night, and in the morning she bathes and sees her hair brushed to lustre and dons her crown anew. They may have little hope from Balon Greyjoy, for Theon ought to have reached Pyke by now, and they may be awaiting nothing but scorn from Tyrion Lannister, who reports say now holds the office of Hand, and Catelyn is still traveling for Bitterbridge, with an uncertain future there.

But for one brief moment Nell feels secure, confident, powerful as queen, when she stands before them all, bleary-eyed from a night of drinking and dancing, and calmly announces that she and His Grace the King are expecting a babe. She sits back down in her high-backed seat as the hall erupts with cheers and applause, spots of color emerging on her pale cheeks, and wonders if this is how Robb felt, whenever men cheered and shouted his name. 

Then she begins to think about how to make this a more frequent sensation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I know this was another fairly calm and uneventful chapter, but I didn't want to do any drastic time jumps, and the truth is, we don't have that much canon information about what's going on at Riverrun while Robb is headed west and Catelyn is headed south. Edmure and Nell are pretty much just holding the fort down for the time being while Tywin still holds Harrenhal. Things are going to start to pick back up again soon, I promise.
> 
> 2\. Nell is pulling an 'I Won't Say (I'm in Love)' straight of the Alan Menken playbook, yes. I think it is very difficult for her to reconcile the idea of romantic love and platonic respect and even sexual attraction all within the same relationship. The only real 'happy couple' she's ever been around is Ned and Cat, and her time with them was pretty short-lived. She was raised by Barbrey, who obviously is not someone who really advises prioritizing love in one's marriage. It's easier for Nell to think, 'well, once I give him children and the war is over, maybe then we could fall in love and have that sort of fantasy relationship' than to reckon with the fact that what she feels for Robb might not just be pregnancy hormones and proximity.


	23. Donella XXII

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell first feels the babe quicken while negotiating over rights to the village green. How this came to be is simple, really- she cannot go out riding or hunting, Edmure is loathe to let her leave the safety of Riverrun at all, and she did promise Robb she would be careful. But she is not so far along in the pregnancy that they might think to shut her up in some dark room yet, and Nell is determined to make the most of what free time she has. So when she is not reading or practicing the high harp or sewing or writing letters- because regular correspondence is expected from any lady, and certainly a queen- she has decided that, well, if she is to rule, or at least reign, she ought to be able to hold her own audiences. 

The trick is how to do this in a manner that is not going to have people murmuring about her shutting her husband’s uncle out of his own hall or solar. She comes to much the same conclusion Good Queen Alysanne did; hold women’s courts. It’s hardly a novel concept; the vast majority of petitioners before any given lord will always be male. Men speak on behalf of their families, villages, or towns. Most women would not dare approach their ruling lord themselves, unless they were truly desperate or prominent widows. At the Dreadfort, willing visits from the smallfolk were very rare indeed. A peaceful land, a quiet people meant that the smallfolk did not approach Roose Bolton for judgment on a matter unless they truly had no other choice. 

Gods be good, why would anyone willingly seek out the rule of a man known for taking tongues and maidenheads? Her father was not their protector. They did not respect him; they feared him. Father would say respect and fear are intertwined, and he may be right, but Barbrey taught her that men will obey out of fear. But they will only rise to your defense out of respect. One thousand sullen, reluctant soldiers only forming lines out of fear of being hanged for desertion may make a tolerable fighting force. One hundred fiercely devoted men willing to lay down their lives for you in an instant makes a far better one. Her aunt was never beloved by the people of Barrowton, but she was respected, defended, firmly above reproach in their eyes.

These women may never fight for her, but if they respect her, it is worth more than men might assume. Even women of the smallfolk can wield influence in their communities. Certainly during a war, when most of the men in their prime who would otherwise be leading them are gone. After the Dance, Westeros had more widowed ladies in high positions of power than it knew what to do with. Many of them were reluctant to immediately remarry, and not just out of enduring love for their late lords. Sara once japed, while instructing her on history, that they might have been far better off with each kingdom ruled by widows. Of course, Visenya was a widow while she plotted Maegor’s bloody path to the throne, but Nell still sees the point.

It has been a little over a month since they had a raven with news that Robb is forging a path into the westerlands. He should be passing through the Golden Tooth, but the news was vague, and for good reason, in case the raven was shot down by Lannister men. Nell does not think Robb will stay on the river road all the way to Casterly Rock. He’d be almost immediately waylaid and surrounded by westermen. She suspects he will try to use the mountains for cover instead. It will be a hard, frustrating journey; very few of the men he is with are familiar with the area, and it’s very easy to get waylaid and lost, even with scouts riding ahead. But it is what he will do, she thinks. Robb prefers a quiet ambush to a blatant confrontation. Thus far it has served him well, because the men he has been warring with note his youth, and believe it will make him short-sighted, impulsive, and eager for glory, sure to take the most direct route, the biggest risks. And other boys of fifteen likely would. But he is clever, and patient. Even if it takes them weeks and weeks of hard travel, even if men grow frustrated upon seeing no battle beyond a few skirmishes, he will wait, and then strike when they least expect it.

She is glad of it. Cunning, patient men tend to die much later in life than the ones seeking immediate recognition of their valor. 

To further set her guests at ease, she is holding court in the godswood. Far from the view of the heart tree where she sacrificed a young goat not a week past. Such things are not brought up in polite conversation, but there are rumors of Stark’s heathen wife practicing witchcraft to her tree gods nonetheless. Nell is not particularly bothered by them since they have yet to take on a directly malicious slant, only one of horrified fascination or incredulity. She will not deny it, nor will she shout it from the roof tops. The pregnancy has gone well enough thus far; her vomiting has lessened as of late, although her breasts are still tender and sore most of the time, and her back often aches. She will not risk it by abandoning her faith now. 

But nor does she wish to develop a reputation akin to Mad Danelle Lothston or Shiera Seastar. Nell is not nearly beautiful enough, she will admit, to counter any rumors of black arts and bathing in blood the way the Seastar could. Lucky bitch. Had she been covered in moles or with sagging teats or had crooked teeth they would have had her charred to a crisp on a pyre within weeks, Targaryen-blooded or not. No wonder she never wed. Look at what they did to Serala Darklyn, who was not even accused of witchcraft, only a silver tongue and a beguiling smile. Shiera likely thought if she wed Bloodraven and he fell against Daemon Blackfyre, they’d have her roasting over a fire or fed to wild dogs before sundown. 

So she breaks from her usual mourning black- for it has not yet been seven months since Ned Stark was killed, and she stands with Robb in his grief, even when apart- to wear a more palatable shade of grey-blue, still modest and unassuming, but perhaps a bit more maidenly. Well, as maidenly as a woman thirteen weeks with child can be. She is still not far along enough for it to really show unless she is sitting or standing a very specific way with the light fabric of her gowns flattened taut against her belly, but now that everyone is aware she can hardly go a few minutes without some query or concern or advice related to it. Always ‘have you heard this’ or ‘Your Grace, you might try this’ or ‘when I was with my fifth child, I found that…’

At first it was bemusing, even endearing. Nell is not used to being fawned over so. Barbrey was not inclined towards an overabundance of affection, even when Nell was ill as a child. She was a Ryswell; the Ryswells believed the cure for most ailments, be they physical or not, was brisk exercise and a rousing argument. Now it seems all anyone wants to talk to her is about how she is feeling, her aches and pains, whether her bowel movements are regular, whether she is getting enough sleep, is she carrying low or high? Does she feel flushed more often than not? What has she been eating? Is she moving around too much? Not enough? Perhaps she ought to rest her eyes- reading during pregnancy is unhealthy for the babe. Listening to lively music is unhealthy for the babe. Sleeping with open windows is unhealthy for the babe. Hot baths are unhealthy for the babe. Cold baths are unhealthy for the babe. If even half of this is true, Nell has no idea how anyone has ever managed to successfully carry a child to term, because clearly it is all madness balanced on the head of a needle.

Now, leaning over a rough map of the village most directly under Riverrun’s rule, Nell feels the strange fluttering, twisting sensation, pause momentarily in surprise, and resists the impulse to put a hand to her belly as she straightens up. “We’ve the right of it, Your Grace,” the hardened woman of fifty odd years before her states. Maren is the village headwoman, and the only head at all with most of the men off to fight. She’s diminutive and bony, with greying auburn hair pulled back under a faded scarf, but the vast majority of the common women gathered seem to look to her before saying anything bold. Not counting her own ladies, Nell estimates there are near fifty village women or girls present at the moment, some sitting on blankets on the grass, other standing and chatting, a few timidly approaching Dana or Jory from time to time, who likely seem more personable than many of the Frey girls.

“We’re not about to set them out to the wood to starve,” Maren continues shortly, “but the extra cattle is more trouble than not- the green can’t take that much grazing, we’ll have nothing but dry dust, and the grass isn’t coming in as rich as it was, what with the autumn-,”

“Yes,” says Nell, still unsettled by the movement she just felt. 

Any settlement north of High Heart or Raventree Hall has been swamped with refugees from the southern half of the Riverlands. The land around Harrenhal and the God’s Eye may as well be a desert waste. People are always loathe to leave their homes, especially if they are small crofters, but no one is willing to chance an encounter with the Mountain and his men. And the Riverlands is populous as it is, even with the recent thousands slaughtered by the Lannisters’ initial invasion. The village of Riverrun has gone from three hundred to near six hundred alone. Some of the smallfolk were able to move their cattle with them. While it might initially seem like a boon…

“You’ll have to draw straws,” she says, already anticipating the look of distaste on Goodwife Maren’s face. “No one will like it, I’m aware, but this squabbling over who has rights to the green must end, or you’ll have disputes all autumn, and go into winter with ill-fed, weak cattle and people at each other’s throats. Draw straws, and rotate. Hold out as long as you can until it’s time to slaughter and store the meat as efficiently as possible. I will send as many men as I can spare to help with the construction of the new homes and barns.”

“My people wager they ought to have first rights. This is our land,” Maren says stiffly. “We feel for the newcomers, truly, but-,”

“You are all rivermen and women, are you not?” Nell exhales, adjusting her circlet momentarily. “The lost harvests are going to mean a hard winter as it is. We cannot send these people back to burned homes and ruined fields and Tywin Lannister’s pack of reavers. I will not lose any more workers to Harrenhal. And we cannot afford to lose cattle either. Start the slaughtering early if you must. I will ask Lord Edmure to send out a scout to try to locate any meadows in the wood we may have overlooked. Then you could have a north and south pasture.”

“We’d need another bridge to move them ‘cross the Red Fork, Your Grace.”

“Then we’ll build one,” Nell says, trying to sound as if this will all be easily resolved with a few firm words here and there. In truth, she feels as though she is simply making things up as she goes. But what else can she do? They came to her, and she ought to feel some measure of honor for that, that they would show her such trust. She is not sure that northerners would be so quick to embrace a southern queen the way the Riverlands has a Stark and a Bolton, ugly rumors about her heritage aside. 

That is not the only matter brought up, of course, just one of the more pressing. After a little while, and with some prodding from the likes of Arwyn or Fat Walda, women or girls come up her, a few heavy with child themselves or with small children in their arms, and… tell her things. Not things they want her to necessarily solve or rectify, just… as if it were some confession. Dead husbands, parents, children. Destroyed homes their family had maintained for centuries. Rapes. So many rapes. One girl describes hiding in a well with her sister to avoid a group of soldiers that spent near two hours amusing themselves with the neighboring women. Another tells her how Amory Lorch found some of her village’s children hiding in a barn loft and set the building ablaze to lure out their mothers and fathers from their own hiding places. 

Another tells her that she miscarried after falling down a flight of stone steps running from soldiers. Another tells her that the Mountain rode her father and brother down in the fields where they worked, then set them alight. Another tells her that she and her cousins spent two days being pressed into service dumping corpses into the river until they managed to escape. “They float, Your Grace,” the girl said dully. “But the current don’t take them all downstream, it don’t. So we had to wade in with poles an’ push them.” Yet another informs her that Tywin Lannister came to the Crossroads Inn and hanged Masha Heddle for letting Catelyn Stark take the Imp prisoner, then let his men fall on the guests and workers. 

None of this ought to surprise Nell. And it doesn’t, not really. But it is one thing to hear vague reports from the mouth of scouts or men like the Blackfish, and quite another to hear it from eye-witnesses. My fault, some part of her thinks numbly, although how could it be? She is not responsible for any of this. She did not ask for this war, or this position, or these circumstances. Yet she thinks it all the same. She is their queen. They are coming to her and telling her these tales because she is a queen, and that is supposed to mean that she ought to do something about it. She truly understands the trap now. The temptation to raise a host and march on Harrenhal, strategy be damned. The desire for revenge, the burning want to do something, anything, to prove to them that this will not go unanswered. But she cannot. She cannot answer these injustices for them. Not now. Perhaps not ever. 

Afterwards, once they have been fed and sent on their way, Nell walks the triangular keep of Riverrun with Roslin and Jory; she has been trying to make an effort to spend more time with the girl who is now formally Edmure’s betrothed, and Dana is off somewhere with Marianne and Alyx, likely not practicing their needlework as they were said they were going to, and instead loitering in the kitchens or trying to spy a glimpse of the Kingslayer down in the dungeons. Nell may be the one with child, but it is Roslin who has been glowing as of late, every step near a dance, looking as though she might burst into song. 

“Had I any idea you would be so besotted with Edmure, I would have insisted he ask for your hand much sooner,” Nell says dryly, and Roslin pinkens, but cannot hide her smile.

“He is a good man,” she says simply, as if that explains everything there is to say on the matter. “I- I am grateful that he has been able to overlook the circumstances of our match.”

“His quarrel has always been with Lady Catelyn, not you,” Nell replies. “It is not easy for a proud man to accept that his sister sold him in marriage so we might cross a bridge. Though I daresay he was halfway to forgiving her the moment he laid eyes upon you, Ros.”

“Don’t say that,” Roslin is so pale, she reddens all the more, fidgeting with her hands slightly. “I- I feel terrible about it, as it is. I- I am one of Lord Walder’s daughters, aye, but… He is a Tully. He would normally never have wed someone from my house. I am-,”

“If you tell me you are beneath his favor, I shall have Jory pick you up and throw you into the river,” Nell rolls her eyes.

“I wouldn’t,” Jory calls from behind them, then adds, “begging your pardon, Your Grace.”

“Treason,” Nell mutters, but smirks. 

“I am so pleased, of course,” Roslin says quickly. “Edmure- he has never held any of it against me. Not my family, not my station, nor… well, they say things about us. The women.”

“That you are not maids,” Nell is not going to dawdle around the matter. “You know my feelings on the matter. Regardless of whether-,”

“I am a maid,” Roslin blurts out in mortification, then presses her lips together, before allowing, “You ought to know, Your Grace- Donella. Fair Walda loves Black Walder.”

Nell glances at her sharply. “Her uncle?”

“He is… familiar with many of my nieces and good sisters,” Roslin allows, gaze shadowed. “Including Arwyn and Shirei’s mother, before she died.”

“So you tell me that Fair Walda lies with her own uncle, and Wyn and Shirei may be bastards.” Nell keeps her voice low, but casual, so no passing guard or servant might look amiss. “I confess, I do not know whether to thank you or scream, Ros.”

“She thinks that one day, if- if he could inherit the Twins, he might wed her for true,” Roslin says carefully. “That is what I’ve heard her telling Zia, at least. She- that is why she has been most loathe to be here. She does love him, even if…”

“She resents the thought of me attempting to wed her to another. How long have they been carrying on like this?” Nell is irritated, of course, but less shocked than she perhaps should be. She has met the notorious Black Walder before; he is fighting with Robb in the westerlands at present. The thought of the man sleeping with his own kin is not terribly surprising. His temper, though- she would not want to be on the wrong side of that. If the man had a wife, he’d beat her bloody regularly. Fair Walda may not realize her own fortune that she cannot wed him.

“Since she flowered, I think,” Roslin murmurs. “I heard- once her father caught him coming back from her rooms, but- Walton is no fighter, he would never dare openly challenge Black Walder.”

Nell wonders then, if Fair Walda loves the man because he might wed her someday, incest be damned, or because the idea of him wedding her has been something to cling to, after years of him slipping into her bedchambers at night to take his pleasure. She does not see how a maid of twelve or thirteen might have ‘invited’ a man who was at least twenty at the time into her bed. Sometimes people love because the only other option is fear, or hate, or dread, so it is easier to love and obey and pretend things are alright

“If it becomes necessary, I will speak with her,” she says tiredly. “For now, I think we ought to let the sleeping dog lie, yes?”

“Yes,” says Roslin, sounding relieved to be off the topic, as is Nell. 

“What say you to the idea of me sending the twins north?” Nell presses, after a few minutes of silence. A dog is barking nearby; for some reason it reminds her of Grey Wind, although he seldom behaved like a kennel hound. She is surprised by the pang she feels. Who would have thought the likes of Donella Bolton, a huntswoman’s daughter, might miss a direwolf? “Serra and Sarra are young, only thirteen, the both of them. It will be difficult to find them matches here as it is, with so much uncertainty, and I should feel badly to part them. My aunt will be wanting for the company of young women to lash into well-mannered ladies. It might be a consolation to her, as I remain here while I am with child.”

“They should welcome it, I think,” Roslin answers honestly, as always. “They are the adventurous sort, the two of them. They have four other siblings, and their mother is like to be with child again soon enough. Their father would not forbid it.”

“Good,” Nell is relieved. “It would not separate them, and my aunt will grumble, but it might do her good as well. Girls that age are still half child, flowered or not.”

“You show us much concern for women who are not your kin,” Roslin says after a few moments. “You have a good heart, Your Grace.”

“I cannot abide the idea of silly girls like that being sold off to the next hedge knight to come riding down the lane, is all,” Nell sniffs, but one corner of her mouth twitches all the same. “Have I not some duty to moral sensibilities? I wish to be known for a prudent match-maker… not necessarily the most efficient one.”

Roslin chuckles at that, her laughter ringing out clear and bell-like against the damp pink sandstone walls around them. The fluttering sensation returns, and this time Nell lets herself stop and smile, put a hand to her belly. “He likes the sound of our voices, I believe. Gods willing he will not be a talkative one, always interrupting me when I am speaking.”

Her dreams are seldom sweet, but that night they are; a little boy of five or six leads her by the hand through Riverrun, although his hair is not the dark brown of her own but the auburn of his father. She does not recall what he is telling her, but in her dreams she laughs and smiles with ease at the sound of his high child’s voice, the feeling of his warm hand in hers, the way he glances back at her, beaming. There is no trace of her father or her brother in his young face. Then something catches his attention, and his hand slips from her own as he darts ahead, laughing and crying out, and she lifts up her skirts to dash after him, grinning, but the dream fades before she can reach him.

When she wakes, crying, for once it is not out of horror or grief. She lays her head back down immediately, closes her eyes, and tries to will the fantasy alive once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know several mostly peaceful/light chapters in a row is only increasing the tension for everyone reading. I'm sorry! I promise some actually relevant plot-related things will be happening over the course of the next two chapters. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I wanted to use this chapter mostly to note that the pregnancy is progressing without any cause for concern, Robb has entered the westerlands and no one at Riverrun is really sure what the outcome of the invasion will be yet, and to show Nell engaging in some official queenly business by holding a women's court. (I'm not sure why no Targaryen queen after Alysanne did this, I *hope* we get some record of Black Betha having held women's courts during her time as queen given Aegon the Unlikely's commitment to seeing justice for the smallfolk).
> 
> 2\. The 'village green' is the communal grazing area for livestock, in case anyone was confused. That's what's being fought over, there's not enough space for the extra cattle, and no one's sure how long the good autumn weather will last before the plants start dying out. With the majority of able-bodied men off to fight, I'd assume many of the villages and towns are being run by headwomen/female elders/etc. 
> 
> 3\. The Freys. The Freys are pretty much whatever the author wants them to be in any given fic, in terms of their individual personalities/motives. From what I've seen in fanfiction, Fair Walda is generally portrayed as an extremely unlikable character, I assume because Merrett Frey mentions in his prologue that she sleeps with Black Walder, who we as readers don't like, because he's a murderous asshole. Side note, while he's referred to as her uncle within the wiki, the actual family tree shows that Black Walder and Fair Walda are in fact cousins, not that it really matters in light of the incest and what is in my opinion the highly dubious consent.


	24. Donella XXIII

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell is tracing the red spirals on the canopy above her with her eyes during Maester Vyman’s latest inspection. She is alone this time; she did not feel like keeping Dana from breaking her fast, and most of her ladies are busy reading Tyta’s latest letter from Stone Hedge or helping Roslin sew her wedding garments, or finishing off Alyx’s maiden cloak. They have been quite preoccupied as of late, all an attempt, she knows to stave off the swelling dread with no news from the west or the south. No news can only be good news, she tells herself every day, but it has quite lost its reassuring ring by now. She had thought waiting during the Whispering Wood was bad enough, when she could still see and hear the fighting. This is far, far worse. 

Were it not for the pregnancy, she thinks she would be going mad with frustration. At least she has something to measure time with, beyond the steadily changing leaves in the godswood and the crisper chill to the air at night. The swell of her belly is clearly visible through her gowns now, and she can feel expectant eyes on her wherever she goes, as if waiting for her to perform some sort of trick. At the very least her sickness has eased; she hasn’t vomited at all this week. Rather, she is ravenously hungry, constantly. The maester tells her that is normal, with the babe growing so rapidly, but it is disconcerting nonetheless. Her stomach seems to growl as soon as she wakes up in the morning, and the next meal can never come fast enough. 

Vyman steps back, signaling that she can sit up once more, and Nell carefully rises from her prone position on the bed, massaging her aching back. That too is normal, but it is not very comforting when she is trying to sleep at night, nor are the headaches. Either her stomach is gnawing at her, her head is pounding, or her back is rebelling like an old woman’s. Suddenly thoughts of many more children after this one seem foolish. Surely one is enough. How can they expect women to endure this every few years until their courses stop flowing? Never minding the thought of labor. Barbara tells her that the first babe is often slow to leave the womb. That is the last thing she wanted to hear. 

“Everything seems to be progressing normally,” Vyman says as she adjusts her stockings. “You are healthy, I see no reason to feel that the babe will not be healthy. You could stand to get more sleep, Your Grace.” Are the dark circles under her eyes really so prominent? She reminds herself to begin borrowing some powder from Fair Walda. She cannot go around looking on the verge of collapse. “Perhaps a nap during the day-,”

“I am not a child of three,” she scoffs, waving off his concerns. “I need to be present whenever audiences are being held.”

“Yes, but given your current condition, perhaps a bit more care is advisable-,”

There is a sharp rapping at the door, and the muffled sound of voice outside. Nell smooths down her skirts and jumps to her feet, neatly cutting around the maester to open the door, where she finds a guard and an excitable child from the rookery. “Begging your pardons, but there’s a letter for the maester to see to- and you, Your Grace,” he blurts out, dipping in a belated bow, “but the maester sees them first, so-,”

Nell plasters on a calm smile. “Then we shall fetch Lord Edmure and inspect the news together.”

The news is from Oxcross, which is barely a three day’s ride northeast of Casterly Rock and Lannisport. Nell can barely bring herself to look at the words, but stares down at the parchment over Edmure’s shoulder nonetheless, her nails digging into the back of the chair she is clutching. When he lets out a loud whoop and turns and embraces her soundly, she knows, past the initial shock. She knows. Stafford Lannister lost three thousand men and his own life in just one night. Nell doesn’t know what sort of fool fails to post sentries while camped out with men, even on his own lands, but Lannister was just the sort of fool to do so, apparently. Robb sent men down to cut loose their horses in the night, and Grey Wind down after to provoke a stampede. Then the northmen rode down from the mountains and laid waste to the rest. 

Stafford is dead. Rupert Brax is dead. Lords Jast, Vikary, and one of Kevan Lannister’s boys were all taken captive, along with fifty or more other lordlings and knights. The rest of the westermen fled back to Lannisport, and gods be true, Robb was not a fool, and did not go chasing after them. He stands no chance of taking the city, and certainly not the Rock itself, with six thousand men. But he can still claw his way up and down the west with six thousand, and there is no reputable force there left to stop him. 

Edmure is so thrilled, he kisses her soundly on both cheeks and holds her hands in his own like she were his little sister. “Your husband will win us the war at this rate,” he declares, and Nell tries to smile, but it wobbles on her mouth, she is just so relieved- Robb did not take any injuries, and their own losses were few, although not entirely inconsequential- Stevron Frey is dead, as are a few Flints. She will have to tell Dana herself. Edmure is still loudly extolling Robb’s many virtues, and finally she manages to smile back, widely, nodding, and embrace him in return. 

“This is the best news we could have hoped for.”

Better news would have been that Balon Greyjoy descended upon Lannisport just in time to slaughter those who escaped Oxcross, but she will not push her luck. This was extremely fortunate. So many things could have gone wrong. Robb’s army could have been discovered and pinned down in the mountains, trapped in some narrow pass and cut down. Had Stafford not been so careless, the ambush could have gone very differently, and they might have lost many men. Without Grey Wind, much of the surprise would have been avoided- No, she can’t think like this. She ought to be happy. Thrilled, as Edmure is. They have nothing to fear from the west now, she and the babe are well, Robb- Robb will return soon enough, or at least before his son is born, she is sure of it. He promised.

When Tywin hears he will have to march. And if Robb kills Tywin it will be over. The Lannisters are not a pride of lions, they are an assortment of pretty liars with varying degrees of wits about them. See how well Cersei and the Imp fare against Renly’s host without their father’s protection. That is what she should really be praying for. That Catelyn allies them with Renly, that Renly crushes Stannis, and then takes the capitol. That would do quite nicely for them all. They could go home then. Robb would have his revenge and she would have his heir and then they could go home to Winterfell, and put war aside to prepare for winter. 

Dana is in the kitchens with the Bracken sisters and Marianne. Barbara is laughing and smiling for once as Marianne presses some sort of tart upon her while Dana eggs her on, and silent Jayne is sitting in a chair in the corner, tentatively petting the kitchen cat that has leapt up into her lap. Their giggles and chatter fade some at the sight of her in her usual mourning black, but the hopeful edge to their looks is all the same. Barbara wipes at her mouth quickly, turning on her younger sister. “Jayne! You’ll ruin your dress like that, get up-,”

“She’s perfectly alright where she is, I only need Dana,” Nell says quickly; Jayne looks like she might cry, although even tears might be preferable to the muteness. She still will not speak. They say she is quite mad. Nell does not believe that; she looks at Jayne and does not see a dumb animal staring back at her, but it is true that Jonos Bracken will not have an easy time seeing her betrothed. And perhaps that is for the best. Men have offered nothing but suffering to Jayne; why should she have to take one to husband? She has many sisters and she is not her father’s heir.

“How bad was the news?” Dana’s flush from the warmth of the kitchens is dying as they step back out into the cool autumn morning. “You have had word, haven’t you? There’s talk about a raven coming in this morning, people think-,”

Nell tells her about their triumph, and then, as Dana’s smile widens, says, “But- I am sorry. There’s no easy way to say it, Dana, but your-,”

Dana stops walking altogether, and the pink drains from her face. She puts a hand flat on the sandstone wall. “Not my father.” It comes out in a child’s high plea. 

“No,” Nell says immediately, taking her hand, “Dana, no, your father- your father is well, but your uncle… Your uncle Beron fell in battle, as did one of his sons, Donnor.”

Dana is silent, then exhales shakily. “Good. That is- not good- I care only for my father,” she ends up saying through gritted teeth. “If he is alright- there is no love between my uncles and him, nor them and I. I am not pleased to hear of Beron and Don’s death, but-”

“Of course you are relieved it was not your father,” Nell says slowly. “You have it said it yourself, many times, you were never close with the others-,”

“When I first refused Black Donnel and Grandfather, Beron threatened to-,” Dana cuts herself off, shaking her head. “No matter. He was not a good man. Loyal, maybe. And brave. A good fighter, he and his sons. But not a scrap of kindness or mercy among them. Of course,” her smile turns slightly watery, “my father is not a good man either. Tolerable when he is sober, perhaps. But war is not- He is not most men, he should hate to die on a battlefield. I am glad that he lived.”

“He should hate to die fighting?” Nell is confused. The Flints have all seemed war-happy enough to her, even the ones that aren’t from the mountain clan. Artos Flint certainly never struck her as timid or faint of heart. “Why should-,”

“Because my father is a craven, as my uncles would have told you,” Dana says crisply. “He is a craven who fears battle, and that is why he drinks. Can’t be too afraid to fight when you are too drunk to care.”

“Dana, I’m sure that’s not-,”

“It’s true,” Dana retorts. “But I would still rather a living coward for a father than a dead hero.”

Much of the rest of the day is given over to impromptu celebration. Edmure holds a small feast and there is some drinking and dancing and singing, and Nell knows she perhaps ought to be disapproving of this type of cavorting when they are still at war, but she is awfully hungry, after all, and the babe does not kick half as much when she is sitting down and resting her feet. 

And it does not last long, anyways. Three days later there is hastily scrawled word from Catelyn’s party. Renly is dead, under strange circumstances. They are returning to Riverrun with all haste, although they must be careful to avoid Harrenhal’s long shadow. Storm’s End is under siege, and expected to surrender to Stannis sooner or later. Much of Renly’s host will go over to Stannis now- what choice do they have? The brief spark of joy flares out as quickly as it came. 

Catelyn calls it murder. Nell had not thought Stannis Baratheon the sort to resort to assassins in the night, but men are capable of much deception when there is a throne at stake, she supposes. It should not be very difficult to play the righteous, rigid claimant by the light of day, and plot murder and kinslaying by night. Although, of course, kinslaying has never been much of a moral quandary for the Baratheons. 

She kills a sow that night, to beseech the gods for aid. The Lannisters have not a hope in any hell of holding King’s Landing against Stannis. That is not her concern. Her concern is what may happen after the dust has settled and the Baratheon they did not come to first for an alliance sits the throne. She doubts he would be willing to tolerate an independent North, and it may not be simple a solution as begging his pardon and handing over their crowns. A proud man might forgive rebels more easily than he could the thought of said rebels preferring to parley with his younger brother over him. She has spent all these months fretting over the lion, when perhaps she should have been more concerned about the black stag. They say he has a witch in his service, from the East. It seems to Nell that if Stannis Baratheon were to consort with a witch, she had better be a damnably good one. 

So what should she wish for now? For Stannis to crush the Lannisters for them, or for the Lannisters to slay Stannis for them? 

“Robert forgave those who stood against him and the rebels when he took the throne,” Arwyn points out over their needlework. Alyx’s maiden cloak is an endless river of grey and blue before them. “Many said it was a mark of wisdom at the time. A king cannot be too harsh when it comes to justice-,”

“You were not even born when Robert took the throne,” Fair Walda scoffs. “Wisdom? He held it for fifteen years. That is a blink of the eye compared to the Targaryens. Did they forgive their enemies? Look to their words.”

“Stannis is not a Targaryen,” Fat Walda wrinkles her nose. “In fact, I’ve heard he is quite bald-,”

“Aye, their lovely flowing locks, a true mark of a Targaryen,” Marianne says snidely. “He does not have dragons, you nitwits. Men do not need forgiveness or mercy when they have dragons. They do as they please. And what happened when all the dragons died?”

“I thought there were still dragons under the sea,” little Shirei pipes up hopefully. “In the stories, the dragons went to sleep under the sea, and when they wake up-,”

“Hush,” Marissa shushes her, “we aren’t telling stories right now, sweetling.”

“Oh, I always loved that story,” Jory cuts in, from her post under the tree whose shade they are sitting in. Shirei beams. 

“His grandmother was a Targaryen,” Roslin reasons, steering the conversation back. “That is how Robert claimed the throne, that is how Stannis will. He proclaims Joffrey and his siblings are natural-born.”

Zia claps her hands over Shirei’s ears, and adds wickedly, “Do you mark it true, sisters? I could believe it. The Kingslayer is very handsome, and Robert was a boar, they say-,”

“Zia!” Barbara splutters. “It is a great sin for sister to lie with brother-,”

“Then we were ruled by the most depraved of sinners and their abominations for near three centuries, were we not?”

“Yes,” drawls Dana, “but they had dragons and lovely purple eyes, you see, so it was alright for them to marry one another. The same way it is alright for a rich man to neglect his taxes.”

“I heard the gods cursed their line for it,” Alyx cuts in eagerly. “They say Rhaegar’s blood dripped black as tar when he fell at the Trident. Madness and plagues upon them all. Perhaps it is why Stannis has no sons.” 

“Perhaps it is why Stannis slew his own brother,” Fat Walda shrugs. “That is a mark of a true Targaryen, is it not?”

A moment of surprised silence falls over their circle, and then Nell laughs, else she will scream, and so do the rest. 

A fortnight after that, red cloaks are spotted coming up the river. They are carrying a banner of peace, and it is quickly known that this is Ser Cleos returning from King’s Landing, but that moment of terror is as sharp and piercing as any arrow through the chest. Riverrun has outlasted many sieges before and could surely withstand another, but it was one thing to think that when they had two combined armies, and not just the rivermen. It was one thing to think that when Robb was here. Nell seldom worries for her own safety beyond the spectre of childbirth, but for a few moments she dwells on Robb returning to find all their bodies hanging from the waterwheel, and she can understand the strange sort of terror he might have felt, to leave her behind. 

Then she pushes the thought away.

Cleos Frey was not a very intimidating man to begin with, and despite the one hundred envoys sent with him, he does not seem any more fearsome. Their terms have been rejected unilaterally, of course. The Iron Throne will neither recognize the North and the riverlands as independent, and they absolutely will not entertain the idea of trading the Stark girls for the likes of Willem Lannister and Tion Frey. None of this is very surprising. Their counter offer is truly laughable. Nell has to fight to keep a straight face to hear Tyrion Lannister’s words presented by a man like Cleos. The Imp may be reviled, but he was always very eloquent, she’ll give him that. 

Ser Cleos…

“His Grace’s terms are thus,” Cleos says in a thin, reedy voice, glancing around the hall with obvious anxiety. Nell rather wishes Grey Wind were here to express her displeasure, but instead she will settle for the thunderous look on Edmure’s face and the unanimous looks of derision among her ladies, even the Freys who are kin to Cleos and his father. “Robb Stark must surrender-,”

The shouts and exclamations nearly drown out the rest; men jeer, stomp their feet in disapproval, rattle their steel, and call out threats. Nell straightens in her seat, and holds up a hand. It continues until she stands, and they can see her iron circlet glinting in the late afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows. “My lords, I must ask you to restrain yourselves and let Ser Cleos speak. He is merely a messenger.”

“Thank you, my lady-,”

“Your Grace,” Edmure enunciates pointedly, through his teeth.

“Your Grace! Robb Stark must... ,” Cleos swallows, glances back down at the scroll, and continues, “swear fealty to the Iron Throne, and return immediately to Winterfell.”

More angry muttering and murmurs.

“Ser Jaime, the king’s beloved uncle, is to be set free at once, and Robb Stark shall place his host under Jaime’s command, to join us against the Baratheon rebels-,”

“Rebel, there’s just the one now,” Nell says under her breath, but it goes unheard under the second explosion of noise. Does Lannister think them insipid? Aye, Robb will return here with all haste, set the Kingslayer free, kneel at his feet, and hand over his army? 

“Each of the northern and river bannermen will supply the court with a son as a hostage. Failing, that, a daughter-,”

Barbara has wrapped a protective arm round Jayne’s shaking shoulders.

“Who will be treated gently, so long as their fathers keep their faith-,”

More shouts of indignation and outrage. The red cloaks at Cleos’ back are looking nervous, especially since they surrendered all weapons upon arrival. Nell insisted they be searched for knives or daggers as well. A man does not need a sword or spear to kill someone. 

“We remind Robb Stark that he has no hope of allies… He stands alone against the Iron Throne in a futile rebellion... “ Cleos appears to be skipping some lines now in an attempt to get this over and done with. “And we offer Harrion Karstark and Ser Wylis Manderly in exchange for Willem Lannister, and Lord Cerwyn and Ser Donnel Locke for Tion…” Cleos hesitates, paling.

“Something else to add, Ser?” Nell asks, brimming with sarcasm.

“Lord Tyrion, Hand of the King, reminds… you… that two Lannisters are worth four northmen in any season.” He finishes in a voice barely above a murmur. 

Someone draws steel. 

“Enough,” Edmure barks, “these men came here under a banner of peace, I’ll not have bloodshed in these halls.”

“Might we take them outside then, my lord?” Marq Piper calls back.

There is scattered laughter, but no one seems very amused.

“Well,” says Nell, leaning forward in her seat some, a hand cradling her belly. “What an… ambitious counter. I would never presume to speak for His Grace the King- my husband, that is,” she adds sharply, with a pointed look to the Lannister men, “but I am certain he will take all this under consideration upon his return. Particularly your… what shall we call it? Reminder of what a Lannister is worth? How novel. I can not say I have ever heard that saying before.”

“Your Grace,” Cleos says desperately, “I would… never presume to- that is, I had no part in these terms, I am only a humble envoy-,”

“Certainly,” Nell waves him off. “We cannot hold that against you, Ser. You have done your duty quite admirably. How proud your cousin Ser Jaime would be, were he present. King Robb shall respond to these terms… with the most carefully weighed force… upon his return from the westerlands. Where Lord Stafford’s ‘great host’ was worth very little, it would seem.”

Of course they are not going to respond to this nonsense. Four northmen to every two Lannisters… really. Did the Imp have himself a little chuckle while writing that line? Still smarting over the time Grey Wind nearly took a limb off? 

She stands. “What I will say is that the day my husband swears fealty and surrenders his sword to any Lannister, is the day the Trident and its forks run dry, and the day the strength of the river lords fail us. And I know we will never see that day.” She had to say it, dramatic though it might be- men need to hear this sort of thing, and they are happy enough to hear it now, shouting their approval back at her, grinning broadly, while the red cloaks turn their gazes anywhere but upon her face.

The envoys are given free reign of the castle; Nell does not like it, but she cannot order men who came under a peace banner imprisoned without just cause, and ‘delivering the hateful words of the Imp’ is not ‘just cause’. Still, she doubles the guard around the armory, and Edmure insists one of his men accompany her about the castle during the day at all times, not just Jory. 

She will admit to being especially wary the first few days, but she sees no stares of malice or loathing or suspicious whispers among these men. Most of them are just common guardsmen, of low birth, simply happy to be behind castle walls and sleeping in proper beds once more. Edmure is a polite and gracious host, and she plays the part of the sweet-natured expecting mother well enough, she supposes, when she is not humiliating Cleos Frey in front of his own men.

On the fourth day, there are reports of some broken men terrorizing a village across the Tumblestone, and Edmure gamely sets off with a dozen guards, promising to be back by the next sunset at the latest. Nell suspects she should be more pleased at the thought of having Riverrun to herself than she actually is. Instead she feels tightly wound and anxious, somehow, but perhaps that is just the headaches. Nothing of note occurs while he is away, but sleep does not come easily at all to her that night. She knows she is dreaming again, but they are short and scattered, and when she wakes just after midnight, she cannot remember any of them.

What she does know is that her back hurts, the babe is moving about as if he were a little trout inside her, and Dana is gone. Nell assumes she went to use the privy, rolls onto her other side, and tries to sleep. But after several minutes, Dana has not returned, and she gives up. She sits up, pads out of bed, and pulls on a dressing gown, sliding her feet into her slippers. “Jory?” she calls softly into the next room. Jory sleeps very lightly; she is up immediately, a hand reaching for her sword. 

“Yes?”

“Dana didn’t come in here, did she?”

“No,” Jory replies blearily. “Why?”

“I just… no matter. Will you walk with me? The babe is kicking and turning about, and I cannot sleep like this.”

“You need your rest, Your Grace,” Jory reminds her dutifully, but seeing the look on Nell’s face, rises and pulls on her jerkin and breeches over her thin shift, jamming her feet into her boots without socks or stockings and fetching her sword-belt. “Coming,” she mutters with just enough fifteen year old reluctance to make Nell smile slightly.

Riverrun is cool and damp and very quiet at night. Nell keeps a watchful eye out, expecting to see Dana hurrying around a corner at any moment, but does not. They make their usual turns, and Nell’s feet begin to ache as well, but the babe is still moving. She rubs at her back with a grimace, then pauses under the flickering light of a torch. “Jory, promise me you will never do anything foolish like take a husband.”

“I shall try not to,” Jory mutters, leaning against a few barrels, then jumping away when one nearly tips over. “Perhaps you should try a bath. When Aly was with child, that always helped.”

“I don’t wish to rouse the maids at this hour,” Nell shakes her head. “In the morning, maybe-,”

She stops. “What was-,”

“Was that Ser Edmure?” Jory is blinking in confusion, then brightens. “He’s returned at a very late hour, hasn’t he? Look, they’re opening the river gate-,”

“No,” says Nell. “ _No_.” She rushes past Jory, pauses at the top of the flight of stone steps that allows for a direct line of sight to the portcullis, and just makes out several figures in the shadows, impatiently waiting for it to raise high enough. Two are already in a boat, the others- “STOP!” she shouts, her voice ringing out into the night air. She may have just woken half the castle, but she cares not. “LOWER THE GATE!” she screams, coming down the steps quickly, Jory at her back. “You fools, LOWER THE DAMN GATE, IT’S NOT HIM-,”

There is a series of shouts, a man curses, and Nell stops at the bottom of the steps, heart in her throat, as the few nearest guards on the walls come rushing down towards the dock. One of the men in the boat leaps out with unexpected grace, another man charges the two closest guards, and she sees a gleam of steel in the moonlight. “Get behind me,” Jory snarls, “Nell, behind me, it’s-,”

“I yield!” one of the men is shouting, and another has fallen into the murky water, spluttering and coughing, but the biggest one is outright brawling barehanded with three guards at once, and the tallest of them is wrenching his blade out from a dying man’s back. 

“Well met, my ladies,” Jaime Lannister’s voice rings out just as mocking as it did when Robb had him on his knees at the Whispering Wood. His hair and beard may be wild and ragged now, and his clothes worn and grey, but he wields the short sword in his right hand with an alarming level of dexterity. This is not a man unmade by months of captivity in a tower room. Nell scrambles up the steps behind her, a hand on Jory’s shoulder. 

“Come now,” says the Kingslayer, “am I truly so fearsome to behold? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost, Lady Bolton.”

More guards are coming, but not fast enough, Nell thinks, not fast enough, he will be on them in an instant, he will gut Jory like it’s nothing-

“Run, Your Grace, I’ll hold him,” Jory says firmly, and she sounds terrified, but she is not even shaking or trembling. Nell is. Is this what Robb felt, seeing Jaime Lannister cut his way across a battlefield towards him.

The Kingslayer laughs at that, and Nell’s breath hitches in her chest. She can’t run, she can’t. He’ll kill Jory without a thought but he won’t kill her, she’s too valuable, he won’t. “I confess to never having killed a shield-maiden before,” he says dryly. “But I suppose there is a first time for everything. Shall we have a dance, my lady?”

Jory squares her shoulders, adjusts her footing, and grips her blade tightly in the moonlight. “Come and ask me properly, Lannister.” They are at the top of the steps now. Nell looks around frantically as the Kingslayer begins to bound up the stairs, sets her eyes upon the nearest available thing, and shouts, “Jory, left!” 

Without thinking, Jory neatly sidesteps left, and Nell slams all of her weight and might into that mostly empty barrel she’d almost knocked over mere minutes before. It goes crashing down the steps, Jaime swears and jumps out of the way, wavers on the slick stone, and just as he regains his cat-like balance, is met with a spear-point prodding at his back. 

“Oh dear,” says Nell shakily. “I’m afraid Enger’s cutting in on your dance, Ser.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. So the victory at Oxcross is some consolation for Nell, but it does get overshadowed by the fact that the more 'agreeable' of the two Baratheon brothers is dead, supposedly at the other's hand. Nell now feels she has both Tywin and Stannis to worry about losing to- she doesn't think Stannis will be in a very merciful mood by the time he actually takes the Iron Throne. 
> 
> 2\. Being seen as a coward or in any way reluctant/afraid to do battle or go to war is very much an issue in the 'rather be dead than dishonored' North. Dana's father does not have the respect of his brothers and family at large due to his very obvious drinking and whoring to cope with the trauma of war. Artos was in his twenties during Robert Rebellion, so this is two major wars over the span of less than 20 years he's been pressed into service for. Dana obviously has very mixed feelings over this, and the whole thing baffles Nell, who can't relate to having a father who has a hard time coping with violence, and can't relate to loving one's father in general.
> 
> 3\. I couldn't resist some teenage girls ragging on the Targaryens, I'm sorry. Also a general debate over what counts as justice versus mercy for one's enemies. The Frey girls are not a monolith on that, and Nell herself I think is uncertain of what it really means to rule wisely but fairly. 
> 
> 4\. Rereading the counter-terms Tyrion sends back with Cleos is a trip! He really put Cleos in 'don't kill the messenger' territory with the 'a Lannister is worth twice as much as a northman' lines. Nell doesn't consider herself as having the authority to directly respond to any of this, but she does see the value of making a scene for showmanship's sake .
> 
> 5\. The escape attempt. I actually forgot completely about this until rereading A Clash of Kings, since we only hear about it after the fact from Edmure when Catelyn returns. I wasn't going to miss out on the opportunity to address it directly through Nell's POV here.


	25. Beth II

299 AC - WINTERFELL

Beth’s dreams were never strange before the crannogboy came to Winterfell. She knows Jojen Reed is not really a witch; witches aren’t real, and neither is greensight, or whatever the Reeds want to call it. Beth was happy enough when they first arrived, on the night of the harvest feast; they hadn’t had any real guests in ages, after all. The Walders don’t count; they’re part of an alliance between the Freys and the Starks, not here because anyone particularly likes them. Which no one does, not really. Little Walder is nasty to the servants and nearly as rude to her and Bran. And Big Walder only seems to want to talk to anyone if he can get something out of it. 

The Reeds are friendly enough, in contrast; Meera is, at least, even if she’s a bit odd, with her roughspun clothes and spear. She’s so small, too, not much taller than Beth herself, that Beth often forgets that she’s a woman grown of sixteen, not still a child. Beth had always assumed she’d be wed by sixteen, and wonders why Meera isn’t. Perhaps she’s waiting for the war to end. Jojen is different, thought. Not mean-spirited like Little Walder or cold like Big Walder, but his bright green eyes frighten her. She’s seen green eyes before; one of Joseth’s twins, Shyra, has brownish green eyes, but Jojen’s are different, glossy and vivid like dewy leaves. Meera seems much younger than her age, but Jojen, although he can be no more than thirteen, seems decades older. 

And he does dream. Beth does not really know what he dreams about, but servants like to talk, and Palla says Jojen dreams all sorts of wicked things; death and war and ruin. Nonetheless, she doesn’t seem very concerned; “Just because he can dream it, doesn’t mean it’s for certain.”, the kennel girl had reasoned. “What d’you expect a mud witch to dream of? Happy things?” There is a certain logic to that, Beth supposes. In the stories no one ever bothered with telling pleasant prophecies: “One day you will marry a handsome man and live happily ever after with ten children.” What would be the point? Maybe if he were a happier person, he’d dream nicer things.

Lately Bran has been saying that Jojen dreams of the sea. That shouldn’t be that bad, Beth thinks. She’s seen the ocean before; her last visit to White Harbor was with Father and Jory, two years ago, before Starks went south, before the king died, before the war. Father had some business with a merchant and so Jory took her to the shore. It was a sunny summer day, and although not hot, warm enough that she could take off her shoes and stockings and run barefoot up and down along the damp sand. Jory threw some seaweed at her and laughed himself hoarse when it got caught in her curls, and then found her some pretty shells to beg her pardon.

She still has one of the shells, in a drawer in her bedchamber. She’s sure she could still hear the crash of the grey-green waves if she put it to her ear. It still smells of the sea, salty and fresh. 

But she hasn’t dreamt of the sea this past week. No, she’s dreamt a woman- no, a girl, really, she’s never known before. Beth cannot remember what she looked like, not really, only that she had long, dark hair and wore grey. She remembers her voice, though, young and a little raspy, as if she were ill. They were not in any place in Winterfell that she recognized; they were in a godswood, but not the one here. Somewhere else instead. This one was wild and overgrown, dead brambles clinging to the stone walls, and damp leaves crinkled underfoot wherever she stepped. The girl was perhaps sixteen or seventeen herself, lifting her faded skirts as she walked alongside Beth in quiet contentment. “You’ll like it here,” she was saying. “I always do. Listen.” She’d put a hand on Beth’s shoulder, stilling her, and Beth had listened as hard as she could, but heard nothing but the rustling of the changing trees and the distant caw of a crow. 

“Listen for what?” she’d asked the girl in the dream.

“You’ll know it when you hear it,” the girl had said, with a little smile, the kind older girls gave when they were telling other girls wicked secrets. 

Beth did not know, and she did not hear. She’d woken up a little unnerved, but not so much that she had not been able to roll over in her warm bed, and fall back asleep within minutes. 

She could ask Maester Luwin about what it means, to dream of people you have never met before, but he would likely just tell her she did know the girl, had met her once, years ago, and simply forgotten all about her, except in the very back of her mind. That’s not a very satisfying answer, Beth thinks. Surely she would recall someone important enough to dream about. But maybe it wasn’t the girl who was important at all, but the place. Maybe it was Hornwood. If Father weds Lady Hornwood, when her mourning has ended, Beth would go there to live with her like a daughter, and learn to be a proper lady. She might very well marry a firstborn son then, as Lady Hornwood’s daughter by marriage, if not by blood. 

By this time next month, Lady Hornwood’s seven months of mourning for her late husband will be over and done with, and Father might ask her to wed him. He did not say as much explicitly to Beth, only implied it, but Beth is a clever girl. Father was not asking her about how she might feel to spend time under the tutelage of a noble lady for no reason. He did not bring out her mother’s miniature and tell Beth that he would never forget her, even if he were to wed again, for no reason. She does not know Lady Hornwood well, but everyone says she is gracious and wise and very kind, and she has been so very alone and bereaved with her husband dead and her son off fighting in Robb’s war. 

Beth knows she would not be so lonely with Father and her around. Beth could be an excellent daughter to her, she is sure of it. She would be obedient and polite and ever so charming, and Lady Hornwood would come to love her, just as she would come to love Father. She already likes him, Beth knows that much. When she looks at him the wrinkles around her mouth soften and melt into her pale skin, and they danced together beautifully at the harvest feast four months past. They could never have any more children together, of course, but they would have Beth. She would be like other girls; she’d have a father and a mother both, and a lady for a mother, even better. 

She has never been to Hornwood, and she knows it is much smaller than Winterfell, and in the middle of a great forest, at that, full of moose and bears and perhaps even a wolf pack, and it borders the Bolton lands, where all the horrible things happen in Old Nan’s stories… But it is also someplace new, and different, and exciting. And hasn’t she wanted to see new places, to travel, for ages and ages? They would be closer to White Harbor and the sea there. She might very well have been dreaming of Hornwood’s godswood. She still doesn’t know who the girl was- someone of that household, perhaps? One of Lady Hornwood’s nieces? Or Daryn’s betrothed, the Karstark girl? It doesn’t really matter.

So that morning when she wakes from another queer dream of the strange godswood, she tells herself it is simply a sign of what is to come, what she hopes so dearly for. Father will wed Lady Hornwood, Beth will go to live with her, and have lovely gowns and new doe-skin slippers and a fine ribbon or two for her hair, and she will never have to check rabbit-snares or be pressed into helping set a table or play silly games like Come Into My Castle with the likes of the Freys ever again. She would even have a brother, then; Daryn, whenever he returned from war to wed Alys and assume his lordship. Well, two, if one counted the bastard Larence Snow, although of course he would really only be Daryn’s brother, not hers. Think of that, she tells herself, you will be just like Sansa and Arya, a lady’s daughter and brothers as well, one trueborn, one natural. 

Then she feels a stab of guilt, as she dresses for the day, with no maids to help her, bundling on her thickest stockings to ward off the chill. She should not want to be like Sansa nor Arya, who are prisoners of the Lannisters, or maybe even dead. They may be ladies, but it has not seemed to bring them any happiness since the war began. She supposes that it because they are too important. Father explained to her once that she should be glad to be a Cassel and not a Stark; she would not have to marry for anyone’s sake but her own. Of course Father would never let her run off with some smallcrofter or blacksmith, but she knows he would never send her to wed some withered or fat old lord thrice her age, either.

That is heartening, at least. She should like to marry someone her own age, when she does. Handsome, too, at least a little. Everyone says she is pretty enough. Not beautiful like Sansa was- like Sansa is, or even as pretty as Jeyne, who had lovely dark hair and big brown eyes- maybe she still does, if she is alive- but pretty enough for a girl of ten, auburn-haired and hazel-eyed and still a bit chubby-cheeked. She cannot wait until she flowers, until she is tall and graceful and can wear her hair like a woman, not a child. But for now she is just plain, pink-faced little Beth, short and freckled and tongue-tied around every pretty boy she sees.

Father is not there at the table for breakfast. He is not training the men in the yard either; in fact, no one is training them, and when Beth ducks into the barracks, one of them tells her they are preparing to ride out by midday for Torrhen’s Square. Something about raiders. Beth does not stay to listen; she dashes back outside and makes straight for the lord’s solar, where Father looks at maps and answers letters in his role as castellan. She does not knock, no matter how rude it is, and is breathless and ruddy in the face, panting, when she bursts into the room. He is not sitting behind the desk; he is standing there in his mail, with his sword at his hip.

“No,” says Beth achingly, because she knows, already, what he means to do, what he must do, but that does mean it hurts any less than it did when he left with Lady Catelyn last year for King’s Landing. “No, please, don’t go-,”

“Beth,” he says, and comes and puts his hands on her shoulders. For the first time she sees his age, the lines and cracks in his weathered skin, the heavy weight of his hands, the white of his hair and beard. She has never felt any younger, smaller, more insignificant. _You are too old_ , she suddenly wants to shout. _No. You are my father and you are too old to fight now, so you must stay here and let me take care of you. Send the boys to fight. You stay._

“Ironborn have attacked Torrhen’s Square,” he tells her calmly. “Benfred Tallhart and his friends are missing. They have barely any men left to defend their keep and the town. I must go, and drive them back before they reave any further into the North. You must think of the people there, Beth, how frightened they are. Think of young Eddara. If it were you, would you not want someone to come help you?”

“But you can’t go,” she says desperately, “Father, you can’t, you’re the castellan, that means you can’t leave, you have to stay here-,”

“I will not be gone long at all,” he assures her. “I will ride straight back here as soon as they have been dealt with, Beth. My sweet girl. Don’t cry now.” He brushes at her wet cheeks with a rough finger. “You must be brave. Set an example. Bran and Rickon are frightened as well. These are dark times, so we needs be brave for one another. I know you can do it. You are my daughter. Your mother’s daughter.”

“But- but what if- you _can’t_ ,” she repeats herself, wiping at her eyes in useless embarrassment. “Father, you just can’t leave, wait, send for men from White Harbor, or the Karhold, or- or the mountain clans, can’t you just wait-,”

“I cannot wait,” he says firmly, squeezing her shoulder. “You know this, Beth. I am a knight. I am sworn to the Seven and to House Stark. You remember my vows.”

“To- to defend those who cannot defend themselves,” she recites dully, “to protect all women and children, to obey your captains, your liege lord, and your king, and to fight bravely when needed-,”

“However hard or humble or dangerous the task may be,” he finishes it for her, and looks down upon her gravely. “I’ll not lie, Beth. It will be dangerous. Men will die. I may die. But you know that you will be alright, my girl. Yes? Winterfell is your home. You are a Cassel. You will always have a place here, no matter what.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” she bursts out, “what if I’m all alone-,”

“”You are never alone,” Father says. “Never, do you hear me? Even when it seems it, I am with you. Jory is with you. Your mother is with you, and everyone who loves you. As I love you,” he embraces her then, and she clings to the familiar, comforting feeling of his barrel-chest and old cloak, then reluctantly lets go. “Now enough of those tears. Dry your eyes. You’ll see me off with the rest, and gods willing, watch me ride back through those gates a week from now.”

Beth is a good girl, and she has never willfully disobeyed her father, so she does. She sees him off with all the rest, holding a squirming Rickon still in front of her, for he always pitches a fit whenever he sees anyone leave. As soon as the gates are shut he tries to bite down on her hand, and she lets go of him with a shudder of annoyance, scowling when he snarls at her. “You’re not a wolf, Rickon!”

“Yes I am!” he roars back at her, then snaps his mouth open and shut like a dog. “See?”

Little Walder barks at him, snickering, then curses when Rickon aims a kick at his shins. Big Walder sniffs in amusement, then glances passively at Beth, who is crying again in spite of herself. “They’re just raiders. You act like he’s going off to fight the Lannisters.”

“Oh, shut up!” Beth snaps back at him, and is just as surprised as he at her sudden ferocity. But it’s too late to stop now. “Your father’s fighting the Lannisters, isn’t he? Bet you never even cried for him, because you don’t care about anyone!”

“You wouldn’t care either, if you were a Frey,” he says pointedly. “Someone’s always dying or being born.”

“Don’t worry,” Palla tells her later, handing her a mewling pup to cheer her up. “Torrhen’s Square will never fall, everyone says so. Ironborn are craven, anyways. S’why they raid villages, not castles.”

Beth holds the limp mound of a puppy in her hands, tries to summon up a smile as its wet, pink little tongue tickles at palms, but all she can do is stare up at the high walls around them, looking more empty than she ever saw them before. Father has taken six hundred with him; all the fighting boys and men of Winterfell and the winter town, and every farm or holdfast within reach, beyond the garrison of perhaps thirty, if that, left behind to protect them, and Cley will join them, she knows, with however many men House Cerwyn can muster. They will beat back the Ironborn and return victorious, and she will dream again of Hornwood. And everything will be alright. She is never alone, as Father said.

But she feels alone, all the same.

Winterfell is cavernous, the week after Father leaves. There’s no men laughing or muttering in the halls or corridors, even the kitchens are quiet, the barracks practically empty. Beth is nervous, sleeping alone above the guard’s hall, so instead she beds down with Meera, who is warm and nice to sleep next to, although she sometimes murmurs in her sleep. She tells Beth stories about Greywatch Watch, their moving castle, and lizard lions and the curious flowers and creatures of the marsh and bogs, and about the legends of the crannogmen, the spirits who float by with lanterns along the dark peat and water, the whispering lights that bob in the sunken trees, and about her mother, Jyanna of House Fenn, who is descended from the marsh kings and queens, and who can sing a drowned bird back to life when she holds it in her hands. 

The week comes to an end. There is no word from Torrhen’s Square, from Father. There is no word from anyone. Beth feeds the crows with Bandy and Shyra, chases after Rickon when he tries to climb up the walls the way Bran used to, and out of sheer boredom, cuts up vegetables in the kitchens with Gage and Turnip and Osha. Beth thinks of Father, and prays, even when she is not in the godswood. If the gods are good and true, he will defeat the Ironborn and come back to her. If the gods are good and true, Winterfell will not be like this for long, this empty hollow of a place. 

Without the people, a castle is just stones and wood bracing against the wind and rain.

On the eighth night, the howling is what wakes her. 

She knows it is something terrible, because the direwolves seldom howl just to hear themselves. And she knows the terrible thing is happening here, when the kennel dogs begin to bark and howl and bay as well. Beth sits up in bed beside Meera, clutching the quilt to her chest, as if that might help, might ward off whatever it outside. Meera is more awake than she is, already slipping her shoes on, picking up her spear and slinging her net over her shoulder. “Get under the bed,” she says lightly, as if they are just playing a game, “I’ll come get you when I see a safe way out, alright?”

“Don’t go out there,” says Beth in a small, frail voice. “Meera, please. You don’t know who it is.” She can hear distant shouts, running feet on the steps.

“The sea,” says Meera, and prods her gently, jerking her head towards the underside of the bed. Beth gets up and scrambles under it, tucks her legs up under herself, presses her chin against the cold stone, and listens to her slip out the door. She does not have to wait long. A few minutes later there is a sharp cry, someone falls to the ground, and then the door bangs open. 

“Anyone else in here?” a strange man asks, or jeers, more like it. “Answer me, bitch.”

“No one,” says Meera in a different, tighter voice. “Let my brother go.” She is not holding her spear anymore, Beth sees. She can glimpse Jojen’s bare feet on the floor, bloody, and wonders what he stepped in.

“No one else? Then why’s it that I see another pair of shoes?” the man snaps, and Beth watches the end of his spear prod at her boots in the corner, her bundled clothes beside them. 

Meera is silent. Jojen gives a sharp gasp of pain, the man breathes harshly, and then Meera says lowly, flatly, loathingly, “Beth, come out. Please.”

Beth crawls out from under the bed in mute terror, limbs stiff and awkward, arms wrapped around herself. The man has the tip of his spear to Jojen’s throat. Meera’s arm is blossoming with fresh bruises. “Who’re you, girl?” the ironborn demands. She can barely make out his face in the dark. He's big, and long-limbed. She could try to dart around him and run out the door, but she would not get very far.

“Beth Cassel,” she says, although she has to repeat it because no sound comes out when her lips first move. “I am the castellan’s daughter.” That means something. She’s important. They won’t kill her if she is someone important’s daughter. They wouldn’t dare. When Father comes back-

“Some castellan he was,” the man sneers, and jerks his head towards the door. “Walk.”

She does.

The hall is the darkest she has ever seen it, only a few torches lit, and just one fire blazing, and the tables and benches all pushed back, casting long shadows across the dirty floor. Mud and straw collects on the bottom of Beth’s soles. Meera angles herself so she stands between the ironborn with the spear and Jojen and her. Beth cannot bring herself to lift her gaze from the floor for a long while, shoulders trembling with barely suppressed sobs, but when she does, it is not the man she expected to see on the throne, not the great war chief they claim Dagmar Cleftjaw is, not the man who attacked Torrhen’s Square, but another, younger, familiar man.

She has not seen Theon Greyjoy in months and months. His dark hair is longer, down to his shoulders now, his skin tanner, but she knows him instantly, of course she does, despite the putrid yellow kraken across his chest. She has always known Theon, used to sit and giggle with Jeyne, watching him spar with Robb or Jory or Jon or Cley Cerwyn. She remembers him laughing with Robb over some jape and arguing with Nell and rolling his eyes at this or that or smirking to himself. He is not smirking now, but the shadow of it is still there, across his sharp jaw.

Her sobs are not silent anymore. 

“Quiet,” Meera whispers to her, swiftly, “they’ll hurt you if you draw attention.”

Beth tries to quiet herself, but then sees Bran on the ground at Theon’s feet, a huddled little lump of a boy, and Maester Luwin bruised and bloodied, clutching Rickon’s hand, and how badly poor Hodor was beaten, his face gone all red and purple, Old Nan holding his arm tightly, and then she sees Joseth in the corner, his daughters clinging to him in terror, and there is Palla- Palla’s dress is all ripped, straight down the front; she has to hold it closed across her skinny chest with white-knuckled hands, and her father is limping, as she leans heavily against him, wincing every time she takes a wavering step forward. 

When Septon Chayle hurries towards them, exclaiming in horror, one of the Ironborn throws him to the floor as if he weighed nothing at all. He lies there, groaning, in his stained grey robes. 

Turnip is sniffling quietly, a flour-stained hand on his father's leg. The Freys are standing in the shadows; Little Walder seems almost smug, as if happy to see Bran on the floor and Rickon on the verge of tears, but Big Walder is just watching, eyes darting around the hall. Theon sits the high seat all the while as people weep and cry out in pain and shuffle in, limping or being dragged or looking around blankly, as if this were all some ridiculous jape. When the doors finally slam shut, she jumps, knocking into Meera. Jojen is staring straight ahead, unmoving, directly at Theon, who does not seem to notice or care.

He leans forward in his seat instead, as though this were a mummer’s show he’d been looking forward to for weeks. He raises a hand for quiet the way Lord Stark or Robb might have. Beth looks at his hand and the iron rings on his long fingers in the light from the torches, and imagines Summer or Shaggydog tearing them all off at once. She imagines Father taking his traitor’s hand off at the wrist, the solid thunk the sword would make when it hit the bone. Beth has seen men lose fingers for thieving before, if only from a distance. What ought a man to lose for stealing a castle and a throne? 

“You all know me,” he says coolly, and even as Mikken the smith begins to shout and curse, and the people murmur in fear, Beth thinks, _liar. Liar. Liar. We don’t. We never did._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, but there's a reason Theon is tagged in this fic, and a reason why it was necessary to establish Beth as our new northern narrator. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. Two obvious changes are that Donella Hornwood is still alive and well, and so the question of Rodrik wedding her was not one of politics (since Daryn is also still alive and well) but of personal affection, which we seldom see in ASOIAF. Rodrik would certainly be marrying 'up' in this case, and Beth's initial excitement at the prospect is two-fold: she gets a nice stepmother and she also gets to be a lady's 'daughter'. The other obvious change is that Reek/Ramsay is not currently present within Winterfell, since he's not wanted for any crimes in the North (although the previous Beth chapter established that other nobles are still justifiably concerned about him bulking up the garrison at the Dreadfort and getting bold with trespassing onto others' lands). 
> 
> 2\. Nell is not the only who's been having some odd dreams! Fortunately, Beth's are a good deal less disturbing in nature. 
> 
> 3\. The lack of positive or really any mother-daughter relationships that we actually see on page in ASOIAF is notable, but I wish we saw more fathers and daughters interacting in a healthy(ier) manner as well. (Looking at you, Doran 'I let you believe I was planning to overturn you as heir for your younger brother, leading to years of resentment and bitterness between us all' Martell).


	26. Donella XXIV

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell spends the sunrise with the mummer, who she’d judged to be the easiest to interrogate. She is right. The thing about men who tell stories is that they’re oft desperate to believe them, and so Nell spins him a very pretty web of one; sitting across from him wan and exhausted with her hair still rumpled and a borrowed cloak from Edmure spilling open at the front to show the pure white linen of her modest shift and the swell of her belly underneath. He wants to believe a woman growing heavy with child will be slow to hate, quick to forgive, so she lets him, and promises him a gentle mother-to-be’s mercy if he only tells her everything he knows. She does not need a whip or a knife or a hot poker or anything to threaten him with. Hope is much more dangerous.

He tells her they came in disguise on Tyrion Lannister’s orders, he tells her that a mummer, a thief, a murderer, and a poisoner were specially selected, he tells her that neither Ser Cleos nor Captain Vylarr knew anything of it, and most importantly, he tells her the name and appearance of the poisoner, who was busy tainting the larder while the rest of them attempted to trick the guards into opening the gate. “Thank you,” Nell breathes earnestly when he is done- and he is a young man, not much older than her, with reddish hair a bit like Robb’s or Edmure’s, and a freckled face, “thank you for your honesty. You cannot know how grateful I am.”

He smiles almost tentatively. “All I ask for is mercy, Your Grace. I wanted no bloodshed- I had no part in the murders.”

The murders being the dead guards, of course, and she supposes they are technically responsible for the oblivious Lannister men who attempted to free Jaime a second time once the Tully guards had restrained him. By then she was well away, of course, shaking like a leaf in the wind, fighting back vomit, soaked in sweat. Nonetheless-

“Nor do I,” she says. “Only peace and safety for my people and my babe.” She caresses her stomach then, and stands. “Every man shall have his fair judgement on the morrow, I promise you.”

On the morrow, twelve men hang. It is merciful, she thinks, for there is no bloodshed, and it is a cleaner end than the one Jaime Lannister or the murderer gave the men they killed, a cleaner end than any of them would have given her or Jory Mormont or Edmure or her babe. She is back to her usual mourning black and grey, and there is no trace of horror or upset on her pale face. Edmure protested the idea of a pregnant woman attending executions, but he had no real authority to stop her, and knew better than to try, anyways. Nell sits, her hands clasped neatly in her lap, and one by one watches them swing. The mummer is the third to be brought up to the gallows, and he makes it a true performance, screaming and shouting all the while.

“Mercy!” he calls to her. “You promised me mercy! Please! Your Grace, please!”

Nell has seen her share of men hang before, but never on her direct orders. She will not lie; it is not easy to sit there and watch, but she does not look away, as tempting as it is. She does not speak, either. Executions are not the place for pithy remarks or attempts at moralizing. There is a duty to be done, and everyone sees it through. This is how her aunt would do it, how Robb would do it, how Ned Stark did it, if Catelyn Stark were here, this is how she would do it. Her father- well, depending on his mood Father might take his time to get around to it, but they would die by sundown all the same. 

It is a mercy, she reminds herself, when she hears them murmur behind her back. There is a reason there are set ways these things are done. Nobles are beheaded, commons hang. There is supposed to be a certain dignity and rhyme and reason to it. Otherwise they are just animals, tearing each other apart. But it takes a long time to hang twelve men. Next time it might be twice that. Or thrice that. And she would still have to sit through every one. There may come a time where there is no noose to hang them, and she might need to pick up a blade herself. She has been thinking about that, how she might do it. She is not strong enough to take off a man’s head with one swing of a sword. She would have to use a knife and slit the throat, quickly and neatly. 

For the Bastard, when his time comes, she will not worry about not managing it with just one swing, of course.

Robb’s son kicks steadily all through the hangings, as if in approval of his mother’s justice, and afterwards, once her stomach has settled, she is ravenously hungry again. Unfortunately, they had to empty out a good deal of the larder, so there is only fish, and she is dreadfully sick of trout. But what is more sickening is her ladies’ fussing over her as though she- well, she was in danger, but she feels dirty about it, as though she were claiming some sort of stolen valor. Edmure was right when he told her she never should have been out at that time of night with just one guard, and she was right when she told him he never should have ridden out himself to chase after bandits, if he was going to give Lannister men free reign of the castle.

They are both at fault, obviously. It was careless. A banner of peace means little and less in war. In the worst case scenario, Jaime Lannister with the backing of one hundred men could have easily taken a castle as small and compact as Riverrun in a night. Edmure could have come back to find his own men hanging from the walls, and she might have been the one chained to a wall in the darkest, dampest pit of the dungeons, not Jaime Lannister, who could not stop laughing, even after they’d restrained him. 

“You have to admit, I was close, my lady,” he’d told her mockingly while they chained him at the neck like a snarling beast. “You will tell the boy, won’t you? How close I got?”

The boy. She does not how they are going to explain to Robb, who is taking castles with ease, how they nearly lost theirs. But she does not know when she is going to see Robb again, either. He’d said he’d be back in time for the birth. Or he’d try, at any rate. He has to be here. He must, she wants him to be here when his son is born, and if it is- if it is not a son, he needs to be here anyways. Eddard, she thinks. His name is Eddard, and he’s strong, he kicks so much, and he likes music and the night time and hearing justice done. He’s not very fond of fish, though, because her meal is turning her stomach. She sets down her knife, giving up on trying to saw through a bone of the trout before her, and glances up at Jory, who is picking at her own meal.

Dana sighs, loudly. It is just the three of them, and to say spirits are low would be an understatement. Nell’s brow furrows. “Why weren’t you abed, anyways?” she asks suddenly, only recalling it now, in light of everything else- the guilt, the fear, the overwhelming sense of not feeling safe in the place that has been her home for over six months now. “We were looking for you.”

“I was in the godswood,” Dana says, finishing off the last of her cider. 

“You were praying that late?” Jory snorts humorlessly. “You’re far more devout than me, Dana.”

“Good thing I was, too,” Dana retorts. “Might be that’s what saved us, my prayers.” She measures the distance with her fingers. “How far up did they raise the portcullis? A bloody goat would have done a better job of raising the alarm.” She sets down her cup roughly, shaking her head and adds bitterly, “And they tried to poison the tarts, too! That was the last good jam of the summer. Damn them all.” 

Nell watches her stalk out of the room, decides that Dana is lying about something, although she’s not sure what, and turns back to Jory. “I want you to teach me how to use a rondel. Or anything that will puncture chain mail or go up a man’s armpit.”

Jory chokes on her bite of trout, holds up a hand, swallows, and then says in a strangled voice, “Your Grace, if this- I swear to you, I am still worthy of being-,”

“No, it’s not a jape,” Nell tells her. “I trust you with my life. Most men are not the Kingslayer, and you would have defended me to the death, nonetheless. But I cannot run anywhere in my current condition. And I need to be able to wield something I can put through a man’s rib cage, if it comes down to it.”

Jory’s expressions says ‘if a man who means to kill you is close enough for you to put a knife in his ribs, you’re already a dead woman’ but when she speaks, she says, “Alright. I can show you. Have you held daggers before?”

“Just for hunting and dressing,” Nell says, pushing back her plate. “But I trust I will be a quick learner, given family history. We are rather fond of them.”

Over the course of the next month, Nell learns how to kill a man, or at least badly injure him, with a rondel, sees Alyx wed her Vance, and convinces Marissa Frey to spy on Dana for her. Not all at once, and in between that she feels her hair grow thicker and her nails grow brittler, to the point where half of her finger and toenails are cracking and for the first time she must cut her hair for the third time in one year to keep it from turning into a horse’s mane down her back. Her ankles begin to swell, too, to her dismay, and her legs cramp all night now, even if the headaches have passed and the nightmares seem to have receded. But she peers at herself in the looking glass and does not quite recognize the woman staring back at her. 

She wonders if Robb is thinking the same thing to himself; he’s seen multiple battles now, not just an ambush or two. For all of Barbrey’s talk, in the end Nell wed a properly blooded warrior. She wonders if he’s come to like it. The fighting, anyways. He took no joy from securing Riverrun, but she thinks Robb likes the strategy part of it, at least, if not the actual bloodshed. There is something to be said for seeing a plan play out perfectly. She wonders if Grey Wind is any bigger. There are rumors Robb rides him into battle, but she does not take those any more seriously than she does the ones of her husband being a skinchanger or ripping Stafford’s still beating heart from his chest.

Some part of her is worried, though, and she’s not sure why. Before she wed Robb, all she could complain of was how young and inexperienced he was, how sheltered and innocent, how she would have much rather wed a grown man, someone who’d seen death and who was willing to make the hard choices. And now that he is gone off to do exactly she that she finds herself mourning the kind boy who left her, and frightened that the kind boy who only wanted to do what was right will be gone for good when he returns. 

She’s a hypocrite, of course. She would begrudge Robb his revenge and bloodier notions, while entertaining her own in private? It’s not fair or wifely of her to demand softness and mild manners from him while she lies awake at night and thinks about slitting throats. Is it not her duty to temper his baser impulses? Is that not what she was taught? Has she not heard a thousand times that women keep men civilized? Yet for all that she can tell, men seem most happy with themselves when doing uncivil things to women. Not Robb, though. Never him.

 _You are a child_ , the voice quite like her aunt’s tells her still, as she grips the rondel in her hand. _What do you imagine your king is doing in the Westerlands, you silly girl? Feeding orphans? Blessing babes? No. He is killing and burning as he goes, his men are slaughtering and stealing gold and cattle, he is conquering castles. You wanted a soldier, admit it, not a lord or a king, and now you have got one. You wanted someone you could throw up against your father, who would protect you, kill for you, and now you have him. Use him as you will when he returns, or he will use you, and you may not like it._

 _He will not be so changed_ , she tells herself firmly, as she drives the needle-like point through the slight gap in the armor Jory painstakingly arranged on a straw-man for her. _He will not. He cared for me before he left, he was worried for me and the babe, he will still feel that when he returns. He will not be so changed. He is still my Robb who gave me a crown and apologizes when he’s wronged me and who has never lied to me._

“Nell?” Jory is staring at her. “Is it… stuck?”

“No,” says Nell swiftly, flushing and wrenching the dagger back out from in between the plates of metal, brimming with straw. “I’m sorry, my thoughts ran away with me.” But even as she smiles reassuringly, the tip of the rondel nicks open her left thumb.

“Careful,” says Jory in consternation, blanching as she hisses in pain, “I knew I should have taken it to be blunted first, if Mother were here she’d kill me-,”

Nell puts her throbbing thumb to her lips, then holds it up for inspection. “I think I’ll survive the night, Jorelle.” 

But she can still taste the blood on her lips and the sting in her thumb four days later, at Alyx and Kirth’s wedding feast. You would not think they’d hung Lannisters from the walls three weeks past, the mood is light enough, even if there is still not much in the way of bread or cakes due to the ruined flour. Alyx is beaming, and Shirei runs over, giggling, to tell Nell and Roslin that she is holding Kirth’s hand under the table. 

“I hadn’t thought her so soft of heart,” Nell muses, while Arwyn takes her little sister by the hand and leads her out to dance. Alyx liked him, that was clear enough, but there was quite the gap between liking a man and wanting to clasp his hand like lovers in a song. Or perhaps she’s just too cynical. Or envious. She has not touched her own husband in months.

“Kirth did promise her a new horse from his father’s stable,” says Roslin hopefully, “and Alyx is mad for horses.”

Nell watches as the bride and groom rise to dance to a song that Alesander, the singer brother of Alyx, has composed especially for the wedding. “Well, they will not say my reign as queen was short of entertainment and merry-making.” She glances around, brow furrowing as she leans forward in her seat, wincing when her swollen ankles and feet ache. “Where is Edmure? It’s not like him to pass up a chance to ask you to dance, Ros. And Dana- gods, where has she run off to now?”

Neither Edmure nor Dana are anywhere to be seen, although she spots Marianne coming back into the hall through a side door, hair mussed and arguing furiously with Marissa. Fair Walda is brooding in a corner, tolerating the flirtation of a bold squire and sipping her wine, and Fat Walda is dancing merrily with Zia, who cheers when Kirth lifts a grinning Alyx up by the waist. 

“Your Grace-,” Marissa had started towards her, but Marianne snatches her by the hand, then scowls when her cousin rips it away.

“Rissa, don’t-,”

“Marissa’s never missed a chance to tattle,” Roslin laughs. “Like or not she found Mari kissing a boy in the gardens.”

Marissa’s penchant for reporting on anyone and everyone is why Nell asked her to look after what Dana’s been up to, but Roslin doesn’t need to know that. Nell could care less what Marianne Vance is getting up to. Still, she’d rather not have a fight at a wedding, so she pushes herself up out of her seat, shaking her head. Whatever it is, Marissa can certainly tell her later, in private-

“Your Grace.” She starts; Maester Vyman is at her side. “Lord Edmure requires your presence.”

From the look on his aged face, she can tell it is not for any reason to celebrate.

“We’ve had reports of Harrenhal.”

Roslin overheard; she pales, and Nell lays a hand on her arm. “Please make my excuses, won’t you? I went to bed early, the babe’s tired me out. We don’t want to cause a panic,” she mutters, and Roslin nods tightly. “We’ll have time to prepare, whatever it is.”

Unless Tywin Lannister has spontaneously dropped dead, word about Harrenhal only means one thing.

“They’re marching west,” says Edmure, seated, massaging his forehead with one hand. He’s reddened from the wine he had before he was called away from the festivities, but Nell is unfortunately sober, and so plucks up the missive to scan it a first, second, and third time. 

“He must be very confident indeed that Stannis will not hound him.”

“Lord Stannis is still working to take Storm’s End,” Vyman says quietly. “He will not turn his attention to the Lannisters until his family’s seat is fully restored to him.”

“I rather wish he’d deal with them first,” Nell snaps. “What is a castle, to a war? We could have pinned Tywin from the north, Robb from the west, Stannis from the south, but-,”

But a thousand fleeting things. Pride and ambition and fury and revenge. Stannis is not their ally. And Tywin is not there, waiting to be trapped, any longer. 

“They’ll fan out,” says Edmure, rousing himself with a groan. “He has enough men to span the riverlands from north to south. To face Robb he must cross the Red Fork, and-”

“He will not march past us with a smile and a wave,” Nell says tartly. “If he can take Riverrun and claw his way back into the westerlands to harry Robb, he will.” She rummages through a drawer, pulls out a map, knocking over an ink well in the process. The sluggish spill could be blood in the dim lighting, she thinks suddenly, then ignores it. “We need to determine where and how he is going to try to cross. My father must bring his men down from the Twins-,”

“And take Harrenhal,” Edmure says suddenly. “If we can cut him off from Harrenhal-,”

“Then he has no base to retreat back to,” Nell smiles at the thought, and at the thought of Roose marching anywhere on her orders, especially to a place known to bring ruin and despair to all who claim it. How fitting. “He has the numbers, but you know the land. We cannot meet his host in open combat. They would crush us. But if they can be divided-”

“His Grace left orders to hold only Riverrun,” Vyman says warily.

“And we shall,” Nell retorts. “But I mean to give the Old Lion more than a few smarting wounds in the process. We’re going to bleed him out as much as possible before Robb returns.”

“The smallfolk cannot take another invasion,” Edmure says. “I cannot- we cannot fail my people again. There will be mass hysteria, when they hear the Mountain and his men are riding out, and Tywin himself as well. They would rather butcher their own babes and slaughter their own livestock before they lived through another assault.”

“Then they won’t cross,” Nell thinks of the women in the godswood, who came to her crying and shaking to tell their stories, of little Lyman Darry, of Masha Heddle hanging outside her own inn. Of the Bracken sisters. Jayne could not come to the feast. Loud noises and the sound of men laughing and shouting terrify her. She is up in her room with her sister, sewing, one of the few things that brings any comfort to her. Not again. Never. Of Jory shaking before the Kingslayer, but refusing to run all the same, sword in hand. How could she face any of them? She has to do something beyond sitting here, waiting for some rescue or salvation or miracle. Robb gave her a crown. She means to earn it. 

“They won’t cross so long as I am queen,” she says. “I promise you that, my lord.”

By the time she finally makes it back to her rooms, it is nearly midnight. The bedding ceremony has already concluded, the feast has settled down, the stars are out in full force. Dana is missing, the third time this week. She is constantly slipping in and out, late or early. Nell knows exactly what to make of it; there must be some man, or boy, more likely, but she cannot determine who. Dana is friendly with many men but close to none of them in particular. It could be one of Edmure’s friends, a Vance or a Piper or a Mallister, but-

Why then has she not raised the issue yet? Nell could surely secure an arrangement between her closest lady in waiting and any one of them. Is Dana somehow ashamed to use her influence? Is she really that opposed to marriage as a whole? Is the lord in question promised to another? Gods, is he married? It might explain some things, if it were a married man. Nell mislikes it, mistrusts it. This isn’t like Dana at all, to turn secretive and distant. She has always been so open, so freely affectionate. Of course there were some things she never liked discussing- her family, for one, but Nell could hardly chastise her for that, given her own past. But… Nell has always confided in her about these sort of things, matters of the heart. Or matters of sheer lust, at any rate. What has changed? Perhaps it is because she is with child. Perhaps Dana worries Nell is consumed with other concerns, would not care to hear it. 

When Dana does come in, Nell overhears her japing with the guard at the door- Dana is always friendly with the guards, always on the best of terms, teasing them the way a sister might, which she says everyone with a lick of sense ought to do, since it means one never has to argue their way in or out of a room- and it is very early morning. Nell does not move, pretending to still be asleep, and watches through half-lidded eyelashes as Dana swiftly undresses, then pauses, a hand lingering on one wrist. What is she feeling at? A bracelet of some sort? A gift from a lover?

Within minutes, she is fast asleep besides Nell as usual. Nell waits a good fifteen minutes before sitting up cautiously to squint down at Dana’s wrist. It’s not the sort of jewelry a man might give a mistress or a lady he was courting. It’s a girl’s hair ribbon, frayed blue-grey silk, looped around her wrist. Dana has never in her life worn a ribbon in her hair, nor anywhere else on her person. Nell studies it for a little while longer, struggling to place it, and then it occurs to her. Marianne’s mussed hair at the feast, as if someone had- or she had-

Some five restless hours later, Dana stirs to find Nell uncovering a tray of freshly baked honeyed bread. She moans in hunger, pushing her hair out of her face, and beams at Nell. “Fresh flour came in. I thought I was going to die of misery.”

“Yes,” says Nell, “a life without bread- no life at all. You could make them your new house words. That or, bread and ribbons. Like the Targaryens, you see. Fire and blood, bread and ribbons-,”

Dana is staring at her.

“Come now,” Nell wrinkles her nose. “I thought it was funny-,”

“One of the girls dropped it, is all, so I thought I’d return it to whoever. Later.” Dana says in a quick, clipped voice.

“I know it’s Marianne’s,” says Nell. She does not know, she only suspects, but the look on Dana’s face confirms it. She never has been able to lie well. “I’m not angry- I’m just confused. And worried. Dana, what is going on?”

“Nothing,” Dana scoffs. “So what if it’s Mari’s? I was going to return it to her today-,”

“In the godswood?”

There is a long silence, only punctuated by the crackle of the fire in the hearth and the patter of autumn rain on the windows.

“Did you send Marissa?” Dana blurts out, reddening in fury. “Donella-,”

“I sent Marissa after you, not Marianne, but if she’s involved-,”

“Involved in what?”

“You tell me!”

Dana licks her lips, then asks hoarsely, “Is that a command, Your Grace?”

“Should it be?” Nell snaps. “Gods be good, we have known each other for years. Do you mistrust me so, now that I am a queen? Can you not see I am worried for you? So if I’ve no need to be, please, do enlighten me-,”

“You will not like to hear it.”

“I will mislike you dancing around it even more!” Nell catches herself before she completely loses her temper, and adds in a softer tone, “Danelle. If it… if one of you has become… involved with a man who is wed, or who is otherwise not suitable, I am sure- we can find some solution. If there is a child-,”

“You think I’m with child?” Dana spits.

“I don’t know what to think, but I plan to find out. Now, you can tell me-,”

“Or what? You’ll have Marissa follow us around like a little shadow? Could you not have asked me-,”

“Would you have told me?”

“No,” says Dana shortly. “I would not have. Not because I mistrust you, or- or because I am angry with you, because- Nell. I would not have you think of me…”

“Dana, you are my friend. My dearest friend,” Nell raises a hand as if in beseechment, then sighs and stands, taking a seat on the bed beside her. “How could I think badly of you?” Dana looks at her for a long moment, then wipes at her nose, and murmurs something. Nell frowns. “What?” 

“We were together,” Dana says, a little louder.

“I know that,” Nell tries not to sound impatient. “My question is what is it that brought you together. Is one of you helping the other with-,”

“Neither of us is fucking a married man, nor with child, if that is your concern,” Dana says flatly. “In fact, a bastard child is not in the least a risk for either of us.”

Nell doesn’t understand. “Then what-,”

“We have been together,” says Dana. 

And then she realizes, all at once. “You-,”

“I told you that I would not marry,” Dana is not looking at her anymore, but studying the floor. “You must understand, this is not- I know when they speak of, of- of women- doing such things, it is said to be- games or silliness or- training one another to please men. It is not a game, for me. Nor Marianne. We’ve not- not for long, but- you don’t know… I’ve never met anyone like that before. Like me, who- who feels as I do. As I always have.”

“Always?” Nell murmurs.

“Yes,” says Dana, looking up at her fiercely. “I will- I’ll not be coy with you. My grandsire was negotiating to wed me to Black Donnel when Gawen found us. Me and- a girl, one of our steward’s daughters. We were only- it doesn’t matter. I swore to him we were just playing- I was fourteen, her fifteen, he- he told his father, who told Grandfather, and my father, and my mother- and then everyone seemed to know, or at least suspect it, and-,” her voice catches slightly, “and then her father sent her away, and- well, Donnel had got wind of it, of course, and- and he laughed, and said he cared not so long as I was still maid enough for a husband, but-,”

“I refused and said I’d- I told them I would not, could not, that I’d leave if they wanted me to, but I would not marry, and Grandfather was wroth, and Beron said they ought to- that I should be stripped naked and made to walk through the village, for dishonoring myself so, but… Father would not have it, he said he’d belt me himself if they liked, but the first man who laid a hand on me or tried to strip me nude, he’d kill them, kin or no.”

“Dana.” Nell puts an arm around her, but she jerks away.

“No. It was my fault. There could have- people might have been hurt, all because-” She shakes her head. “And then word came from your aunt, looking for companions for her Bolton niece, and off I went. And I never- never felt like I could again, until now. Here. With her.” She stiffens, pushes her hair behind her ears. “I understand that it’s- that you must act as a queen, not my friend. I do not- I only ask- it is not Marianne’s fault. She had never- You must not blame her. Marissa did not see us, but she suspects. Please, don’t- If Marianne’s kin find out, they will wed her off, to some bloody cousin or- whoever they can find, and it’s not- I cannot have that be my fault as well. I will go home, if you command it.”

“You think I would send you away?” Nell asks roughly, something tugging loose in her chest, like thread unspooling or snow brushed off an evergreen branch.

Dana’s eyes are red-rimmed. “I don’t know. It’s- you do not think me depraved? Or- my mother said I was just being willful, that I was too stubborn to see men’s virtues, but- I have never looked at a man and felt what I feel for a woman.”

“No,” says Nell after a moment. “You are not depraved. Or- unnatural, or willful. Well, willful, yes, but- Dana. I cannot pretend to understand- I don’t know what it’s like. But- you are my sister, truly. You could do all sorts of vile things, and you would still be my sister, to me. But this is not… one of them. I love you. And that you do not love men could never change that.”

Dana hugs her too tightly; Nell inhales and then pats her firmly on the back. “It’s too early to cry on me.”

“Oh hush, my queen,” Dana mutters in her ear, before letting go and wiping at her face. “I’d like that bread now, if you don’t mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next four chapters are going to alternate between Nell and Beth- this isn't a permanent change for the rest of the fic, it's because I need to communicate some events that are about to happen in the North and the Riverlands without having to rely on flashbacks or tons of exposition in the future. So the next chapter will be Beth's POV, and the one after that (chapter 28) we'll be back to Nell, and I promise we will see the return of Catelyn and Brienne. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. This chapter roughly covers the span of a month, I am trying to make it clear how time is progressing with my descriptions of the pregnancy advancing, etc. People are clearly going a bit stir-crazy; Nell's been holed up in Riverrun for a while now, and news from Robb's army is sparse beyond 'we're winning and stealing their shit'. No one at Riverrun knows what's going on in the North yet, in keeping with canon, so they have no idea that they no longer hold Moat Cailin or Winterfell.
> 
> 2\. "Nell just straight up lied to a prisoner, implied she'd grant him mercy, then executed him. That's fucked up!" Look, I've read a lot of ASOIAF fics where anytime a character takes a 'darker' approach or behaves mercilessly, they're met with endless praise and accolades because they're finally 'wising up' to the setting. The setting of Westeros is pretty fucked up! I'm not going to heap rewards on my characters for their actions, morally dubious or not, in this fic, but I don't want to cushion things either. As it stands, Nell is pretty proud of herself for not having to rely on torture to get someone to readily confess the details of their plot to her. When she refers to people whispering behind her back, it's not that the men were executed, it's that she as a woman played an active role in the sentencing and overseeing the executions themselves. As queen consort and as Robb's pregnant wife, the expectation would be that she would distance herself from these things and let Edmure handle everything alone. The hangings- let's just say this isn't the first or last time in this fic people are going to be executed (fairly or not). 
> 
> 3\. Nell's worries about Robb changing are mostly the result of loneliness and separation from someone she's come to consider a serious life partner and companion (although she's unwilling to admit any romantic interest), but they're not necessarily unfounded. She's correct in that Robb had only seen two brief battles (not counting the skirmish with the wildings) before he left the Riverlands to invade the West, and she is trying to brace herself for the fact that he may be a very different person from the boy who left her when he returns. For her it's the difference between defense vs. offense- initially they were only protecting themselves from the Lannisters, but now Robb is actively seeking revenge for Tywin's actions in the Riverlands, and she is trying to accept the fact that the war might not be so blatantly black and white anymore. She's also aware that it's a bit petty of her to be worrying about him being consumed with revenge, while at the same time she's been seething with hatred for her father and brother for the entirety of their marriage. But I think people fall into comfortable patterns in relationships, and Nell is not entirely prepared for the dynamic of her being the often more actively antagonistic and brooding one to change. 
> 
> 4\. Nell and Edmure agree on something! That thing being 'Fuck the Lannisters, fuck Tywin, and FUCK the Mountain, they're not crossing!' In in the interest of not spoiling things, all I will say is that no one in this fic (well, maybe Bran, but he's not here) has the gift of foresight! The narrator is 18! As much as I would love for her to be genuinely wise beyond her years, she often is not. On a more serious note, hearing the stories of those refugee women a few chapters back had a real impact on Nell, and she has begun to see the protection of the smallfolk and their homes as not just something she owes them, but a real, active duty she should take a vested interest in. She is also very eager, like Edmure, to prove herself worthy of a command post, in her case 'despite' her gender and current pregnant state. 
> 
> 5\. The scene with Dana was initially intended to be much shorter, but the characters weren't having it. I wanted to focus more on Dana being able to talk about it than Nell's immediate reaction to it. I also don't think the concept of 'publicly punish and humiliate a woman for her sexuality' is limited to those who follow the Faith of the Seven. The violent homophobia Dana faces might be less religously-founded but it's still very much present and threatening. Dana blames herself for this in part because it almost escalated into genuine family in-fighting and bloodshed.
> 
> 6\. Bread. I don't know why there's a ton of jokes about bread in this chapter. I think I was just really hungry while writing it.


	27. Beth III

299 AC - WINTERFELL

Beth thinks the dirt in the lichyard is much looser than usual, but perhaps that’s just from the rain. It has poured and sleeted icy droplets from the sky on and off for the past week. Even now, the sky is shuttered and grey and grim far above their heads. It seems impossibly far away, for since the sea came to Winterfell, they might as well be an island of stone, far away from any sight of land or rescue. Beth’s stomach hurts; it always hurts these days. Meera warned her against worrying herself sick; “Crying and fretting won’t help anyone,” she’d told her, just a few days past. “The best thing you can do is keep your head down, watch, and wait. That’s how we win.”

But there’s been no winning for anyone but Theon and his men at Winterfell. Her eyes hurt too; she doesn’t sleep well, even beside Meera, who has her spear always within reach. They barricade the bedchamber door every night, and a few times it has been Beth and the Reeds and Bandy and Shyra, all sleeping in one huddled mass together on the bed. Not Palla, though. Farlen doesn’t let her leave the kennel much, nor out of his sight at all, after what the Ironborn did to her. Beth’s not stupid. She knows how men and women lay together, and she knows that men can rape them, and often do during wars, and not just women grown- little girls and boys too. So she doesn’t sleep very well as of late.

Theon had the men who hurt Palla and beat her father and killed Dasha the dog whipped, but that was all. Beth has seen men whipped for dozing off while on guard, for being late to training, for brawling in the tavern, for thievery. If Robb were here, he’d have put them to death, or send them to the Wall. But if Robb were here, none of this would have happened, and she wouldn’t be thinking about it at all. Palla does not want to talk about it, anyways. She wants to bury Dasha’s ashes, which Turnip is dutifully holding in a linen bundle while she digs. 

Drennan the Ironborn killed Dasha because she bit him when he and the others came into the kennel. She was trying to protect Farlen and Palla. Beth knows Dasha was Palla’s favorite dog, even if she was old and ugly and mean. You don’t have to dig that deep to bury a dog, even a deerhound, but Palla is up to her waist in mud and black dirt before she declares it deep enough. Beth helps her scramble out of the grave; her dress is spattered with dirt and grime, and the dampness in the air is plastering tendrils of blonde hair to her sweaty forehead. “Here,” says Beth, handing her a kerchief. 

Palla doesn’t wipe off her face or dress; she crumples the white fabric in one fist instead, and then drops it into the grave. Beth liked that kerchief. Sansa helped her embroider birds on it once, a long time ago. At least, it feels like a very long time ago. “Give her here,” she says roughly to Turnip, who hands her Dasha’s remains. Palla stands very still for a moment, clutching the bundle to her chest, wavering. 

“She was a good dog,” Beth feels as though she has to say something, anything. “She- um, she was good, and brave, and loyal. And she wanted to protect us. Protect Winterfell.”

“Like a soldier,” Turnip adds in what he seems to think is a helpful tone. “I wish she’d killed them.” One side of Turnip’s mouth is swollen pink-and-purple where one of Theon’s men struck him the other day, then shoved Gage to the floor and spat on him when he protested. Theon said if they obeyed and treated him as their prince, he would be a kind master. No one believed him then, and they do not believe him now. The swelling makes him lisp some of his words. He scratches at the flaky scab forming on his split lip, absently.

“I wish she’d killed them too,” says Palla, and then she closes her eyes, heaves in a breath, and lowers the bundle into the grave. She remains there, on her knees, for too long, hands in the dirt. After a few moments, Beth kneels down beside her, grimacing at the feel of the wet earth clinging to her skirts. A fat drop of water strikes her on the back of the neck. It’ll be back to rain again soon. 

“We can pray,” Beth says. “Here.”

No one’s allowed in the godswood, because Shaggy and Summer are locked up there, and Theon said that if anyone was caught trying to open the gate, he’d have them hung. Everyone has to say their prayers outside, because it’s blasphemy to appeal to the old gods indoors, where it's warm and safe and dry. Insulting to them, the oldest of the wild things. So Beth usually prays in the lichyard, since it’s less intimidating than the dark and cold crypts. She doesn’t know if any god at all can hear her here. She even thought of going into the sept, but it’s been chained shut for a fortnight now.

When the sun came up, the first morning Theon held Winterfell, he let his men take Septon Chayle and sacrifice him to the Drowned God. They threw him down the well. And then they made the few men left haul his body out, so he wouldn’t rot and ruin the water supply. Beth didn’t watch Chayle drown, but she heard his shouts when they took him. He was always nice, even if you didn’t worship the Seven. He loved books and always helped people find them if they came to the library, even if they were common. He wasn’t even old; Old Nan said he still had a ‘boy’s smile’, and Beth could see it too, sometimes. 

He was a very good swimmer, Septon Chayle, but it’s hard for a man to swim when his hands and feet are bound and he’s in a dark, slimy pit. 

Beth has never hated anyone before, but she thinks she hates Theon and his men. No, she knows she does. When a man drowns his whole body goes grey, even his lips. She never knew that before. It took an awfully long time to scrub out the bloodstains on the floor in the Great Hall, where they speared Mikken in the back. Beth never knew that before, either, how long it takes, how many buckets of water and filthy rags, until she had to carry the water and help the other women mop and scrub.

She’s learned a lot of things, and she hasn’t liked any of them.

When Father comes back and takes Theon’s head, she’s resolved to watch. After everything the Ironborn have made her look at, it shouldn’t be very hard at all. She might even like it. Beth knows that’s wrong. But it’s true. She hates- she hates him, she hates his men, she hates the way they tramp around Winterfell, sneering and laughing and drinking, she hates the way they look, their unfamiliar armor, their braided hair and beards, she hates them all, all of them, and while she can’t bring herself to say she wants them to die, she does want to watch, when it happens.

Turnip kneels down too, and the other side of her, and they pray, and fill the grave back up, and pray some more.

“When my father comes back,” Beth whispers, some time later, “I’ll tell him how brave Dasha was, Palla. Maybe he can- we could make a statue for her. And Septon Chayle. And Mikken, and-,”

“Don’t be stupid,” Palla stands up slowly, rubbing at her eyes. “Dogs don’t get statues, Beth. Only lords, and maybe ladies, if they’re really pretty.” But her cold eyes say, ‘we don’t get statues, people like us, because no one wants to remember us’. And Beth cannot argue with that. If Palla died, no one would make a pretty statue for her like they did Lady Lyanna. No one would lay flowers and feathers and pretty pebbles at her stone feet, no one would come and kneel and pray before her. 

The same goes for me, she thinks suddenly. She’s not a lady, is she? Even the Reeds, strange though they might be, and the Freys, horrid as they might be, are worth more than her. Lords and ladies get ransomed back, or rescued. No one goes charging off on a white horse to save girls like Palla from monsters, and no one commissions a statue when a smith like Mikken is murdered, even if it wasn’t fair, even if it wasn’t right, even if they’d never done anything to hurt anyone, and they didn’t have to die, it was just-

“We could make a little statue,” Turnip says suddenly. “Out of clay. There’s some clay in the storeroom. We can make a little Dasha, an’ you can keep her-,”

“I don’t want a stupid clay dog!” Palla snaps, and she shoves him, hard. Turnip falls over on his bottom, gapes up at her in open-mouthed hurt. Palla is crying, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks. “You don’t- I don’t want a bloody statue! I want-,” she makes a strange choking noise, and shakes her head. “I want to go home,” she says then, and Beth stares at her. They are home. This is the only home they’ve ever known. It just doesn’t feel like it anymore.

Palla sinks down onto her haunches, like a dog herself, tucks her chin against her chest, and fights back sobs. Beth puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. “It’ll be alright.” She tries to sound brave and calm, like Meera always is. Even Bran is braver than her, and he’s crippled and kept locked up in his room all day, just like Rickon. Beth’s supposed to bring Rickon his supper every night, and she hates that too. He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t know why Theon is being like this, he keeps asking for his mother and his father, and Beth never knows what to say. Last night he threw his bowl of soup at her; she ducked and it shattered against the wall and spattered, lukewarm, across her hair and back. 

“When my father rescues us-,”

“Stop,” Palla has managed to restrain her sobs, for now. “Just stop,” she says, burying her head in her knees. “If they hear you saying that, they’ll beat you.”

“I’m not afraid,” Beth lies. Of course she is. She’s never been so afraid in her life. It feels like some sick nightmare. She walks through halls and rooms she’s been in a thousand times, played in, laughed in, and she is constantly terrified, as if expecting a monster to pop up out of the shadows and grab her. Only it’s real, and the monsters are here, and the biggest monster of them all is someone who wears a face she knows well enough. Lord Stark never mistreated Theon. Robb saw him as a brother. Farlen and Gage were always kind to him; Father taught him how to fight. She doesn’t know why he’s doing this. Why won’t he stop? Even if- even if he felt like he had to help his kin, he didn’t have to come here. He didn’t have to hurt them.

If she were really brave, like Nell or Lady Catelyn or even Arya, if she were really brave she’d stand up for the people here. She is the castellan’s daughter, after all, and ten is nearly a woman. She should- she should beseech Theon, the way Maester Luwin has, to try to… to at least- She doesn’t know what. Surrender? Leave? Of course he won’t do that. But he wants them to call him a prince. He’s not. Even if he is prince of the Iron Isles, he will never, ever, be the Prince of Winterfell. But she knows better than to say that aloud, of course. Palla’s right. He’d have her beaten, or thrown in a cell. Or maybe down a well like Septon Chayle. 

She wonders what the Drowned God looks like. A kraken, Bandy thinks. A big kraken that feasts on men’s souls. Shyra disagrees; she says it just looks like a drowned man, only still alive somehow, floating deep down in the darkest part of the sea, with the bodies of all his victims. Theon once told Bran it was a sea dragon, chained to the ocean floor, but he was just japing then, teasing him. That was a very long time ago, too. Bran wasn’t much older than Rickon is now, and Beth was just a little girl. Maybe it’s a man with many arms and legs, and scaley grey skin. Maybe he has no mouth at all. But it’s not true. The old gods have power here, not the demons of the sea. Not the Ironborn. They don’t belong. They will never belong. Winterfell will be here long after them.

It’s just hard to remember that, sometimes.

Beth never did a servant’s work before, but now she does. The Ironborn certainly aren’t pitching in to lend a hand, and the servants on hand were already few; there was no need for a castle like Winterfell to house two dozens maids when the lord, lady, and most of their children were gone. She washes laundry in the court yard, beating it with sticks the way Old Nan shows her and the twins, she brings crates and sacks up and down flights of stairs, she sweeps floors, she helps to clear tables. She chops vegetables in the kitchen with Gage and Turnip; Osha went over to the Ironborn, and doesn’t work there anymore. Beth doesn’t like the kitchens; men tend to hang about whenever they smell food cooking, or come in to dry their clothes before the fire. But she mostly keeps her head lowered and her ears open, as Meera would advise. Even when she cuts open the pads of her fingers or gets a new, smarting callus. 

It’s hard. Beth never considered herself blind to the nature of life for the smallfolk- she was not so far from them- but she never realized how hard it was to be on your feet all day, either, having to rush through your own meals to jump back up and work again, how it makes your back ache and your legs and hands cramp, how it feels to be afraid you did something wrong, that you might be punished at any moment. How it feels to be ignored. In some ways that is worse. Beth was never ignored before. Dismissed or overlooked from time to time, certainly, especially when she was forever in Sansa and Jeyne’s giggling shadows, forever the master-at-arms’ daughter, not a lady, not a princess, not special or worthy. But never ignored.

Now she steps into rooms, head bowed, shoulders hunched, and men like Theon stare right through her, or their gaze slides over her without so much as a start of recognition. _I know you did not forget_ , she wants to scream sometimes, _don’t pretend, Theon Greyjoy, you grew up here same as I did, I watched my father teach you how to wield a sword and shield, I sat across from you at dinner_. But the cruelest thing is that she is relieved, now, when she is ignored. Better to be ignored than recognized as something someone could use, hurt, discard. She slinks around like a kicked dog, as does everyone else with any sense. 

“There are no brave men left behind these walls,” Old Nan told her one night, her eyes glassy and grey as she peered at Beth over her knitting. “And there’ll be no brave men beyond them, when winter comes.”

“My father is brave,” Beth had said firmly. “King Robb is brave. They’ll come before winter does, you’ll see.”

Old Nan had just smiled sadly, and clacked her needles together.

She may not eat at the same table as Theon Greyjoy anymore, but often enough she serves his wine. Her and his squire are the usual ones, the mute boy they call Wex. A bastard, Beth heard, born of Pyke. He has wild dark hair and a sharp face. He cannot be any older than twelve or thirteen, Palla’s age. He doesn’t look half as frightening as most of the Ironborn, but Beth knows better. Big Walder wheedled Wex into showing him how to use a dagger. She saw them once, practicing. If Theon finds out he’ll have Wex whipped for putting a weapon in a hostage’s hand, even a little ferret of a boy like Big Walder Frey. 

So Wex has to be nice to her, lest she decide to tell, which is not very difficult for someone who can’t speak. Mostly he smiles when he sees her, and once he tried to touch her hair, but she was foolishly brave, and slapped his hand away. Beth had been afraid then, because even if he wasn’t a man grown he was still bigger and stronger than her, big enough to really hurt her if he wanted to, but Wex had just smiled, and pointed at one of the blazing torches on the wall above them. Beth had stared at it, uncomprehending, until he pointed at her hair again. Fire. Right. The wildlings aren’t the only ones who think that, it would seem. Lucky red hair. She doesn’t believe in that at all, as of late.

Sometimes Theon eats alone, sometimes he eats with one or two of his men, although he doesn’t seem to like most of them, and sometimes he lets Kyra eat with him. Kyra is a tavern girl, which Beth once heard was a kind turn of phrase for a whore. She’d make some of her money serving men their drinks, and most of it serving them in bed. Beth doesn’t want to think about that, though. 

She’s seen Kyra many times before this; about the village, usually, or whenever Jory would bring Beth into the Smoking Log and let her order her favorite rabbit stew that they served there. Once she found a tiny bone in it, and had gasped and nearly cried, thinking for the first time of the poor little rabbits, and then Jory had laughed, so she’d set it between her teeth and bit down, hard, to prove that she could be strong. 

But it’s not hard at all to break a rabbit bone.

Now Kyra stays here. Theon brought her back from the winter town not a week after he’d taken Winterfell. She was smiling and clutching him on his fine stallion, but Beth had seen the flicker of fear and unease all the same when the gates crashed shut behind them once more. When Father takes the castle back, she’d best find a way to slip out a side gate, or she’ll be punished. Palla says women who lay with enemy soldiers always are, that it makes people feel better to have someone to hurt and blame when the invaders have been thrown out. 

Beth doesn’t know whether to feel sorry for Kyra or not, although she looks prettier than she ever has before, her hair properly washed and her skin clean and bright. She’s wearing one of Lady Catelyn’s faded old gowns; it’s too tight in the chest, and too long in the skirt. But the dark green goes well with her hair, Beth thinks; Kyra’s hair is light brown and plain, even when it’s shook loose to cascade around her shoulders. Theon likes a woman’s hair down. She knows because she overheard Bandy and Shyra gossiping about it after they fetched Kyra’s bath. Kyra always wore her hair in a thick braid at the inn, but now she wears it down, because she is a prince’s mistress, and that means she has to dress and do as he pleases. 

Beth doesn’t ever want to be any man’s mistress. Palla is afraid some of the Ironborn might try to take the women left here back for salt wives. Beth thinks she’d rather be dead than be carted off back to the Isles. No, she knows she’d rather be dead. She’d jump out a window if they tried to take her away, she would. But it’s easy to think brave and defiant things like that, to promise herself that everything will be alright in the end, that any day now Father will arrive with an army to free them, when she is by herself, praying on the damp ground in the lichyard or standing on the covered bridge and listening to the wolves howl in the godswood. 

It’s much harder when she is pouring Theon’s wine and keeping her eyes firmly on the table. The food smells good, but not as good as it could. Gage is spiteful with his seasoning and flavors; the Ironborn are just too stupid and hungry to ever realize it. Beth wishes he’d put dog shit in their food. Just thinking the word ‘shit’ makes her feel guilty, but not so guilty that she stops considering it. He could. He could feed them shit and piss and all sorts of awful things and they wouldn’t even know it, they’re so ignorant and evil. That makes her feel a bit better.

“Something funny?” 

She had not realized it, Beth thinks in alarm, but she smiled. Just briefly, to herself. He saw. Kyra pauses mid-sip of wine, her gaze fluttering from Beth’s frozen form to Wex to Theon, who has leaned back lazily in his chair to regard her.

“No, my lord,” says Beth, without raising her eyes, the flagon of wine heavy in her chapped hands.

“You’ve been sullen enough as of late,” he comments, not immediately ignoring her once more, as she’d hoped he would. “Do you remember Rodrik Cassel’s little girl, Kyra? Always trotting after Sansa Stark like a lost pup? Her father meant to serve us a defeat, the old fool. Now his daughter serves my wine.” He almost sounds as though he might laugh, although Theon has not laughed at all since he declared himself Prince.

He’s drunk, she thinks, at least a little. Drunk and looking for praise. It’s pathetic. She almost pities him. Almost. It’s hard to pity someone who frightens you. 

“It was very clever of you, m’lord,” Kyra says, leaning forward so her hair falls just so, smiling reassuringly. “They’ll sing of your victory here, someday.”

They’ll sing about the kraken who lost his head, Beth thinks, but she takes advantage of the distraction in order to step back from the table, bumping shoulders with Wex. He nudges her with an elbow, jerks his chin slightly towards the table, where Theon is kissing Kyra, rattling dishes, and rolls his eyes. Beth looks at him suspiciously for an instant, still gripping the flagon, biting her lip. Then Wex puckers his mouth, briefly, and she does giggle aloud, mostly at the absurdity of the whole thing than genuine amusement. 

She’s standing here in the shadows next to a bastard son of Pyke, who is trying to cheer her up, when it was his master’s own men who are to blame for all of this. It is absurd. It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous. So she laughs. A chair scrapes back. Beth glances back towards the table as Wex straightens, and looks at Theon, who has risen and is giving her a hard stare. “Something funny, Beth?” 

Now she’s made him repeat himself twice over the course of one meal. Beth could strangle Wex, because he’s done it now. Or she’s done it, really. Beth doesn’t know anything about war or politics, but she knows people, she does, and she knows Theon. He always liked to laugh, but he was never the sort who could take a jape as easily as he could dole them out. 

“Tell me,” he says, a hand still on the back of his chair, the chair carved with direwolves, that Lord Stark used to sit in, then Robb, and now him, a turncloak and a traitor and a fool. “Did Wex tell you a very good jape? Or is it something else?”

“Nothing, my lord,” she says very quietly, staring at the floor. “I was- it was nothing. I’m sorry, my lord.”

“Sorry, are you?” He takes a step closer. Some men get angry much quicker when they drink. He might be one of them. She doesn’t know. Father never left her around drunk men, always sent her off to bed when feasts went long into the night. But Father isn’t here now. “For what? Nothing?” he imitates her, and the back of her neck prickles. “I’m a fair master, am I not, Kyra?”

“Yes, m’lord,” Kyra is not touching her wine now, her mouth slightly open in concern. Anxiously, she tucks a lock of hair behind one ear. 

“But I’ll not tolerate insolence, no more than any Stark would have,” Theon’s lip curls. “So won’t you share the jape, Beth? What was so very funny?”

 _He thinks I am mocking him_ , she realizes. _Or all of us, really. That we mock him, deride him, when he leaves a room. It doesn’t matter who I am. I could be Bandy or Shyra or Palla or Meera or Jojen. He just wants someone to punish for it._ Wex is standing stiff and silent beside her. Even if he could speak in her defense, she knows he wouldn’t. He’s still the enemy. She’s still just a prisoner.

“It’s just funny,” she says suddenly, raising her gaze, and for an instant it’s not even her saying it, but some other girl, a stupid, wild girl, not meek Beth Cassel, not obedient Beth, some other half-mad thing, she’s the one saying this, the one speaking up, “when Kyra said they’d sing of you. Because in all our songs about Ironborn, they’re always losing.”

It’s true. That doesn’t mean she should have said it. Beth waits for a stab of terror, shock, outrage at herself. But nothing comes. She feels nothing at all. It’s as if someone else said it, not her. There’s a giddy, floaty feeling in her stomach. How could she- Why would she- She should have ducked her head and mumbled a thousand apologies, cringed and cried until he turned away, disgusted but satisfied, instead she- she-

She’s on the floor, her cheek stinging, hard, the flagon of wine spilling out, drenching her skirt. Beth might have been very stupid tonight, but not nearly stupid enough to get back up and take another blow like that. Theon doesn’t say anything else after he backhands her, just turns back to the table. Kyra stands up quickly, and Beth wonders for a moment then if he means to punish her as well- did she get her in trouble, make Theon think Kyra was mocking him too? Kyra must be thinking it as well, probably wants to slap her herself. 

But Theon just says, “Come along, then,” gruffly, and Kyra hurries ahead of him, lifting her too-long skirt. 

Beth sits on the floor, sprawled among the spilled wine, cheek throbbing with fire. Wex Pyke helps her to her feet, to her surprise. Then he touches his lips and shakes his head, frowning. 

“I know,” says Beth. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” She feels at her cheek with two sticky fingers. The floor was hard and cold. Her legs and bottom hurt as well. 

But he makes a fist and raps it against his own chest, and she frowns. “You’re- you’re sorry?”

Wex nods. Beth didn’t know Ironborn were ever sorry for anything. 

“You should be,” she says, instead of ‘it’s alright’. She doesn’t owe him anything. He’s going to grow up to be a traitor and a murderer and a reaver, just like the rest. “You made me laugh. You got me in trouble.” She doesn’t know why she even laughed, anyways. Mayhaps she’s going mad. 

He nods, then touches his own cheek and lifts his chin towards her.

“I’m fine,” Beth lies. She’s not about to break down in tears in front of the likes of him, even if he’s playing at kindness with her. It’s just a game to him, same as mocking Theon behind his back. “It doesn’t hurt much.”

Wex doesn’t look very convinced, but he shrugs and goes on his silent way. Beth goes to bed that night wedged in between Bandy and Shyra; Meera and Jojen sleep near the door. Despite the pain, Beth falls asleep quickly, for once, and sleeps deeply, at that. She does not dream of anything; not Father nor Jory nor the strange godswood and the strange girl in grey, and she does not even have nightmares of Ironborn breaking down her door and hurting her the way they did Palla. When she does wake, she almost feels rested for the first time in weeks, despite the fact that the sun is not even up yet. 

Then she glances around the darkened room, and realizes the door is unbarred, the Reeds are missing, and the godswood outside, for once, is completely silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Nell next chapter!
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. This chapter was not super eventful, but I wanted to establish how things have been functioning at Winterfell since Theon's takeover, and the general sense of betrayal felt by the household there. Theon got a lot of shit growing up for his background, but Beth is right when she points out that men like Gage and Farlen and even her own father never held that against him. In her view, the smallfolk are now suffering for the wounds to Theon's ego and security that were primarily delivered by highborn lords and ladies. That Theon could (suddenly, it seems to her) turn like this and have innocent people like Chayle and Mikken killed comes as a real shock and horror to Beth, who associates him (smirks and sarcastic comments and all) with her memories of a happy childhood at Winterfell.
> 
> 2\. I know this chapter probably has a lot of similarities with Arya's chapters at Harrenhal, mostly because Beth and Arya are in similar situations- while Beth constantly reminds herself that she never was and may never be a lady, she was still given an education, trained in a lady's arts, and generally spared the workload and harshness of a servant's life. Now that she's a hostage, she quickly realizes that not being highborn means she's not much different from any of the regular smallfolk such as Palla or Turnip, and could just as easily be hurt with little to no repercussions for it.
> 
> 3\. I like Wex Pyke, and I was happy to hear he'd survived at the end of ADwD.
> 
> 4\. Going forward I want to be clear that in Beth's chapters (which most people have predicted are not treading down a happy path) that I am going to try to avoid torture-porn or showing-violence-for-the-sake-of-showing-violence. It's more interesting to me to focus on the aftermath of things and the interplay between characters and how they cope, than it is to spend 500+ words detailing someone's bloody death or a graphic assault. This fic is rated M and obviously handles a lot of adult themes and will have some very violent and disturbing scenes. But I think it is possible to do that without making people want to skip ahead in disgust or having it come across as reveling in the bloodshed.


	28. Donella XXV

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell would have sent the Frey girls back anyways, even without the letter demanding their immediate return, however politely worded. Discounting the force under her father’s command who she and Edmure have ordered to prepare to descend upon the Trident and claim Harrenhal, they have roughly eleven thousand men, and only three thousand of those men will be on horseback. The Lannisters have twice that, easily, and even spread out, it will not be a clean fight. 

It is quickly apparent what Tywin means to do; form a many-pronged trident of his own, and neatly pierce through their defenses to bleed into the West once more. If even one of those prongs slips through, it will open up a path for the rest to follow, and then it will be a bloody tumble for control of the river. Once they lose the Red Fork, Riverrun will be surrounded, and Tywin will be free to devote a portion of his forces to besieging their stronghold, and send the rest after Robb.

And if that happens- Nell knows they have supplies enough to last perhaps six months, given how many people are crowded into Riverrun, but it will not come to that. Depending on which commander Tywin leaves to assault them- and it may very well be the Mountain- they will do their best to divert the river, drain the moats, grapple and swing over the walls, and then it will be over. She must come to terms with that. Should they fall under siege, and should Robb not be able to return in time to lift that siege, they will die. All of them will die. Elia Martell was a frail woman with a babe in arms when they broke down her door, and Tywin Lannister’s dogs did not waste any time in tearing her and her children to pieces. 

If it comes down to it, Nell knows it will not matter that she is a woman, not matter that she, until recently, did not carry a blade. It will not matter whether she is still pregnant or whether she has a mewling infant at her breast. It will not matter if she commands her defenders to throw down their swords and yield. It will not matter if she prays and begs for mercy. The window for mercy was the ludicrous terms the Imp sent back with Ser Cleos, and even those came with murderers under a banner of peace. It will not matter if one is a Bolton, a Frey, a Bracken, or a Flint. The women of the household are not going to be politely escorted to a tower cell. They will be fallen upon the way wolves fall upon fresh meat still clinging to the bone.

So she readily agrees to send the Frey women back to the Twins, and orders the Bracken sisters and Dana to Seagard shortly thereafter. Dana is two-folds infuriated, of course. Furious to be separated from Marianne, and furious to be packed off to Seagard. “You cannot,” she all but spits, pacing wildly like a caged animal in front of the hearth while Nell plucks out an errant stitch from her sewing frame. “I will not go- we are pledged to you, sworn like any soldiers, you cannot think to send us- to send me away like this, Nell, listen to reason-,”

“Explain to me what reason there is in keeping you all here, taking up room, taking up supplies, which could be devoted to the garrison, to the wounded,” Nell says without looking up from her work. Her neck aches and her eyes burn, but she blinks away the pain and blurriness. The maester assures her it is normal. The babe will be here before three more moons have passed. If Edmure had his way, she would already have shuttered herself up in her rooms for her confinement. Lucky then, that he is not her husband, and she has no compulsion to obey his wishes. There is still time yet. She has convinced Maester Vyman that she is still well enough, strong enough, to have the run of the castle. “Can you reason that, Dana?”

“This is mad, and you know it,” Dana snaps back. “If we are to be evacuated, you must come as well- gods, do you intend to give birth in between issuing commands to Edmure’s troops?”

Nell winces as the babe lands a particularly painful kick to her ribcage. He is a strong one, to be sure. “If the need arises, I would lash this child to my chest and ride out to lead the archers myself. But no. My good brother is capable of commanding his own men.”

“Then why stay?” Dana groans aloud, stopping her pacing and turning to face Nell head-on. “Don’t let your pride compel you, Nellie! Robb would want you safe. You are carrying his heir-,”

“I am not just a vessel for his legacy!” Nell finally throws down her needle, then regrets it as it rolls off her lap and onto the floor. It will be a horrible pain to have to pick that up. Crouching down is not nearly so simple as of late. She wants her body back. She wants her coordination back. She slipped badly getting out of the bath just the other day, and nearly cracked her head. Her maids were beside themselves, fussing and ashen at the thought of somehow being held responsible for any injury to their queen. She exhales. “Go over to the window and tell me what you see.”

Dana’s brow furrows. Nell holds her baleful stare. Dana sighs, crosses to the window, and peers outside. “I see chaos,” she says after a moment, turning back around. “I see green boys and old men picking up swords and shields, I see Edmure running ragged like a headless chicken. And I see every bloody farmer and shopkeep within a thousand leagues of here, filling up the yards and crawling up the walls.” 

“Yes,” Nell digs her fingernails into the arms of her chair, trying to straighten her back. She feels like an old woman, sometimes, always hunched over. Her bones ache like it, too. They say second pregnancies are much easier. At this rate, she never wants to find out. Robb shall be content with just one son, surely. Men cannot imagine the torture. “The garrison, preparing. Marching commands being straightened out. And the smallfolk. Waiting. Fearing.”

“And you’re not,” Dana scoffs.

“I am terrified,” Nell says through her teeth, “which is why I cannot go. I’ve had this exact fight with Edmure a dozen times over the course of the past two days, Danelle. He has the Tully temper, need I remind you. Do not think you will sway me where he has failed.”

“He is worried for you! He considers you a sister!” 

Nell flushes slightly; Edmure’a acceptance and affection has always been perplexing, almost unsettling in it’s easy fondness. ‘Brother’ has never been naught but a dirty word for her, something to be dreaded, reviled, avoided at all costs. Yet here is a man who she has known for less than a year, who already treats her as if they’d grown up together, as if it was not just his duty to defend and protect her, but-

“And I am worried for him, and all the rest. But as worried and frightened as I am, the smallfolk cannot see it. They cannot see me fleeing. They cannot see me despairing. I am their queen. I swore oaths to protect them, to defend their rights, to shield them from men exactly like the Lannisters. Edmure gave them shelter here, and for better or worse, I will remain here to shelter them. I do not care if the Old Lion sets the bloody Fork ablaze or the Mountain is at our gates, I will remain here with them until the fighting’s done.”

She casts a look down at her own body, and then adds, “Traveling like this would only have slowed them down, besides, and if I know the Freys, they will not let an army leave until their daughters and granddaughters have been returned to them unharmed.”

“”You are a queen, they cannot order you to give up your own ladies-,”

“They are not ordering, they are strongly insinuating,” Nell rolls her eyes. “If it comes down to a siege, they do not want their own kin trapped behind these walls, least of all women whom they can use to make new alliances if the need arises. That is why I wasted no time in sending Roslin and Arwyn and have Waldas and the rest.”

“You doubt their loyalty.” Dana frowns, folding her long arms under her chest. “You don’t think they can be trusted-,”

“I don’t think anyone can be trusted, but I have no choice. They have agreed to assist my father in claiming Harrenhal, and that is no small task. I don’t doubt their current loyalty, I doubt their commitment to the future, and not just theirs- should we fail at this, should Tywin run roughshod over Edmure again, any respect-,” she rubs two fingers together, “gone. I do not have Robb and Grey Wind here to make a fine picture of what a warrior king should be. If we are made fools of, or seen as weak, we are done,” she shakes her head. “It won’t matter if Robb returns or not. It won’t just be the Freys who will jeer and make mockery. These river lords change with the tides. They will question what the point of them swearing allegiance was, if their own lands remain unprotected while the northerners ravage the West”

“Robb might disagree,” Dana mutters pointedly. “He might prefer you hold back those eleven thousand here-,”

“Robb isn’t here!” Nell had not realized how angry she was until she practically yelled it. And she is angry, she realizes with a start. With him, she is. That he isn’t here. That he hasn’t come back. That he is off conquering gold mines to fund their war while she sits here and waits and frets about the babe and the battles and the fact that her good mother has not yet returned- 

“He’s not here,” she echoes herself in a more subdued, albeit still curt tone. “And I am not going to sit here and bow my head in prayer with lions outside my door. Nor am I going to run to the Twins or Seagard. But you must go, because you are my responsibility, and should the worst come to pass, I would see you spared it.”

“I knew it was dangerous when I agreed to come south-,”

“Aye, and it is, and that is why you are going,” Nell massages the bridge of her nose. “Gods, do not make me command it, Dana. I am sorry about Marianne-,”

Dana’s mouth tightens, and she glances away. “If you had sent me to the Twins as well-”

“I think it best not to take that risk,” Nell says calmly. “Do you know I had to promise Marissa a betrothal to her choice of the northmen, when they return, to keep her from spreading gossip about the two of you? Let’s not stoke the fire- the Twins has far more eyes and ears than Riverrun, and dozens of them would love the chance to use my own ladies against me. Besides, the Brackens have need of you. It is difficult for Barbara, looking after Jayne on her own-,”

“So now I must play nursemaid?” Dana grouses, although she sits down in a chair, which Nell takes as a sign of begrudging acceptance. “You know they say that girl is mad. It has been months, and she will not speak.”

“She can still hear and understand,” Nell does not want to think of Jayne, to think of the way Jayne shattered a pitch of water in terror when she told them that the Lannisters were marching again. “I cannot see how tucking her away in some tower room is going to improve her disposition. She needs sunlight. Fresh air. She needs to be well away from this. As do you.”

There are a few moments of troubled silence between them, before Dana says, “Mari promised to write, although what we’ll be able to say with maesters peeping over our shoulders… Mayhaps we should think of some sort of code.”

“Lady Catelyn once said she and her sister devised their own language, as girls,” Nell recounts. 

“Sounds like something your good mother would do for fun,” Dana smirks slightly. “Alright, Your Grace, decode this-,” she leans over and grips Nell’s hand, hard, in her own. “Don’t get yourself into any trouble while I’m gone. You’ve got a nasty habit of going looking for it.”

A week after they depart they have word from outriders that Catelyn is a few hours’ ride away. Nell is not sure whether to be relieved or anxious. She feels rather like a child caught with their hand in the basket of cakes, truth be told. As if it were Sara come to inspect her handwriting or her sums- the braid of hair around her wrist itches terribly, and she feels a jolt of guilt as she changes into a gown so dark a blue it is a shade shy of midnight. She has not thought of Sara in weeks, too consumed with everything else. She has not thought of Mother, nor Barbrey-

Barbrey, who would be just as incensed as she knows instinctively that Catelyn will be.

But she is distracted from going down to the river gate to greet her good mother with the rest by Vyman, who tells her they have word from her father. He has made good time down-river and taken the Ruby Ford and the Crossroad. He has also taken a wife; he wed Walda Frey the night before he and his men departed. A very spontaneous wedding- the Frey girls could not have returned to the Twins more than a day or two prior to that. Beyond the numb shock of it, and the pragmatic relief that he is closing in on Harrenhal, she thinks distantly, ‘at least it was not Marianne he took to wife’. Dana never would have forgiven her. 

She does not even know if it was Fat Walda or Fair. Does it matter? Whichever one it was, the Freys likely leaped at the chance to rid themselves of another bride to be, and to have a secure foothold in a powerful northern house. And Father- Nell tries to imagine her father in the godswood at the Twins- if they even have a godswood, they are such a young house- taking a woman her own age, young enough to be his daughter, to wed. What could have provoked him now, to do such a thing? He had his fair share of offers, throughout her childhood, of potential third wives. It was common knowledge that he had no trueborn sons. Yet for him, the Bastard sufficed. She’d come to assume that he simply couldn’t be bothered. Perhaps he found other men’s wives more enticing. 

Yet why now? 

_The coin_ , she tells herself savagely, handing the letter back to the maester and struggling to compose her scowl into a neutral look. _It was for the coin. They made him a rich offer if he’d only take a daughter off their hands, and he accepted. You know what he is. His motivations have never been particularly complex. When he is hungry, he eats. When he is bored, he hunts. When a man dangles a purse in front of his face, he takes it without question._ Gods willing she will never set foot back in the Dreadfort, but she cannot help but-

She should have tried harder. She could have pushed for a betrothal for either of the Walda’s, damn Fair Walda’s affair with Black Walder. She could have prevented this. It’s silly- he could have easily wed Arwyn, or Zia, or even little Marissa. Her stomach turns uncomfortably, at the idea of a young girl of not yet fourteen for a stepmother. _You could have saved them_ , a voice snarls in the back of her head as she carefully descends a narrow stairwell. _You could have spared her him. You sent one of your ladies back to wed a monster. And to think Roslin said your heart was good. You care naught for anything but your claim and your babe. Call it responsibility and honor all you like, you know it is pride._

Nell forces the doubts back as best she can, but they surge up with a vengeance when she finally finds her good mother, praying over her husband’s bones. The silent sisters had come with Cleos, but Nell barely paid them any mind at the time, too concerned with the sudden flood of Lannister men in the castle, and then with the escape attempt, had nearly forgotten about them, and her good father’s remains, entirely. More guilt, at that. I barely knew Ned Stark, she reminds herself sharply. Who could expect her to mourn him? Of course she’d grieved, but more so for Robb’s obvious pain and hurt than anything else. 

Yet she stands in the doorway and watches Catelyn’s head of auburn hair bowed, her hands clasped before her. She had not even taken off her riding gloves yet. Nell nearly turns to go, feeling as though this is some intrusion, but Catelyn rises fluidly and turns to regard her. It cannot have been so very long since they last saw one another, but Nell sees their shock a perfect mirror; Catelyn is shocked at how big she is with the babe by now, this far gone in the pregnancy, and Nell is shocked by how- Catelyn Stark is still a fair and graceful woman to look upon, but there is a hint of grey to her scalp that was not there before, and the lines of her face are more obvious, somehow, as if she’d aged years in mere months. 

“Donella,” she says, and Nell bows her head, unsure of what to say- what can be said? 

“I should let you finish your prayers-,”

“Come here,” Catelyn’s voice cracks with raw grief, and Nell looks back up in surprise, before taking a small step forward. She is even more surprised when Catelyn embraces her; Nell has not been embraced by anyone save Dana in a long time, discounting Edmure’s reaction when he learned of her pregnancy. It… it feels nice, she supposes, to be embraced by someone like a mother. Not her mother, of course. Even when Barbrey took her in her arms, seldom as it was, Nell always knew it was an aunt’s affection and care, but not- not what Mother was to her. 

“The babe is well? You are well?” Catelyn grips her by the shoulders; she is stronger than she looks, and she and Nell remain equal in height. 

“Yes,” says Nell, “it has been- not without its irritations, but things have gone well enough. With the child, that is,” she adds quickly. “I’m sure you saw the bodies-,”

“Edmure told me of the Lannister men who tried to free the Kingslayer.” Catelyn lets go, her face shadowed once more, blue eyes darkened. “And of his plans on the Red Fork. Come. We can speak in my chamber.” She spares one last glance back at the skeleton on the table. Nell is not disturbed by it, but has avoided staring directly at it for too long nonetheless. She is not even sure that is Lord Eddard. Surely they could have dressed up any bones in a dead man’s clothes. After all, they did not return Ice. They never will; the blade is likely melted down, reforged, and named something new by now, all for the glory of House Lannister. Nell learned as a girl that they lost their own Valyrian blade years and years ago. 

“You wear it well,” Catelyn says once they are sitting before the fire in her room; Nell is hungry and sends the attending maid for honey milk and bread, and does not immediately realize that Catelyn is referring to her crown. She resists the urge to reach up and adjust it. Queens do not do such things.

“Thank you. It has been… an adjustment.”

“You have borne all that graciously as well,” Catelyn tells her gravely. “I am sorry that I had to leave you here. I know it must have been difficult for you, with Robb gone as well-,” she pauses and swallows hard. Nell wonders if she’d expected, or wildly hoped, to see Robb safe here upon her return. “You’ve had a hard first year of marriage already, and it is not even over yet. I wish I could promise either of us a softer future.”

“And I wish I was still a girl again playing at the part of a lady in Winterfell,” Nell gives a half-smile, “but there is no sense in wishing for what was, a wise woman told me once. We have endured this much, you and I both. Tell me, is it bad- is it as bad as they say, the battlefields? I heard you did not return through Bitterbridge, and that it why you were so delayed…”

“After Renly… after Renly was killed,” Catelyn says carefully, “we thought it wise to avoid risking the wrath of House Tyrell. But yes. It is… carnages you cannot imagine have been visited upon the people, the land. The number of villages we passed that were no more than smoking ruins… Places I knew as a girl, inns I rested in, fields my sister and I would pick flower from-,” she shakes her head. “It will take years to recover, and now that autumn has come, I fear we are all running out of time.”

Nell does not want to think about that. Not at all. “Then you understand Edmure’s insistence on meeting the Lannisters when they try to ford. It is his shame, what has happened to the Riverlands. Not nearly all his fault, but his shame nonetheless. He fears the people think he has failed them-,”

“The people could be provided for without offering them all admittance behind our walls.” If Catelyn is angry, she does not show it. Nor does she look pleased, either, but Nell would not be pleased were she a fresh widow with daughters hostage or missing, sons far from her embrace, and a homeland at war, either. “I understand his feelings, but should we come under siege, they will only get in the way. Most of their fighting men are already gone.”

“When a man begs his lord for shelter, and he refuses it, they call him close-fisted and cold-hearted,” Nell says. “What might they say of me, their queen? Edmure was set on it. And once you admit a few families, you cannot turn away the next mother with starving children, nor the young pregnant widow, nor the girl who has been raped half a dozen times in the past six months. I agree. They will be underfoot and often useless. They will cost us in terms of supplies. We must pray Edmure can avoid a siege, for we will surely have one should the Lannisters be allowed to cross.”

“I would counsel him to hold back the eleven thousand he seeks to set up and down the river, and fully encamp around Riverrun with them instead,” Catelyn replies, as the maid comes in with the food. She waves away the bread, but takes a cup of the milk, and a long draught at that, her eyes briefly closing, before they open again, as keen as ever. Nell chews on a bread crust, swallows. “He has everything to lose by attempting this plan of his. We have everything to lose. If we draw back and hold only Riverrun and the Whispering Wood, a few surrounding villages, no more, we would be better served. In trying to dam up the rivers with knights and archers, we may be laying our own trap.”

“My father has ten thousand men ready to take Harrenhal, but they can be diverted with a raven if need be.” Nell does not want to consider that, either, but she will take the beast she knows well over the ones she does not.

Catelyn sighs. “Edmure told me you insisted he not call up Tallhart’s garrison at the Twins. He meant to send them with your father-,”

“And I was firmly against it,” Nell says, breaking off another hunk of bread to slather with butter and preserves. “Four hundred men is still four hundred men. The Freys have far more, should they break their faith, but when my husband sets a warning, I mean to see it still ring true.”

“That is good,” Catelyn sounds faintly relieved. “You ought not to trust-,”

“I never have,” Nell says simply, and her good mother regards her with something like sadness for a moment. 

“Yes. Never.” Catelyn hesitates, then adds, “He also told me you devised some plan for Stone Mill.”

Nell shrugs lightly, as if it is of no consequence. “For certain they will try to cross there, sooner or later. A little further south at Pinkmaiden, as well, and near Mummer’s Ford, I’m sure. They will try to cut northwest around us through the Whispering Wood as well. Stone Mill is only important because of the bridge.”

“The bridge?” Catelyn frowns, sets down her cup. “I know there is a bridge there, by the mill, but-,”

“It’s no bridge like the Twins, no stone giant, but a bridge nonetheless,” says Nell. “Mostly wood, half gone to rot, as well, but still strong enough to hold the weight of the miller’s ponies and little wagons, or the occasional traveler. Edmure thought we might burn it, litter the water with spikes and caltrops, and try to goad whoever comes to risking the crossing anyways.”

Catelyn is looking at her intently now. “But you suggested otherwise?”

“I looked at the maps,” says Nell, “and I decided to pretend I were Tywin Lannister. A dozen places he might try to wedge a finger into, of course, but Stone Mill- why, any man who tries to cross there would have to face House Vance to the west, House Piper to the east. Risky. But a greater risk to not attempt it at all. So if I were Tywin, I would send men there, but not my best or most valuable- I’d send the hardest of the lot, the ones used to brutal fighting, the ones I thought might be able to smash through those combined forces on either side, and get across. And if I lost them, what of it?” she shrugs again. “It was a butcher’s work.”

“So you send a butcher,” Catelyn’s brow furrows, and then she has it. “You think he will send the Mountain there.”

“Mayhaps I’m wrong,” says Nell. “Mayhaps not. I’m a fool if they avoid it entirely. But that is near where Edmure means to make a stand with Marq Piper and Karyl Vance. So I told them not to burn the bridge. Leave it. Station archers on it, fan out the rest of the men into the brush, on either side, and wait. Whoever comes- be it the Mountain or not- they will be expecting trouble. They’d ride hard for the bridge, hope to break the archers. So I think we ought to let them. Let the archers pull back, let them think they might cross the bridge-,”

“You mean to have them bring down the bridge,” Catelyn leans back in her seat, eyes momentarily widening. “You think-,”

“I know that bridge cannot hold the Mountain that Rides, nor any of his armored knights on warhorses,” Nell says. “Seeing our men on it might give them some assurance. And they are used to seeing men turn and run at the sight of them.”

“The water’s always very shallow there,” Catelyn is considering. “Even should the bridge fall, there’s no hope they’d be swept away, although with caltrops, and spikes-,”

“It’s so shallow that Karyl Vance claims he can dam it up a little further north, drain that stretch near dry, and dig pits. Best season for it, I think.” Nell nods to the open window, the cool autumn night outside it. “All those wet, muddy fallen leaves and debris from the trees? You hardly know where you’re riding, nor stepping.”

She is tramping through wet, muddy leaves herself, the next morning, when she first meets Brienne of Tarth. Nell knows who she is by then, of course- the news that Catelyn Stark had returned with an armored woman who was once pledged to Renly Baratheon had made its rounds twice over by then. Nell is no stranger to seeing women carrying weapons or in armor; even now she walks beside Jory Mormont, the one lady left to her, but there remains a world of difference between wiry Jory Mormont, with her long brown hair in a plait down her back and her battered chainmail shirt, and Brienne of Tarth. 

From a distance, Nell would have taken her for any other brawny young knight. She knows plenty of tall, stocky women, but none so tall nor so muscular as this one. Even clad in a gown, Nell does not think there would be any disguising her figure. She’s ugly, that’s true enough, with stringy blonde hair, a thick neck, a nose that looks twice broken and a very square jaw, but more so than that, dented armor and faded cloak or not, she is impressive. 

Nell does not realize just how young Brienne is; they must be about the same age, until she is standing before her. Or rather, it feels, below her. Nell is not small; she has stood five foot eight since she was a girl of fourteen. And Jory is only an inch shorter. But both of them are dwarfed by Brienne, who is taller than any man or woman Nell has ever met, save perhaps the Greatjon and his sons. 

“Your Grace,” Brienne bows awkwardly at the waist, and Nell simply stares for a moment, before recollecting her manners. This woman has pledged herself to her good mother, and she must be a force to be seen on any battlefield. It might seem absurd, but for a second, Nell is almost- envious. She blames the pregnancy. She has never felt weaker or more useless like this, a lump of flesh who has trouble putting on her own boots at this stage, nevermind running, jumping, or climbing anywhere. And yet even at her very best- and she was always in good health- Brienne of Tarth could have slapped her down with so much as a swat. 

If she could have accompanied Robb onto the battlefield, were she capable of such things, she would have. That is not her place, and never will be, but- Surely there must be some freedom to it, in a sense? What does a woman like Brienne of Tarth have to fear from anyone, man or woman? Nell pities the man who tries to order her behind castle walls. “Well met, Lady Brienne. I am told you hail from Tarth, my lady,” she says instead. “You must tell us all about it, should you have the time.” 

Brienne is looking at Jory, who is gazing up at her in unreserved awe that way a small child might a shooting star. 

“This is my sworn sword, Lady Jorelle Mormont,” Nell says, a small smile tugging at her lips. “She hails from an island herself. Her mother and sisters are fighting at my husband’s side. Perhaps you might-,”

“May I see your sword?” Jory blurts out.

Brienne blinks, looking slightly suspicious, as if this might be some jape, then reluctantly unsheathes her blade. After a moment’s hesitation, she lets Jory hold it, although Jory immediately braces slightly for the weight adjustment. “Two-handed?” she demands, as Nell takes a step back, sitting down on a low stone bench with a groan. 

Brienne nods, then says aloud, voice slightly hoarse, “Yes.”

“What about a shield? My sister Dacey wields morningstar and shield.”

“I began with a shield when I was ten.” Brienne’s freckled face pinkens some, as if this is far more attention than she’s used to receiving. Perhaps it really is. Nell can’t imagine she’s very used to other women making conversation with her, beyond Catelyn. “But I prefer a morningstar during melees.”

“Like in a tourney?” Jory is firing off questions like crossbow bolts. “How many tourneys have you fought in? Do you always fight in the melee? Do you joust? I should like to learn to use a lance, someday, but my sister Aly thinks-,”

Sometime later, Nell finds herself practicing the harp in her chamber, overlooking a courtyard where Jory continues to follow Brienne around like a persistent gnat, jubilant at the thought of having another warrior woman around. They will be sparring sooner or later, if Jory has her way, although Nell does hope Brienne goes easy on her, as she’d hate to have to tell Maege that her daughter went a round against the Maid of Tarth and wound up with a broken back. 

Edmure rides out four days later; the look on Catelyn’s face makes it quite clear what she thinks of the garrison left to defend them, and Nell privately agrees. Desmond Grell is capable, but the old men, boys, and wounded somewhat less so. But five hundred men is still five hundred men, and Riverrun is not very large. Shorter walls to walk, less acres to cover, and the moats beside. Yet despite her schemes of bleeding Tywin Lannister dry in a dozen places each time he tries to cross aside, when faced with the reality of those eleven thousand men riding out and leaving them behind, she’d be a fool not to be afraid.

That first night, the smallfolk hold vigil, spilling out the sept and even into the godswood itself, though very few of them worship the old gods. Nell knows she will not be getting much sleep at all this week, so she sits under the heart tree with Jory, watching the stars come out. The gardens are bathed in light from all the lit candles; Nell would only such a waste of wax this first night, but there is something comforting about it all the same. Distantly she can see the rainbow windows of the sept aglow with golden warmth, and even in the dark of the godswood, the lanterns blaze and the night seems to shrink away. 

Nell thinks about the word they received today, that Storm’s End is officially fallen to Stannis, its stubborn old castellan dead. Catelyn told her Stannis had some want for a bastard boy of Robert’s. Nell assumes to make some proof of Joffrey’s illegitimacy, if the child is black of hair and blue of eye. She wonders that he does not fear men might take up arms in support of the boy, not him. A king’s son is still a king’s son, particularly when his mother was of high birth as well, and men have tried to put bastards of all sorts upon thrones. She wonders if Tywin doubts his grandson’s paternity at all, but what man would even be willing to consider the thought of his own children lying with one another? It may have been well and good for the Targaryens, but the rest of Westeros, be they worshippers of the Seven or the old gods, never lost their revulsion for it. 

At some point, she must have nodded off, and she could have sworn she’d started to dream again, for it is almost always winter in her dreams, and she wakes shivering, although she’s slept outdoors in the North on a dozen nights far colder than this one. She awakens to find that Jory wrapped an old cloak round her shoulders, and men are screaming in the distance. Nell is in no state to walk the walls, so she sends a passing child instead; the girl, grimy and disheveled, comes running back shortly thereafter to report that the garrison is ‘smashing’ Lannisters, although she claims it is less than a hundred. It lasts less than an hour before the lancers retreat.

The next night, another skirmish, another small force probing at their defenses, quickly vanquished. The screaming, though. She’s gone soft; she’d forgotten what the screams of men and horses and steel on steel sounded like. Her last battle was the Whispering Wood, but this is what lulls Robb to sleep every night, and wakes him every morn, a constant cycle of sheathing and unsheathing swords, mounting and dismounting horses, pressing forward, drawing back, leading the charge. He must have done this half a hundred times by now, testing, feeling, as Tywin is, trying to see how best to take a castle, a river, a hill.

Nell has no hope at all of sleep after that. _You pushed for this_ , she reminds herself coldly. _You could have ordered Edmure to draw back to Riverrun, to keep his men close. You are still the queen here. You wanted to play at war, well, this is what it sounds like. Best learn to tolerate it._

The Mallisters send Lannisters reeling, the Vances force them back. By all accounts, Edmure’s plan is working. The lions can gain no foothold, and Riverrun remains well-defended. Nell knows she should try to calm herself. It’s not healthy for the babe; but she cannot. Her appetite disappears, she lies awake, restless, at night, listening to the sound of Jory’s soft snoring. One night she sits up at her window and watches Brienne of Tarth silently move through her sword exercises in the yard below, oblivious to Nell’s gaze. She is as graceful as the finest dancer with a sword in hand. 

Other nights she sits up, and turns the rondel over and over in her own pale hands, wonders what it would be like to really use it. She could do it. She stabbed that wildling, in the wood, with Robb and Theon and Bran, although he was dying already. She knows she could kill. She only dreads having the chance. Not like this. If only anything were as simple as slitting a deer’s throat, dressing it down to harvest the meat and skin.

Eight days later, the messenger comes, and Nell digs her nails into her palms so as not to let her hands shake with tremors while Catelyn quickly scans it, then releases a breath. “A dozen attempts, and not a single victory for Tywin,” she says quietly. Jory breaks into a beam; Brienne looks visibly relieved. “Lefford drowned, Strongboar’s been taken, Addam Marbrand pushed back thrice-,” she pauses, not looking at the letter anymore, but directly at Nell.

Nell parts her lips to speak, but almost cannot find the words. “And our own losses?”

Catelyn comes and takes her hand gently, for all the words themselves are cruel, not for her tone or intent, but in their simple truth. “One of significance. Karyl Vance died at Stone Mill.”

Nell swallows around what feels like a dagger point lodged in her throat. “The bridge-,”

“The bridge collapsed,” says Catelyn. “Taking many of the Mountain’s men with it, and Ser Gregor himself. Near a dozen horses felled in the pits, and the Mountain went under his own, onto the spikes.”

Jory goes very still.

“He did not rise again. Edmure writes that he plans to show Karyl’s wife Clegane’s head, before bringing it back here for our wall.” Catelyn folds the letter back up neatly, one-handed, and squeezes Nell’s with the other. “Tywin’s host is retreating rapidly to the southeast. It’s done.”

 _It’s done_ , Nell thinks, _it’s done, we’ve won, we’re the victors, they’re slinking off in humiliation, smile, come on, you’ve won, think of what Robb will say, such a clever wife, she brought down a bridge and a Mountain at that-_

But she didn’t. She wasn’t there. Her words, her suggestions, her ideas, but not her hands that held the swords or axes or bows. Not her that braced behind the shields, nor watched the fighting churn red around her. It was the men there who saw it through, who acted as they’d planned. It was Karyl Vance who died so she might set Clegane’s head on a spike. 

Those village women, raped and mutilated, their children butchered, the Bracken sisters, poor Jayne, they might fall to their knees and thank her, but will his wife? His daughters? He was a friend of Edmure’s, although a bit older and quieter than the rest. She remembers hearing him talk about his three little girls. Not a son to speak of, Karyl Vance, yet he sounded as proud as any man, when he spoke of his family. 

“It’s done,” she echoes Catelyn, tries to smile, and just shakes her head swiftly instead, eyes burning. It worked. Everything went just as planned. They will celebrate this long and hard tonight. And she will sit up in her chambers and not protest at all the idea of beginning her confinement. It might even be preferable to being down there, among the light and merrymaking, pretending at triumph, when what she really feels is fear that she is balanced on the edge of a cliff, on the verge of overreaching and toppling down into the abyss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was dreading having to get through this chapter for a while, so I'm relieved it's finally out of the way. We'll be back to Beth on Friday.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. We're approaching a point in the story where I'm going to be increasingly unable to answer questions in the comments about the plot, so please don't take it the wrong way if I come across as evasive or dismissive. It's very hard to build any sort of suspense in an ASOIAF fic tackling one of the main plot lines, since I've assuming nearly all of you have read the books, so I'd like to continue to try to keep things as spoiler-free as possible in the interest of telling an engaging story. 
> 
> 2\. Nell sending the Freys, Brackens, and Dana away had the added plus (for me) of not having to account for a dozen side characters this chapter, which was refreshing, as much as I like writing them. Don't worry, we will see most of them again. 
> 
> 3\. The plan to defend the fords is pretty much the same as in canon, aside from Nell's bridge scheme. This was a major point of internal debate for me. I did not want to just detail the events of the Battle of the Fords exactly as they occurred in canon. This was important to me not just because I think that might be boring to read, but because I consider this a major character moment for Nell. To be specific, this is the first time she gets any taste of commanding men in battle, however indirectly. As she acknowledges, she wasn't there, she wasn't the one making things happen, but it was still her idea to use the bridge as a trap, and beyond the satisfaction and relief of things going basically as planned, she has to reckon with the fact that she is in some part responsible for Karyl Vance's death. This is not necessarily an easy truth to swallow. 
> 
> 4\. Nell comes across as pretty conflicted this chapter because despite her determination, along with Edmure, to prove themselves, she's not blind or deaf to the doubts and concerns that Catelyn and Dana raise about this scheme. Yes, it's ostensibly about defending the smallfolk and their lands, but it's also a major point of pride and agency for her, to be able to point at something and say, "See, I'm not just a walking incubator for Robb's heir, I can get things done." While this seemingly works out well, she cannot shake the sense afterwards that this was a massive risk to take and could have gone very, very badly. 
> 
> 5\. You're all sick of hearing it, but this fic is not a fix it, and I was only comfortable with the idea of someone like Gregor Clegane being killed 'off-screen' because canonically he is seriously injured during the battle with Edmure's men anyways, because I needed some sort of 'so-and-so is dead, congrats' and I obviously wasn't going to use Tywin, and because for Nell (and maybe for me as the writer too) it was a 'fuck you' to the multiple off-page deaths, rapes, etc that occur at the Mountain's hands. Due to this I did not consider is stretching credulity to kill him off; going under a horse into a spiked pit is pretty final, and it constitutes a decent loss to Tywin in terms of not having him for an attack dog anymore, without reaching the levels of 'the Lannister forces were completely decimated, we've captured all their major lords, war's over everybody, time to go home!' that I've seen in explicitly fix-it fics. 
> 
> 6\. "What is confinement? How soon is this baby coming?" Nell is entering her seventh month of pregnancy now, and because it's Westeros and they don't really have accurate due-dates, the pressure is officially on for her to stop, you know, running around Riverrun doing this or that. Confinement refers to the 'lying-in' period which historically would occur in the late stages of pregnancy (also after the baby came), where a noblewoman basically isolated herself in her rooms with her ladies, tried to stay calm and well-rested, prayed a lot, and waited for the baby to arrive. We don't really see any depictions of pregnancy or childbirth in canon aside from Dany's, so some liberties are going to be taken, since I really doubt GRRM is going to suddenly delve into the inner lives of expectant mothers within the last two books.
> 
> 7\. It's absolutely criminal that Brienne never gets to interact with any of the Mormonts in canon.


	29. Beth IV

299 AC - WINTERFELL

Beth has had many jobs around Winterfell by now. She’s made beds and swept floors and washed dishes and clothes, shined boots and armor, carried trays of food in and out of the kitchens, brushed down horses and fetched saddles, scrubbed tables and stairs and wiped away blood and snot and dirt off faces, her own and others. If she thinks of it all simply as work, hard work, it is easier. Don’t think, just concentrate on the task at hand. That is what Father would tell her. He never wanted her to be spoilt or coddled, the sort of girl to turn her nose up at the servants or complain at every little inconvenience. If he could see her now, she knows he’d be proud, he would. She’s been good; she only cries at night when no one can see it.

She doesn’t cry when Theon comes back from the fruitless search for Bran and Rickon and promptly puts Farlen to death. No one really believes Farlen lost their trail on purpose, not even his own men; Beth can see the doubt and even disgust on some of their faces, clear as day. But Theon can hardly admit it’s his own fault they couldn’t find them, can he? Someone has to be punished, and Farlen was as likely to be blamed for it as anyone. Beth stands in the crowd of frightened, hateful servants and watches Theon pronounce Palla’s father a traitor. Farlen spits in his face. Urzen breaks Farlen’s nose.

“M’lord Eddard always did his own killings,” is the last thing Beth hears him say. She wants to run, to hide from this, but there is nowhere to go. Palla is standing rigid beside her, as if frozen, the only thing moving her eyes, darting around desperately, as if seeking some sort of intervention or miracle. Nothing comes. Theon picks up the axe. Old Nan draws in a quick, rattling breath. Maester Luwin tries to speak but his words falter. The kennel on the far side of the castle explodes with noise, as if the dogs themselves can sense it.

Turnip is hiding his head in his father’s stained smock.

Bandy and Shyra are crying; Bandy loudly, Shyra quietly. 

“Shut those brats up,” Kromm is telling Joseth, as Theon hefts the axe up, then swings it down. 

He misses. 

Beth can’t see, she’s too short, but she knows he misses because Farlen screams, and then she hears Theon wrench it back out, and swing down again, and Palla is no longer standing beside her, but on the damp ground, her head locked between her knees, screaming so loudly Beth can’t hear Farlen cry out a second time. Beth kneels down beside her and locks her thin arms around Palla, tries to contain her shaking body, tries to pretend she is somewhere else, and no one is screaming or crying, and those sounds are not the sounds an axe makes when it connects with bone.

She does not see much of Palla after that; Palla locks herself in the kennel, most days, and Gage sends Turnip with some food for her every night. Theon’s men drink and gossip about how Father is raising an army to storm Winterfell. Beth wishes he would come quicker. She’s not sure how much longer they can go on like this. Everyone knows it’s useless now; Theon’s only valuable hostages left are the Freys, and the Twins is a very long way from here, all the way on the other side of the Neck. His only hope is that Bran and Rickon aren’t with Father right now, that he doesn’t know they’ve escaped. 

Everyone has a different theory as to where they might have gone, but all of them seem silly in the end, because even if they had tried to run for Cerwyn, Beth doesn’t see how they could have made it there in less than a day, with no horses, no supplies, and a hunting party from Winterfell on their trail. Maybe Farlen really did lose it on purpose. 

Mostly she goes around with a hard, hateful little notion of hope, all the same. Theon might still hold the castle, but he’s already lost, and everyone knows it. Wherever Bran and Rickon and Osha and Hodor and the Reeds are, they’re well away from here, and without them he has nothing to threaten the Starks with, nothing to keep Winterfell in his hands. His men can’t hold it for much longer. Even an army of just one hundred men could take it, Beth thinks. It’s not a question of if Father will rescue them, but when. And then it will be Theon Greyjoy with his head on the block. She hopes Father’s first swing misses too. She hopes he cries. Bandy says Kyra told her that he cries in his sleep. 

That’s why Beth expects them all to leave, when his sister comes. Gage says it’s for certain they’ll go- what’s the point in staying, without the Stark boys, and a sure defeat on the horizon? Only he thinks they’ll likely try to set the place ablaze first, so the rest of them have got to be ready when to run when that happens. They can get out through the hunter’s gate, Joseth tells them. Be ready. Be careful. You’ll smell the smoke before you see it. Run and run and don’t look back, don’t take anything with you, just get to the gate and go. But not everyone can run, Beth thinks. Old Nan is too old, Palla is too weak from barely eating, what about them?

“He’s wrong,” Palla tells her, while Theon hosts his sister in the great hall, the woman they call Asha, who looks so similar to her younger brother that it’s disconcerting, seeing that shaggy dark hair and that thin face on another person, and a woman at that. Asha doesn’t act like any woman Beth’s ever known, save Osha, maybe. But she doesn’t seem to like Theon anymore than the rest of them. Beth could tell that from the instant she glimpsed her derisive glance at Theon’s ugly crown. It truly is horrible. He’d be better off wearing a shadowcat skull on his head. 

“You think they’ll just let us go?” Beth frowns, trying not to grimace at the smell. Palla won’t bathe since Farlen died, says she’d rather get fleas than have to lie under some stinking Ironborn. One of the young dogs is nosing at her skirt; she pushes them away, not in the mood to pet or play. The kennel is dark and filthy, but it’s mostly safe, a cramped sanctuary from the rest of the castle. Beth smells blood wherever she goes now, like copper under her nose.

“No,” says Palla, scratching at her neck. “I think they’ll herd everyone into the hall like they did when they came, an’ kill us all. Then they’ll torch it.”

“I won’t go,” Beth wraps her arms around herself tightly. “No, if- if we fight back, if we run and hide, they can’t- they’ll just go, they won’t waste time trying to find everyone-,”

Palla just looks at her steadily, and her eyes are flat and hollow, like they were painted on her face. “Beth,” she says, and there is something like pity in her voice. 

As if she’s sorry, somehow. What has she got to be sorry for? It’s not her fault. It’s not anyone’s fault except Theon’s, because he’s wicked and vile and evil, and his men are wicked and vile and evil, and even if they do kill everyone and run, Father will hunt them down, they’ll lose, they’ll all die traitor’s deaths, they will, and no one will ever think of them again after that, except to sneer and spit. That’s all the legacy Prince Theon of Winterfell will have. 

But when Asha leaves, Theon does not go with her. 

Beth sees then, that Palla and Joseth may both have the right of it. The only thing Theon has won in this war is Winterfell, and he means to die here as well. 

The godswood is empty now, so Beth goes with Bandy and Shyra and Turnip, and they sleep there most nights, after praying. She prays that Father will get here soon with his army and save them, she prays that the gods will see justice done, and she prays that no one else dies, except the Ironborn. She can’t quite manage to pray for their deaths, but she hopes the gods understand what she means anyways. Turnip heard from Little Walder that Maester Luwin is begging Theon to surrender and take the black, but he will not have it. 

Beth wishes he would. Then he could go to the Wall and Jon Snow would probably kill him, if he still lives. She always thought Jon was handsome, even when Jeyne would whisper about him only being handsome ‘for a bastard’. Handsome but grim, is what Beth always thought. He never smiled and laughed as much as Robb or- or Theon, back then. Maybe he is a brave ranger now, him and his wolf. Ghost always terrified her in ways that the other direwolves did not. She loved Lady so much. She used to help Sansa put ribbons round her neck. And Summer was always sweet as well.

The days seem to run into each other. Beth does not much see the point in counting. She only wants the waiting to be over. She can’t stand it anymore. It makes her skin itch and crawl and she wants to scream and jump up and down like a little child throwing a tantrum. It’s not fair, it’s not right, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to go to Hornwood with Father and be happy, and instead they turned her home into a prison and made her clean up blood and gore and hurt her friends. 

And then one morning, it is. There are whispers and murmurs of scouts in the winter town, and they say everyone’s there, or nearly everyone, that her father’s got a thousand men, no, two thousand, no, a whole pack of wolves, that there are men with Cerwyn and Manderly and Hornwood and Tallhart and Flint and Dustin and even Bolton banners. She feels a little spark of joy, or terror, at the excited talk of catapults and scorpions. It will be quick, Joseth swears. A few hours at most. Beth brushes her hair, even gives Wex Pyke a queer little smile of her own when she passes him in a corridor. He stares balefully back at her, but not with the hate or anger she might have expected. He’ll die too, just like the rest. He should have gone with Asha Greyjoy. She shouldn’t even be sorry.

Palla decides to bathe at last, as if in acceptance of whatever comes, and Beth is at the hot springs with her and Bandy and Shyra, washing her dirty hands in the warm water, when Black Lorren comes. Black Lorren is heavy and broad, with long black hair and iron piercings in his ears. He’s not as nasty or cruel as some of the other men, like Drennan or Squint were, before Osha killed them, but he’s still frightening to see coming towards you, even without an axe or sword in hand. Palla sinks down into the water up to her neck, going white as snow despite the heat, and Bandy and Shyra both instinctively back away into a copse of trees, holding hands. 

Beth stands up slowly. Maybe he just wants her to do something like get him food or ale from the kitchens, or for Bandy to saddle a horse-

“Come here, girl,” he says coldly, and that is not that terrifies Beth. She is very used to being addressed as such by now. What chills her so much that she feels as though she’d been plunged into a snowbank is the look on his face. The contempt, as if he’d about to do something he’d very much rather not, as if he’s furious with someone. Not her, though, and that’s what is so scary. If he’s not angry with her, and he looks like this, then what has Theon told him to do? Her knees go weak and wobbly, but she knows better than to make him chase after her. She should be brave. Father would want her to be brave.

Beth bobs her head obediently and forces herself to shakily approach him. He takes her by the arm, roughly, but not painful enough to make her wince or cry out, and she has almost managed to calm herself down when she realizes he means to bring her up onto the walls. Beth does not know why, but she has enough of some vague idea that her feet begin to drag, so he is almost pulling her along. “Don’t make me carry you,” he snaps, and makes her go up the steps in front of him, and although she told herself she would be brave, there are already tears in her eyes when he brings out the noose.

Beth stares at it dumbly for an instant, unable, or unwilling, to understand what he means to do with that length of rope, and then then he grasps her by the shoulder with one massive hand and loops it around her neck as easily as one might snare a lamb. And then she really does begin to cry, and they are not silent or dignified or pretty tears at all, but big gulping sobs, bordering on wails, because she doesn’t understand, why her, why are they doing this, she didn’t do anything, she was good, she didn’t do anything wrong, and he won’t look at her at all, just grabs her by the waist and sets her up on the parapet, and then all she can do is stare down, down, down, all the way to the dark ground below, covered in autumn leaves.

She forces herself to look back up, stomach swimming with sickness, tears running down her red cheeks. She can just make out the town square, and the riders there, and then she sees him- not really, she’s too far away to make out anything but the blurry shape of him, but the shape is shaped like Father, it’s him, he’s here, he came, and there is Theon before him, and the banner of peace… And here she is on the wall with a noose around her neck, and Beth knows then, knows what Theon means to do. She’s so stupid. She should have seen this coming. She should have realized she is all he has left to bargain with, not the Freys. What does Father care for the Walders? But her? His only child? His daughter, who he promised to come back to, to keep safe? 

She may not be able to hear them, but she knows then. When Father attacks, Theon will hang her. There is no ‘if’. He is sworn to House Stark. He must, or forsake his vows as a knight, and he could never- would never- do such a thing. _Not even for you_ , a little voice coils up inside her ear like a niggling worm. _Not even for you, Beth. He didn’t swear anything to you_. The tears still come, but her sobs have quieted some. She sags back into Black Lorren’s firm grip. He exhales slightly as if disquieted by the whole thing. But he’d still shove her over the edge all the same, she knows. She’ll hang. She’s going to hang. They’re going to hang her. It doesn’t sink in, no matter how many times she thinks it.

_They’re going to hang you, and you’ll die. You’ll be dead. That’s it. Like your mother and Jory and everyone else. You’ll be dead. Do you understand? They’re going to hang you, Beth. There’s a noose around your neck. It might be quick or it might be slow. You’ll probably piss yourself. And Father will watch you dangle off the wall while he rams down the gates. You’ll be so dead, your neck will be purple and your lips will be blue and your feet will turn black and rot off. It might take a long time to cut you down._

If this were a story, she’d be able to say something brave, something defiant, she’d scream and shout and warn them that they don’t have the boys, that Theon’s a liar, a craven, a traitor who’d hang half a hundred children so long as it kept him alive a little longer. But it’s not, and she’s not brave, and she’d swear Theon was the rightful prince a thousand and one times, she’d do anything, if only they took the noose off. And then suddenly, she’s lifted down, and Black Lorren is tugging the noose off; it catches and snarls on her hair, the rough rope, but she’s too busy gasping in and out in relief, falling to her hands and knees on the stones, blood rushing to her her head, to care. 

“It’s ill-done.” Black Lorren says. She doesn’t know if he’s talking to her or himself. “This is not the way. Better to die like warriors than this. This is the way of cravens.”

But he’ll hang her all the same, she thinks. He might not like it, might even hate Theon for it, but not because he had to kill her, a girl less than half his size, but because it would smart at his honor, what little these Ironborn have. It’s not even her he cares about, or the idea of murdering a child, it’s that it will shame him to do it like this. Good, she thinks oddly. Good. At least the man who kills her will be shamed. That has to mean something, doesn’t it? She crawls a little ways from him and heaves and retches, but nothing comes up but some watery porridge. 

Lorren waits until she’s done, to her dull surprise, and then takes her down from the wall and into the storerooms behind the kitchen. Beth can hear people calling after her, a man shouting, someone crying, but her ears are ringing too badly to tell. She sits on the dusty floor in a pale shaft of light coming from one of the small, high windows, and looks at Black Lorren, who looks back at her. Her neck hurts. He didn’t pull it that tightly but it’s sore, it hurts, it will hurt more when it snaps, or the life’s choked from her- Watching her gingerly feel at her neck seems to disconcert him, so he says gruffly, “You stay here, girl,” and closes the door, leaving her in the murky shadows. 

Beth listens to him shifting around outside, obviously ordered to keep an eye on her, and watches the light slowly change around her. It doesn’t really matter. She’s never going to see the sun go all the way down, anyways. She’ll be dead by then. She wishes they’d told her. Wishes she could have prepared, somehow. Maybe it would feel less frightening if she’d had time to say goodbye, to apologize for all the times she wasn’t as nice or as helpful as she could have been, for all the times she turned up her nose at Palla and Turnip or ignored Bandy and Shyra. Maybe she’d feel better if she could have seen Father, one last time, just for a few minutes.

She cries again, then feels like she can’t breathe and has to lie down in a huddle on the floor, pull her knees up under her chin. Then she just lays there, watching dust motes dance in the air, tries to think of happy things. She thinks about catching snowflakes on her tongue and blowing bubbles in her cider to make Jory chuckle. She thinks about how she learned to ride a pony when she was five, she thinks about dancing at feasts with Father, balancing on his boots and hearing his laugh echo through his chest. 

She thinks about playing with Sansa and Jeyne in the godswood, running breathless through the trees, hiding in the bushes. She thinks about the time Arya and her tried to draw a dragon in the snow with a big stick. She thinks about how Bran scared her once, perched on the top of the covered bridge as she went under it, and how he laughed until he was bright red at how she shrieked. She thinks about the time Lady Catelyn complimented her needlework in front of Septa Mordane and how proud she was. She thinks about learning to swim in the hot springs, clinging to Father’s back like a tadpole does a frog. She thinks about a hundred good meals and lemon cakes crumbling on her tongue and what sugar and cinnamon and oranges and plums taste like. 

She thinks about Jory whirling her around by the arms and tossing her into a giant mound of snow, she thinks about the time she got a pretty new dress for her eighth name day and wore it all the time until it was too short in the skirt. She thinks about slipping and sliding in her stockings on a freshly washed floor, shouting with glee. She thinks about getting to hold Rickon when he was a tiny baby, how peaceful he looked while he was sleeping. She thinks about sitting with Lady Nell and Lady Dana and listening to them gossip while they sewed. She thinks about walking through the wood with Palla and Turnip and kicking up dead leaves and how happy and free she still was, she just didn’t know it.

She thinks about how sad she is to die. She wants to be angry, but she’s just sad. It doesn’t mean anything. She was just here, and then things happened, and now she’ll be dead, like Mikken and Chayle and Farlen. It’s silly, she should be trying to think of some way to escape, to get out of this, but all she can do is sit here and feel sad. She is sad. She thought she’d get to do more things. She thought she’d get to meet more people. She thought- she thought she would live long enough to flower and marry and have babies. She thought it would be longer, life. But it’s not. Ten years is still more than any of her sisters got. They were too little to know they were dying. She envies them.

The light grows fainter and fainter. Beth closes her eyes. She hadn’t thought she’d fall asleep, but she must have, because it’s dark when she opens them again. She sits up suddenly, head pounding. This is wrong. Why haven’t they hanged her? As she staggers to her feet, glancing around, the door swings open, but it’s not Black Lorren at all, but Gage. He’s gaunt and drawn. “What’s going on?” Beth asks tremulously. “Did- did Theon change his mind? Where are they?”

“Come with me,” he says, and grabs her by the wrist when she doesn’t immediately approach him. “There’s no time. Something- something’s wrong, I don’t know, the men- your father’s men, there’s… they were attacked, we could hear it, even when they put us all in the hall, but then-,” he breaks off, shaking his head, as he barges into the kitchens. “Turnip!” 

A head pops up. Gage picks up a cleaver, shining brightly in the torch light. “The Ironborn are treatin’ with whoever ambushed your father’s men.”

“What?” Beth blurts out. “What do you mean- they’re not fighting my father?”

“Hell if I know who’s fightin’ who out there, but it’s not- get to the gate,” he orders curtly. “Just get to the hunter’s gate, we’ll figure out-,”

It’s proper nightfall outside now; Beth looks around wildly, eyes adjusting to the lack of light, as Gage ushers her and Turnip out of the kitchens and towards the kennels. She can hear voices in the distance; some familiar, some not. Then the grind of the south gate slowly opening. “Fuck,” Gage snarls, and herds them inside the kennels. Palla is there, with Joseth and Bandy and Shyra. She’s unchaining the dogs under Joseth’s watchful eye. “I’ve got two horses saddled by the gate,” he tells Gage curtly, as Palla swears, hands shaking, while she undoes another chain.

“Two’s not enough,” Gage snaps. “We try runnin’, we’re done. Only way to outpace them is on horseback-,”

The south gate has opened; Nell can hear horses pounding in. 

“Two’s better than nothin’,” Joseth snaps. Most of the dogs are unchained and unpenned now, barking and growling in excitement. “That’s enough, Palla, come on-,”

“I don’t understand,” says Beth, “who- what happened to my father’s army?”

Gage and Joseth exchange a look, but before either of them can say anything, the kennel door opens with a groan. Everyone starts, but it’s just the Walders.

“Where’re you going?” Little Walder demands in his high pitched voice.

“They’re running,” Big Walder tells him, as if it should be obvious. Beth supposes it is.

“Without us?” Little Walder scowls. “You can’t leave us-,”

Big Walder grabs him and mutters something, but Little Walder shoves him away. “No! I’m not staying here while they get to go, we’re lords, we should have the horses- Give us the horses,” he demands of Joseth. 

“Get out of here, ye little shit, before I bury this cleaver in your fat head,” Gage says plainly. “Don’t think we didn’t see how quick you Freys turned, soon as the Turncloak came-,”

“Enough,” says Joseth. “We’re going. Now. Before-,”

The distant voices are gone, replaced by an all too familiar sound. The rasp of steel, and someone is screaming, and the dogs are baying and jumping, and the Walders go tearing out of the kennel door, it swings wide behind them, and Beth hears running feet and more shouting and the sound of more and more riders thundering into Winterfell, and then something bangs so loud she almost jumps out of her skin. Joseth runs to the other end of the kennel to look, then turns back, blanching. “Horses are riled- they’ve come round, they’re ramming this gate-,”

“Bugger the horses then, east gate,” Gage snaps, and holds open the door for them all to run past him. The dogs go streaming out into the night air, howling and barking, and Beth stops dead in her tracks and stares as a flaming arrow buries itself in the charred top of the library tower, provoking a brand new flame from the old wooden interior. 

“RUN,” someone roars in her ear, and so she runs, head down, feet slapping against the ground, as more arrows hiss by overhead and men scream and shout and riders charge past, torches held aloft, and they’re all sprinting across the main courtyard, pass the guest house, when an arrow lodges itself in Joseth’s back. He staggers, then crumples to the ground, his daughters screaming, and Beth skids to a halt, only for Palla to snatch up her hand and propel her forward again.

“We can’t!” she shrieks, “go, just go-,” and Beth is ashamed but she obeys, because they can’t- Bandy and Shyra are huddled over their father’s body, wailing in terror, but her and Palla and Turnip and Gage, they keep running, under the shadow of the covered bridge, but then there’s more men up ahead, Ironborn or not, she doesn’t know- does it matter- and she smells smoke now, she really does, and the guards hall is on fire, the windows glowing orange, and two maids go tearing past them, screaming, and a man is laughing nearby, and the thatched roof of a nearby shed goes up immediately, and Beth trips over something on the ground and only realizes seconds later that it was an arm. 

Gage leads them away from the blocked east gate, and points towards the stone first keep- that can’t burn, surely, and no one will think to look there, and once they’re inside the circular tower they all double over, panting and gasping for air. “Take a moment,” Gage grinds out, “no more, we have to move- one of the houses turned, one of them turned-,”

“Pink,” Turnip is licking his chapped and peeling lips. “Pink banners, they said it was the pink one, when they all went runnin’ up to the walls-,”

Then Beth understands perfectly well. “Bolton,” she says hoarsely. “It was the Boltons. They turned on the rest.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Palla snaps. “Why would they help Ironborn-,”

“They ain’t helpin’ them. They’re slaughterin’ them and takin’ the castle for themselves,” Gage has propped open another door. “Let’s go. They can’t have circled around to the north gate yet. Come on.”

Beth dashes out into the night once more with the rest, could cry out with relief when she sees the north gate abandoned, and Gage runs over to unbar it, grunting and straining under the effort to lift what would usually take two soldiers to remove. Palla goes over to help him after a moment, and Beth wraps an arm around Turnip’s small frame. “It’s alright,” she says, because he is just staring at the ground, quiet and numb, “we’re going to leave now, it’s alright-,”

Gage shouts out in triumph as he and Palla manage to unbar the gate, and Beth’s shoulders sag in relief, and then for an instant, her ears ring again like they did on the wall, with the noose around her neck, and some instinct or urge makes her grab Turnip and shove him to the ground, her on top of him. There’s a hollow bang, and when Beth looks back up, still huddled on the ground, Gage is staring in horror at his left shoulder, pinned securely to the wooden gate by a crossbow bolt. The second one takes him in the stomach. Palla yelps and tries to pull the other door of the gate open, hands scrabbling against it, but she’s not strong enough to get it open by herself, and another bolt lands beside her head, making her drop to the ground with a shriek, hands over her ears.

Beth scrambles around on the muddy ground, still clutching Turnip, as Palla begins to sob aloud, “Please, please- just let us go, we’re not fighters, we don’t mean you no harm, just let us go, please-,”

The man on the grey horse, who must have cut through the godswood in order to catch anyone trying to flee through the north end of the castle, dismounts, puts the crossbow back on his back, and smiles disarmingly at them. One hand is raised as if to reassure. The other is holding the end of a long, greased whip. “Let you go?” he asks, and Beth realizes how young he is; she can barely make out his features, but he can’t be any older than eighteen or nineteen. “Let you go where? Out to the wood, to freeze to death by morn?”

“Please,” says Beth, voice rising in hysteria, “we- we just want to leave, that’s all, you can have the castle, tell- tell Lord Bolton he can have it-,”

“ _Lord_ Bolton,” says the boy, for that is what he is, boyish, and fair, “Oh, he’ll like that. You know your manners, don’t you? _Lord Bolton_ ,” he imitates her breathily, and then laughs, his gaze sliding over Beth and Turnip and then to Palla, cowering against the gate beside Gage’s corpse. “Lord Ramsay’s the one who’s liberated you, you see, from Greyjoy and his men. You remember that, an’ we’ll have no trouble at all.”

“Just let us go,” Palla cries, “just- we can just go out the gate, you’ll never see us again, I swear-,”

The boy-man-monster smiles, and unfurls the whip. It cracks at the air, and Beth shies back, dragging a still frozen Turnip along with her. “No, I don’t think so,” he decides lightly, as if they were playing a game. “I think I ought to follow orders, an’ bring you to thank Lord Ramsay properly. He saved you, after all. _I_ saved you. You would have died out there, in the cold. In the dark.”

He’s not going to let them go, Beth sees then, and he’s not going to kill them, either. At least, not right away. Maybe that should be reassuring, to her, when she thought she’d be dead on the end of a noose by now, but it’s not. It’s not at all. No one moves. The whip slashes through the air a second time. Turnip makes a faint whimpering sound. Beth watches their breath mist in the firelight. “You don’t look very grateful,” he says. “Don’t worry. You will. Now get up, and walk. Nice and slowly.”

Beth slowly stands, pulling Turnip to his feet as well. Palla stares at them and the whip for a moment longer, then lunges for the gate again. He only takes two strides forward, and then the whip reaches her, and she crumples to her knees with a scream, clutching her hands together while blood runs through her fingers. “Get up,” he says, still smiling, as if there were some clever jape they hadn’t been told about yet. 

Palla is still crying in pain, so he heaves her up by her long hair. Palla tries to jerk away ineffectively, eyes streaming tears. “Bastard! Stupid fuckin’ turncloak bastard!” she shouts at him, kicking, spit flying. “Beth, run! Go!” But Beth doesn’t run. There’s nowhere to run. Before her is the gate and Gage and the whip and the crossbow bolts, and behind her, Winterfell is burning. 

“No,” he says, patiently, and squeezes Palla’s bloody fingers, hard, and Palla screams again. “It’s Damon. You’ll learn. Now you can dance for me, cunt, or you can walk. Your choice.”

They decide to walk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. This is a chapter that was not in the initial outline for the fic at all, since I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to introduce a secondary POV, but I'm glad it made it, because I think in a work surrounding the Bolton family, having someone present at the Dreadfort is probably necessary, since otherwise we would not be seeing Ramsay for some time, which I think detracts from his narrative weight as an antagonist. Nell may be safe from her father and brother at the moment, but Beth and the others are not. 
> 
> 2\. Beth has a very limited POV due to her age and circumstances, so I apologize for it not being exactly clear what is going on in this chapter. To summarize- Reek/Ramsay is not present at Winterfell, he does not kill and mutilate the bodies of the miller's sons to pass off as Bran and Rickon. Theon instead pins it on Farlen for losing the trail, and executes him in an attempt to maintain control of the people left at Winterfell, although it's blatantly obvious that this is now a suicide mission for the Ironborn. His sole advantage is that no one outside of Winterfell is aware that he no longer holds the Stark princes as captives. Rodrik rounds up an army to reclaim Winterfell, including Ramsay (who hasn't been publicly accused of any crimes here, as Donella Hornwood is very much alive and well) and his recently bulked up garrison from the Dreadfort. Ramsay and his men promptly turn on the rest of the northern houses assembled around Winterfell, convince Theon to open the gates, etc. Not explicitly showing Ramsay in this chapter was a choice to add to the tension; Beth and company are confronted by one of his lackeys, Damon Dance-For-Me, instead.
> 
> 3\. Rereading A Clash of Kings, the part wherein Theon reveals his plan to hang Beth, and then a new hostage every day if her father attacks is, to me at least, one of the most repulsive scenes in the entire series (along with the canonical murders of the miller's wife and her children). 
> 
> 4\. We are going to see Beth again in the year 299 AC, but for not for a little while as there's some necessary Nell chapters to get out of the way first.
> 
> 5\. The next chapter we'll be back to Nell, and I'm pretty sure it will be the last chapter of this fic that takes place during A Clash of Kings, so we're finally moving into A Storm of Swords territory after Chapter 30.


	30. Donella XXVI

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell has to put her needlework aside after the girl comes in with her supper, for she found her throat tightened to a knot at the sight of her. One of the castle’s children, but in the firelight, for an instant, she could have been little Beth Cassel. She’d once heard the saying that ill news came in threes. Well, they’d had their threes: three haggard, exhausted ravens. 

Barbrey warned from Barrowton that Ironborn had sailed up the Saltspear and ventured into the Neck; if Moat Cailin had truly fallen to one of the Greyjoy brothers, they were now cut off from the North. It’d be a brutal fight to take it back, even with the aid of the crannogmen. Then word from Rodrik Cassel at Cerwyn; Theon had returned with his promised longships, and promptly raided up and down the Stony Shore before taking Winterfell while Cassel was fighting to protect Torrhen’s Square. And finally, the third blow; Alysane Mormont claimed, in her letter all the way from Bear Island, that Deepwood Motte had also fallen, to Theon’s reaver sister. 

None of it should have been surprising, Nell has told herself half a hundred times. Did she not say herself that Balon Greyjoy would likely rise again in rebellion? Only, she had not thought it would be so soon. But it makes perfect sense. They left the North weak, exposed, stripped of many of its ordinary defenses. They had no choice; they needed the numbers to pose any threat at all to the Lannisters, but with garrisons dwindled and every able man and boy gone south… 

She could tolerate the news of Deepwood; Nell has never visited, but everyone is aware that the Glovers have always been both isolated and vulnerable in their small keep just a day’s ride from the Bay of Ice, with only the mountain clans to rely on for defenses. She could even tolerate the loss of the Neck, painful though it might be. If the Ironborn hold Moat Cailin, they do not hold it lightly; they are surrounded by the Reeds and their bannermen, and they are not at all familiar with the terrain or its dangers. 

But Theon- Theon is her shame, hers and Robb’s. Aye, Balon would have sent forces to raid the North regardless, but to have Winterfell taken in such a manner- overnight! - only Theon, who spent half his life there, could have done that. He is likely proud of himself for it, proud that he was quick-witted and cunning enough to devise a way in, to take Robb’s seat and his brothers and the household he’d been brought to as a glorified prisoner- But gods, how could they have been so blind to it? Nell may wrack her memories as much as she’d like for any memory of Theon’s resentment, bitterness, rage towards Robb, but- Where did it start? When did it begin? She looked him in the eyes when they left, and judged him as trustworthy as any true man. 

She was wrong. They were wrong, and now the North is paying for it. That Cassel will retake Winterfell, she has no doubt. However many men Theon may have, or if he has support from his uncle or sister’s forces, he cannot hold out long against the combined weight of the remaining northmen. Their fury will drive them even harder to retake the heart of the North. But the boys- the people- if Theon has any sense, he may have already shipped Bran and Rickon back to Pyke as hostages, and Nell does not want, cannot, think on that, nor can Catelyn. She knows they are likely safe enough, aside from the fright; no one would dare touch them, they are too valuable to use against Robb, against her, but-

The girl who brought her supper looks a good deal like Beth, you see, and that is the root of Nell’s fear. That they have really just been playing at war this entire time, like children, and that she left other children- innocent children- to suffer the consequences of Robb’s absence. Of her absence. It’s been nigh a fortnight since Edmure’s victory at the fords, nigh a fortnight since the Riverlands turned jubilant and joyous again, at the thought of the lions running scared, but Nell thinks she was right, now, to never feel that relief, despite the fact that Gregor Clegane is dead, that they humiliated Tywin Lannister, just as they humiliated his son.

She was right not to let herself rejoice, because now the other hand has been dealt. Robb may have cut through most of the northern half of the westerlands, may have taken the Crag, may have plundered the westermen of their gold and their cattle, but what is a king with half a kingdom? If they do not have the North, they have nothing. They are nothing. She can try to hide the news as long as she likes, but the Freys and the Mallisters must already know it, and it will spill south sooner or later. If the Lannisters know- if the Baratheons know- at best, it will be a humiliation, a temporary setback, a misstep. At worst? Her goodmother does not sleep; says she cannot even think to lay her head down until she knows for certain that her sons have been saved, that Winterfell is restored to them.

Nell thinks of how Robb and she put Rickon to the bed, the night before they left Winterfell. How his head lolled against Robb’s chest and how he smiled in his sleep, unbidden, as they tucked him in. How she’d felt a strange beat of affection, even then, when Robb smoothed back his youngest brother’s toddler curls and kissed him on the brow. How she’d thought, however briefly or embarrassingly, that she should like to see him do the same for their own child, someday. _He’ll make a good father_ , she’d told herself. _He’ll sit up with you and tell stories until your children fall asleep, and he’ll always come in to kiss them goodnight. Even if you grow to despise each other, he’ll always love the children betwixt you._

She thinks of how she told Bran to be brave, that red morning when they’d rode out. How she’d told young Beth to practice her needlework. Their courageous little smiles, children trying to reassure the grownups that they would be alright. They are not alright. She left them, and in her place stole the likes of a traitor and his men, men who might be pragmatic enough to not raise a hand against the Stark boys, but Beth, the other children, the old men and women, like Nan, Palla, Turnip, Joseth’s girls- _You were their queen_ , she thinks, _and you left the windows open on your way out, and now you are surprised that that sea sloshed in?_

She is still their queen. If they cannot be saved they will be avenged. But they must be saved. She must not think like this. Maester Vyman was loathe to see her up and about, if only to hand him a letter to Robb to send off, urging him to return as soon as it was prudent, even before. Even with Winterfell reclaimed, they will still need to go north. The Lannisters will be busy dealing with Stannis; there are reports that fighting has begun in the Blackwater. With any luck, it will be months of sieging the city, and they can take back their home in the meanwhile. 

With any luck, Robb will be here in time to see his son arrive. She can feel the babe hiccuping inside her as she uncovers the food before her. She takes all her meals in her rooms now. Vyman estimates she has at least a month before the babe comes, perhaps two, but what is a month, a turn of the moon? He’ll be here soon. It’s still difficult to believe, that she is expected to push this… creature… out of her in a turn or two of the moon. Nell has never seen a woman in childbirth; that is why she needs Dana back from Seagard before the month is out. 

Dana’s attended a dozen births, there’s so many Flints scurrying about, and the Bracken sisters as well. The Freys are reluctant to restore their women to her, citing Edmure’s own upcoming wedding to Roslin, and how arduous the preparations will be. Truly, that is the last thing on Nell’s mind. Had she her way, Edmure and Roslin would have been wed months ago, but the Freys want a grand ordeal of it, presumably to rub in everyone’s faces how well they have fared for this war, how their overlords have finally seen fit to honor with them a marriage to a Tully. At least the babe will have been born by then, and the worst will be over with. 

She can no longer see her feet past her belly, and her pale legs are mottled with new purple veins. Between those and the burgeoning stretch marks on her stomach and thighs, she finds it easier to just close her eyes while she bathes now. Her body will not be hers once the babe has come, anyways. She does not want to rely on a wetnurse unless she has no choice. Barbrey always said babes were stronger for their own mother’s milk, not that she’s ever birthed a child herself. In some sense she almost envies her aunt. They make it out to be such a simple thing, pregnancy and childbirth, when it is really anything but. Vyman has her counting kicks, for the love of the gods. But this child is almost always moving, as if restless, impatient to be out in the world. 

She is still picking at her food when Catelyn enters. Nell’s confinement may be new, but it already riles at her, and she finds herself brightening for company the way a prisoner in a cell might. She can see the sense in it; she’s in no state to be going up and down narrow flights of stairs all day, particularly while wearing skirts, and most midwives agree, be they northern or southern, that rest, prayer, and peace and quiet are the best circumstances to bring a child into the world. If Nell had her way, she’d give birth in the godswood, the rest of it be damned. That’s the only place where she’s ever felt true peace here. 

Now that she is limited to just two walks outdoors a day, she’s begun to appreciate her childhood more. Barbrey was not perfect, but Nell spent nearly all day, every day, out of doors. Her aunt felt that keeping young girls inside made them frail and more susceptible to illness and infertility. So long as the weather held, Nell took most of her lessons with Sara outside, or tramped around the barrowlands on long walks while she memorized the order of Stark kings and the sigil and colors of every major house north of the Neck. 

“Eat,” Catelyn says encouragingly, taking a seat beside her on the bed. “You must keep the babe’s health up.”

Nell exhales, tries another bite of fish, then grimaces and sets down her knife. “Vyman says he’s like to be big, either way, from how I’ve been carrying.”

“They says boys are carried low,” Catelyn observes, then pauses. “May I?”

The list of people whom Nell will allow to touch her belly is very short indeed, but Robb’s mother heads it. The woman’s birthed five healthy and hale children, without a single loss aside from an early miscarriage in between Bran and Rickon. Nell hopes that sort of luck is contagious. As opposed to Mother’s. But that was Father’s fault, she reminds herself sharply. His seed was weak and corrupted, Mother told it true enough. He brought his lost sons upon himself. He did not sire any children on his first wife, did he? And Walda… She doesn’t want to consider that. 

“He’s kicking,” Catelyn does not smile; she has not since the news, but something in her expression lightens all the same. 

“I was sick so much,” Nell says, “at first, and Barbara Bracken told me that was a sure sign for a daughter.”

“But you’ve no spots,” Catelyn removes her hand, and adds dryly, “and they say girls will steal your beauty. Swollen ankles, that’s a boy, they told me when I was carrying Robb. But I was always hot with him, and I worried that meant a daughter. They say these things to comfort and scare mothers, especially with the first babe. There’s no true rhyme or reason to it.”

“My mother was certain I’d be a boy.” Nell only said it because she is tired, she tells herself later. She has only ever mentioned Mother once in Robb’s presence, and never in his mother’s. She sees the way Catelyn is looking at her now, the crease of sympathetic pity in her brow. She feels like a child, avoiding eye contact after saying a dirty word. But she just- it would be sweet, perhaps, to have a mother at a time like this. To have someone she could trust unconditionally, whose favor never has to be courted or sought out. 

“Your mother’s life was not easy,” Catelyn says after a little while, when Nell has taken a few more bites of her food. “I regret that I never had the chance to know her well. And I cannot imagine the pain she went through, to lose so many babes. My sister Lysa had similar troubles, and did nothing to deserve such suffering. But it seems obvious to me that your mother would be, without question, very proud of the woman you have become.”

Nell exhales through her nose, and then says, “You know, she used to tell me she would take me and run off to live with the wildlings if my father made me an unworthy match. She had more of a sense of humor than my aunt, even when she was-,” she hesitates, as always, “even when she was in poor spirits otherwise. But she would have liked Robb, I think. Quite a lot, really. Not just because he is a Stark, because he is…” She struggles for the word, and then settles on, “True. He is true. I’ve never had cause to doubt his loyalty, nor his sincerity. He says what he means, and he means what he says.”

“He got that from his father,” Catelyn says quietly. “I did not know Ned at all, when he returned from the war. I did not know Winterfell. I had no ladies with me at that time. The people were strange, their customs were strange, even their clothes were different. It was spring but I’d never felt colder in my life, when we crossed the Neck. It was snowing when I got to Winterfell, I remember, and there was a stranger helping me down from my horse, a stranger I was wed to, whose son was at my breast.”

“But you adapted.” Nell will admit this much; Robb might have Tully blood, but she has never really thought of him as anything but northern. Their culture was the same, despite the courtesy he paid to his mother’s faith. Winterfell was new to her, but not wholly foreign. She had Barbrey, had Dana, had the reassurance that everyone there knew her, knew her name, knew her blood. She was a Bolton of the Dreadfort, born of a Ryswell of the Rills, niece to a Dustin of Barrowton, and her paternal grandmother was a Redfort from the Vale, her maternal grandmother a Flint of the Finger. Her aunts on her mother’s side are respectively, a Marsh of the Neck and a Locke of Oldcastle. 

She cannot imagine how different things would have been had she been wed to a man from the South, be it a knight of the Vale, a riverman, or even a stormlander. 

“I had no choice but to,” Catelyn chuckles without any real amusement. “I was so determined to be a good wife, to be patient, to win their respect- but I was still a girl myself. I was… Ned was not easy to know, then. He was slow to smile, slow to laugh, slow to voice- well, to voice anything. And I tried to understand. He had lost so much. He did not know me, did not trust me. We’d married for the sake of an alliance. But there was fear. If not of him, of… of being alone. When I was a child at Riverrun, everyone knew me, everyone seemed to like me. My father favored me, and I enjoyed it, I think, because it felt like he valued my mind, my convictions, not just my looks or my graces. It was not like that at Winterfell. I was like Arya, I think.”

“Arya?” Nell had been certain she was about to say Sansa. 

“Yes,” Catelyn is staring past her, out the darkened window. “Sansa had- Sansa has my look, of course, and I was never quite the trial that Arya was, I should think, but- When I was a girl, I had the run of the Riverlands. I would sit down in the dirt and make mud pies with Petyr and Lysa. I taught Edmure how to ride a horse. I earned my fair share of scabs and bruises, climbing trees and swimming, and I was spirited. Jaime Lannister came here once before, did you know that? When my father thought to snare him for Lysa. He was a cocky and vain thing, even then, and I remember how we’d go back and forth. Poor Lysa was too tongue-tied to say a word. I counted myself intimidated by no man, when I was a girl.”

“And then the war came,” Nell says, and for a moment maybe she does see the girl Catelyn speaks of, a girl with Sansa’s fair looks but Arya’s glint in her blue eyes, a girl who could sing and write poetry and dance so well, but who also had a certain grit to her, who’d been raised up as her father’s favorite, his heir, who was his trusty right hand even after her brother was born. “I suppose things changed then.”

“Even before that. Arya would… Arya would hate to think of marriage, but I was pleased enough at the thought of being Lady of Winterfell. I was naive. I didn’t understand the sacrifice it would mean. I thought that it was a strong, worthy match and that Brandon Stark was something like a god when I saw him come riding down from the hills all billowed in mist. I put childish things away, so I thought. And yes, then came the war. And he was gone. I’d only met him a few times, and he was gone, just like that, and he never returned. I cried, you know, when he’d left. Out of fear for him, and because my own wedding had been postponed so he could storm into the Red Keep and demand Rhaegar’s head. And then again because I felt so selfish.”

“What happened to Brandon was terrible.”

“It was,” says Catelyn, “and I hated myself for thinking of him when I wed Ned. It was more grief for another life, than the man. I’d barely known him. But I’d made up this story, of what life would be like with him. And then he was dead, and we were at war. I was terrified. For myself. For my sister. For my father and brother and my uncle. And there was nothing to do but wait. Wait for Ned to come back, wait for Robb to be born. And Robb was my hero, though he was but a babe. Even when I felt miserable, when I felt that my husband might never come to love me, that he.. That he’d loved another more than he ever could me, I had Robb. My son. My life. He was a Stark but he’d been born at Riverrun, just I had, just as my father had. He was a beautiful babe, and so happy, too. He gave me such joy. To see him grow up... You’ll come to understand. There is nothing sweeter.” 

Nell puts a hand to her belly, drums her fingers, and waits for the responding kick. “Thank you for telling me that.”

“I may never see Sansa or Arya wed, never watch them have children of their own,” Catelyn says tightly, “but- to see this one be born, I think, will be a great gift.”

A gift. Nell had not thought of it like that. She finds it hard to think of the child as a gift to herself, or to Robb. A necessary component, maybe. A reprieve of some sort. Certainly she is grateful to be having this child in the first place. Had it not happened before Robb left, she knows she would feel that much worse, for all that she might still have her body and not have the birth to worry about. But to be thankful for the child itself is different. She will know when she sees him, she supposes. She’ll be thankful then. Not as Mother was with her, when she was born.

There comes another raven from the North, near three weeks later. This one comes not by morning but late in the day, after the sun has gone behind the trees. Nell is returning from her evening walk, trying not to think of her swollen feet but of Dana’s return- she is due back from Seagard with the Bracken girls any day now. She had thought she might offer to let them look upon Clegane’s head, although it looks much the same as any other, at this rate. Jory has just opened a door for her when Vyman comes to them. His face is as drawn and pale as Nell has ever seen it. Nell stops, a steadying hand on the wall, her stomach cramping terribly. “More word from Ser Rodrik?”

“No,” says Vyman. “Lady Catelyn has it now. It is…” He cannot seem to go on. “You should sit down, Your Grace.”

She finds her good mother hunched beside the table like a child, wracked with sobs, one hand clutching the velvet seat of her chair, her fingers white against the dark fabric. The letter is still laid out. “My lady!” Jory cries, and tries to help Catelyn to her feet, but she is rebuffed. Nell cannot sit; her stomach cramps again, she grimaces and plucks up the letter, as Catelyn sobs, “My boys… He burned them- he burned it-”

The letter is from Jonelle Cerwyn, now the lady of Castle Cerwyn, for Cley, her brother is dead. Cley is dead, Leobald Tallhart is dead, leaving his own daughter as heir, and Rodrik Cassel is dead. She writes that there was some battle pitched outside the walls of Winterfell, but come dawn, the castle had been burned. Lady Jonelle received a messenger bearing a Bolton banner, who gently broke the news to her that Theon Greyjoy had fought a coward’s last stand, ambushing the northerners with reinforcements from his savage sister, and then, when he knew it was lost, murdered the little Stark boys and put Winterfell to the torch. 

The survivors were being escorted back to the safety of the Dreadfort by Ramsay Snow, and as proof of his good will, Cley’s corpse was returned to her, and a letter bore the signatures of not only the Frey wards, the two Walders, but also of young Beth Cassel, now cruelly orphaned by war. There was also a brooch enclosed. Bran used to wear it to clasp his cloak, a direwolf’s head, now warped and mottled from the heat of the fire. There was no mention of whether or not Theon Greyjoy had lived through the battle, but Jonelle Cerwyn offered them her prayers, and asked for theirs in turn, as she was now the last of her house.

Nell has to read it two more times, her vision swimming. Jory has gotten Catelyn seated, but the hoarse fracturing sounds of her sobs continue. “No,” she says. “No, this… Theon wouldn’t- He would not have killed them, why would he…”

“I’m so sorry, Nell,” Jory touches her arm gently. “It’s- it was slaughter, no fair battle, if Lady Jonelle tells it true.”

“No,” says Nell again, but that is Beth’s signature, she recognizes it- she was yet living when this letter was written, but- 

“He put my sons to the sword,” Catelyn rasps, picking you up the brooch, and turns red and swollen eyes upon Nell. “If Theon Greyjoy lives-,” she breaks off, and says, “Rickon was just a baby. Bran was crippled. If he yet lives, I will not draw breath easy again until I see Robb avenge his brothers.”

Nell cannot find any words at all, her tongue thick and limp in her mouth. She wants to deny it, to decry it, to denounce it all as lies- the Bastard lies as easily as he breathes, but- Think, the little voice tells her. What would he have to gain by killing Bran and Rickon? If they lived, he would have taken them. As honored guests or hostages, it matter not. He knows well enough the Neck is blocked. He knows well enough with Rodrik’s men slaughtered that no one else can stand against him. They have not the numbers nor the advantage to besiege the Dreadfort, not with Ironborn running loose and winter coming. 

There was either one truth or another. If the letter was true, and Theon really had burned Winterfell and murdered Bran and Rickon… If the letter was not true, and Ramsay had burned Winterfell and murdered Bran and Rickon… They are dead, regardless. She does not want to accept it. Wants to scream against it, rage against it, proclaim it all lies. But they must be dead. They could not have run, two little boys, one crippled, the other barely more than a babe. They are dead either way, and Winterfell is burned, and Theon…

They are dead. She will never see them again, never hear them again. She will never take Bran out riding, or brush crumbs out of Rickon’s curls. The wolves must be dead too. Theon may have very well killed Summer and Shaggydog as soon as he took Winterfell in the first place. They are dead. They are all dead. Beth and the other women and children may still live… Or they may be dead and buried as well by the time Robb can fight his way back into the North. What can she do? What can she say? Explain to Catelyn that the only light spot of hope in all this, that some innocent lives may have been spared, may not be true at all? Explain that she knows her bastard brother to be a monster? How? With what proof? 

_I believe he’s a raper and a murderer_ , she might say, _I believe he is a born liar and an animal, I believe that no one is safe in his company, I believe if he has Theon Greyjoy, he will be begging for death before long_. That bit might give Catelyn some peace. But the rest? Nell doesn’t know. She was not there. She will not be there for some time. She could have been there, but she wasn't, she came south instead with all the rest. But if what was done to Sara- if any of that should befall the likes of Beth, or Palla, or Bandy and Shyra- Theon will not be the only one begging for death, when she next gazes upon the Dreadfort. She is still the rightful heir. She will ride through those gates with Robb and make the walls dance with hanged men.

So she does not say anything, and instead holds her good mother, and allows her own tears to come, hot and prickling at her eyelashes. When Robb finds out, this will break him. It may have broken his mother. It may have broken all of them. The godswood- she dreamed a godswood burning once, did she not? The godswood at Winterfell? She dreamed she smelt the smoke but could not yet see the flames. Or was it the one at the Dreadfort? It matters not. She heard the horn, and there was a crow, pecking and pecking… 

She dreams the godswood again that night, her first nightmare in months, as if the babe had been offering some reprieve from them. But the trees are withered husks, the ground is ash and cinders, and the smoke still billows. She is not bound to a tree; she is lying prone and naked on the ground, her cloak coiled bloody underneath her, and the sky ripples dark purple overhead. She cannot feel the babe kicking at all; she curls her arms around her belly and chokes back fresh sobs. The wind ruffles at her hair, and her lungs burn with every breath. There is a pile of charred bodies nearby. A child’s skull gapes blindly back at her, only twisted antlers sprout from its head, some deformed creature, a monster.

A cool hand touches her brow, and she blinks through the tears up at Sara Snow. “There’s a good girl,” she says, “dry your eyes, Nell.” Her braid is still hacked off, her neck still wet with blood, her arms and legs are still covered in dark bruises. She wipes at Nell’s eyes with her filthy cloak. It smells of wet, dead leaves and old pelts. “This is no place to have a child.”

“He burned it,” Nell gasps out, “he burned it- it’s my fault, we should have never let him go- I should have made him pay-,” She doesn’t know if she is speaking of Theon or the Bastard. Does it matter? “We never should have left. I never should have left.”

“Had you stayed,” says Sara calmly, “you would not have lived to see another winter.”

“It’s not winter yet,” Nell tries to sit up, but it hurts too much. Her legs feel wooden and stiff. Her feet are numb and purpling. “Not yet, it can’t be winter yet-,”

“Not yet, but will be, as it has been before,” Sara picks a twig from her hair, scrutinizes her. “He’s coming, and you are still not ready.”

“My brother or my son?” Nell asks, and laughs; it crunches like shattered glass in between her teeth. “Tell me.”

“Tell me why he cut my braid,” says Sara sadly. “Tell me why my bones lay in a gulch. Tell me why there is no justice, Donella, daughter of Bethany, daughter of Barba. This is no place to have a child. The gods have gone away, and will not return until the spring rains.”

“But you’re still here,” Nell sags against her familiar grip; Sara was always strong, despite her size. “You won’t leave me.”

“I cannot,” agrees Sara. “But I am not a god. I am just what remains.”

The next day, she has no urge at all to leave her bed, although Jory insists she at least come outside briefly to the godswood, to play the harp and watch her and Brienne spar. Every day Jory prevails upon Brienne until she agrees to spar with her, and every day Nell watches Brienne of Tarth knock Jorelle of Bear Island into the dirt. She apologized profusely the first few times, but now they have found a rhythm, and whereas before Nell would sit and laugh as Jory dances just out of Brienne’s sword’s long reach, light on her feet where the Maid of Tarth is solid and sturdy, today she sits, and does not hear a single note that her harp makes, although she goes up and down the scale and plays the three songs Roslin taught her in perfect order. 

She does not see Catelyn. She knows she should go to her but she cannot. When their sparring is finished Brienne hauls Jory to her feet, both of them flushed red, and even awkwardly pats her shoulder when Jory launches into her usual rendition of her own missteps during the match. “Next time, I’ll get in a shield batter,” she says confidently, as Nell rises to go with them. “I should have feinted right, when you came out of that cross-step-,”

Nell does not hear much of their conversation anymore than she heard the music. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Your Grace,” Brienne tells her when they’ve reached her rooms once more. “I.. if there is anything I can do…” She is still bright red, as if any of this were somehow her own fault.

Nell nods briefly and says, “I believe you are some comfort to my good mother. Please, be with her now.”

She retires early that evening, not long after dusk. There seems little point in staying awake any longer. Edmure rode out at dawn to meet with the party returning from Seagard. At least Dana will be here when she wakes. That is something to look forward to. But sleep does not come; the occasional cramp in her belly disturbs her, and she is lying in bed, staring up at the dark canopy, sometime after midnight. 

“Your Grace- Donella.” The door has creaked open, and Jory is standing anxious at the foot of her bed. 

“What,” says Nell flatly, gaze not leaving the canopy. Her belly twists again. It feels almost like-

“Lady Catelyn sent Ser Cleos out the river gate not two hours past. I found out from Enger when I went to break water. New terms for the Imp, she said.”

Nell does not respond for a moment, and then she says, “Edmure is still not back.”

“No,” says Jory. “Should I raise an alarm?”

“No,” says Nell. “Go fetch a guard, and tell him to check on the Kingslayer. You look for Lady Brienne.” The pain contracts, then seems to stop. “And send the maester in here. I think I’m having contractions.”

She would not be so calm, were it not for the deaths of Bran and Rickon. She feels nothing at all but dull surprise and dull rage and dull agony, as if all her emotions had been weighted with chains and dropped to the bottom of a river. Vyman comes in and inspects her, and by the time he is done, the walls are blazing with light, and men are shouting. Jory comes back in, panting. “He’s gone. The Kingslayer is gone, and so is Brienne. Lady Catelyn-,”

“I do not believe you are in labor,” Vyman speaks over Jory’s ranting, making direct eye contact with Nell, who is now sitting up, her shift hitched up round her waist. “The contractions are the body’s way of preparing for birth. But not yet. You need to drink some water and steady your breathing.”

Nell had not even noticed how her breath was whistling in and out. That makes sense, then. That the contractions are just another trial, and that Jaime Lannister is gone. Of course. Catelyn waited until Edmure had ridden out, until dark had settled, and Brienne- well, Nell did order her to be with her. Of course. She wants to scream, but her throat is too dry. She sees red instead.

“Lying on your left side may help. If they increase at all in pain or frequency, send for me. I’ll have a maid watch over you,” Vyman continues, as if the castle were not steadily dissolving into panic around them, at the thought of having just lost their only truly important hostage against the Lannisters. They’ll take the rivers, streams, and creeks as far as they can, and with someone like Brienne rowing and if the weather holds fair… Even if they catch up to them, Jaime Lannister will not intend to be retaken alive, and dutiful Brienne of Tarth would likely rather die than forsake her lady’s orders. 

“Jory,” Nell blurts out, closing her eyes to fight back the wave of fury and nausea, “get Desmond Grell in here. We need to discuss what room to hold my goodmother in until her brother’s return.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the realm of positives, we'll see both Dana and Robb return next chapter?
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. This is another chapter that ends up covering roughly the span of a month, when all's said and done. In canon Catelyn and Robb don't actually find out about Winterfell being burned or Moat Cailin potentially being taken OR Deepwood Motte being seized until even later, but for the sake of my own sanity and keeping the plot moving we needed to consolidate the bad news without jumping to 'the ravens are basically Westerosi Instant Messenger!' levels. So yes, the ravens in question finally made it, and while Nell clearly does not have all the details, she's now aware that things have basically been one giant shit-storm in the North since they left. As she points out, 'what is a king without his kingdom'. The symbolic loss of Winterfell as the Stark seat of power hits just as hard for her as the practical loss and horror of what might have become of the innocent household there.
> 
> 2\. I could have jumped to the point wherein Nell and Catelyn actually gets news of Bran and Rickon's supposed deaths at Theon's hands and Winterfell's burning, but I wanted some downtime in between in order to show Nell and Catelyn bonding and Catelyn actually being quite open about how difficult her marriage was in the beginning. This is obviously very subject to personal interpretation but from what we hear of Catelyn as a young girl at Riverrun, she seems to have had a very active, rambunctious, and extroverted childhood, much like Arya, which is why I had her draw the comparison. I hate that we never actually get to see Cat interact with either of her daughters on-page in canon, so I liked the idea of her being able to reflect back to her own childhood and how different reality was from her expectations. Given what occurs at the end of this chapter, I also wanted the chance for Nell and Catelyn to have some positive interactions and frank discussion of motherhood/pregnancy.
> 
> 3\. I know it's been speculated back and forth as to whether or not the Jaime Lannister Jailbreak 2.0 would occur, and it was something I heavily debated, along with Theon's Homeward Bound, while outlining this fic. We're going to see the direct aftermath of this next chapter. I want to be clear that this fic is not arguing that it was a Logically Sound Decision nor is Nell going to be patting Catelyn on the shoulder going 'there there'. She's in the third trimester of pregnancy. She's in pain. She's exhausted. She's pissed. It's going to get ugly. Robb's imminent return with the majority of his army is not going to soothe matters much either. 
> 
> 4\. "Is the other shoe finally dropping? Should we be very afraid?" In terms of the overall tone of this fic, while it's never been very 'light-hearted' (although we've had our moments) I'd say we're officially moving into the choppier waters. (Arguably you could say that started with Beth II). I'm going to try to keep the pace very measured, as we're now officially done with A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords, at least in terms of the War of the Five Kings plot-line, is much quicker-moving, in my opinion. What I will say is that I think Nell has been forced to mature a great deal while essentially on her own at Riverrun negotiating her new role as a reigning queen, and I think Robb has had a parallel (but in some ways very different) maturation while out in the westerlands negotiating his new role as a warrior king. So in a sense I think they are going to have to reintroduce themselves to one another, because roughly 7 months of separation is a very long time when you are 18 and 16 years old and have been married for less than a year. 
> 
> 5\. In an attempt to not make reading this fic completely nerve-wracking, I will try to give us some breather moments going forward so it's not just a complete onslaught of tense moment after tense moment and characters at each other's throats. Thank you all so much for your continued support, especially given how slowly this fic moved in the beginning and how long it already is! I'm really shocked and honored by how people have stuck with this story and continue to be so invested!


	31. Donella XXVII

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell is sitting up in bed, writing a letter, when Dana rather noisily enters the room, shoving the door shut behind her and pulling off her dark green cloak. “Well, we had a look,” she announces to Nell, marching over to the table by the fire to pour herself a cup of milk. “I’ll say, when you used to tell me Bolton tales of severed heads, I thought it’d be more…” she shrugs as she takes a long gulp of her drink. “Chilling? Mind you, the smell was chilling, even with the tar-,”

“I hope you didn’t make them look,” Nell says shortly, setting down her quill with a frown. “It was a suggestion, if it might give them peace-,”

“Peace?” snorts Dana, setting down her cup and sitting on the edge of the bed. “No. I don’t think they took any peace from it. Satisfaction, mayhaps. The look on Barb’s face- you’d never seen one colder on a southern lady, I’ll tell you now. And Jayne…” she hesitates. 

“I meant to reassure her,” Nell massages the bridge of her nose, “show her that she was truly safe now, not give her more nightmares-,”

“She spoke,” Dana blurts out.

Nell arches an eyebrow. Since their return a fortnight past, she has seen some change in Jayne Bracken; she looks better for her stay at Seagard, freckled and reddened from the seashore, but Nell has not heard her voice a single word. She has no idea what Jayne even sounds like; Barbara has a huskier voice, like herself, but Jayne’s own voice might be as sweet as they claim the Maiden’s was. “What did she say?”

“Well, she only whispered it to Barb,” Dana says, “but lucky enough, we Flints have excellent hearing. She said she was glad it wasn’t bigger.”

Nell wrinkles her nose. “And what do you suppose she meant by that?”

Dana shrugs. “He was a monster. She had to lie beneath him and see that head leering down at her. I’d imagine, in circumstances like that, he might as well have been a true giant, and her an ant. Now he’s dead, like all the other giants. And the head wasn’t so big after all. Just a husk.”

“Just a husk,” Nell echoes her. “I mean to send it to Dorne, with Robb’s approval, of course.”

“News from the capitol was that Highgarden and Sunspear both declared for Joffrey the Illborn,” Dana counters, lying back on the bed with a groan, her long dark hair spread across Nell’s covered legs. “What good will a head do?”

“The Martells declared, but there’s no reports of them having committed troops to that battle,” Nell says. “It’s in name only. Prince Doran wants no war with the Lannisters, that’s clear enough, but he likely does not want their friendship, either. I don’t care if they sent the princess to them. Her grandfather commanded the deaths of their prince’s beloved sister and her children. She’s like to be more hostage than anything else. If we send them Clegane’s head, perhaps it will sweeten them.”

“Aye,” says Dana sarcastically, “and we’ll have our own Dornish spears come up from the Marches to stab Tywin in the back for us?”

“Stannis yet lives. They kept the city, but only by the breadth of a hair,” Nell is telling herself this more so than she is Dana. Reminding herself that all is not loss, to keep the panic and rage at bay. Yes, they no longer have the Kingslayer- but they can come back from this, they can, Robb tore through the westerlands, and is tearing back out again, the Lannisters were on the defensive until the alliance with the Tyrells… Nell likes not the idea of the might of the Reach mustered against them. If they have an opportunity in the future, to treat with Stannis once more, Robb must take it. Even if it means their crowns. 

Dana turns her head to look at her, and they share more than an expression, a feeling, all the same. Dread. The Blackwater may have been no easy victory for Joffrey the Illborn, and Edmure says the Imp took an axe to the head and will not see the year’s end, but… Even if Dorne’s loyalty to the Iron Throne is uncertain, they cannot hope to win out against both Tywin’s forces and the Tyrell’s hordes of knights and lances and pikes. Not here, at any rate. They need room to breathe, to prepare. They need to go north.

Dana’s warm hand finds her own, squeezing. “Just think on the babe for now,” she says, with a determined little smile. “Alright? That’s all that matters. Are you excited? It could come this week!”

“Not this week,” Nell groans. “Next, I pray. Robb should be back by then. His last raven had them camped alongside the Tumblestone. They’re making good time, despite his…” He’d taken an injury at the Crag, apparently. Not debilitating, but serious enough to see him laid up for a few days and nights. An arrow to the shoulder or something of the sort. He is lucky he is young. That could be crippling for an older man. Yet if he is well enough by now to write his own replies, that must mean something. He did not directly reference his brothers, and she could not bear to. When they are face to face once more, it will be easier. They have so much to speak of.

“He’ll be very pleased to see you, I’m sure,” Dana smirks. “All that fighting, stirring up a man’s blood-,”

“You are crude,” Nell says, but she cracks a hint of a smile at that. “I’m in no state to settle his blood, you wanton. Besides, I’m sure he’s...” she gives a little jerk of her head to insinuate.

Dana frowns. “You can’t really think he’s had whores, Nell. Not a Stark. Not Ned’s son.”

“What is it to me?” says Nell with forced levity. “So long as he paid them fairly. I’ll not be blind to such things, Dana. Men go to war, whores follow. He is sixteen and blooded, as you said.” She lifts her chin and adds coolly, “It is no matter, truly. He would never dishonor me with a bastard nor a mistress. The rest of it means nothing, so long as he keeps to my bed when not on campaign. Look at your-,” she stops herself in an instant, pressing her lips together.

“My father?” Dana is peeved, but not so infuriated as Nell had feared. “Aye. My father keeps well enough to my mother’s bed when he is home. I wonder how she has not smothered him in his sleep yet. She once threatened to cut his cock off if he ever gave her a pox.”

Nell picks her quill back up, as Dana adds, “Speaking of mothers, your goodmother wants words with you. Utherydes came to me while we were examining Clegane’s head. She begs your audience, Your Grace. Will you indulge her?” Her tart tone makes it quite clear what she thinks of this. To say the mood at Riverrun has been inhospitable towards Catelyn in the wake of the Kingslayer’s flight is to say that fish like to swim. At best, men say she is mad and lost her wits overnight. At worst… well, Dana had some choice words for it upon her return. Nell had some choice words as well, but has not said a single word to her goodmother since that night.

Not out of fear of confrontation, but because she did not think she would be able to speak to her without it escalating to the point where Edmure would have to choose who to stop from throttling the other; his blood sister or his goodsister. Nell understands. That is the worst part. She understands exactly why Catelyn did it. But gods be true- had she the power to turn back time- when Catelyn saw fit to question Ser Cleos upon her return, Nell had not interfered in the least. 

Now she sees she ought to have. She was far too content, too comfortable, assured of Robb’s mother’s loyalty to her first and foremost. That was very foolish. Putting her trust in her- seeking out her affection and praise like a dog does a bone- that was foolish. Barbrey would tell her as much. She was thinking like a girl, hungry for acceptance, not a woman, not a queen.

“Let her come,” she decides abruptly. “And the instant I cannot stand to hear her anymore, please go and fetch Grell.”

Dana mutters under her breath, but goes all the same. Ironically enough, Catelyn Stark looks better rested now, after this treachery, than she ever did before. Except for her eyes. Their blue is as muddied and troubled as before. She stands formally at the foot of the bed, as if she were on trial. Nell tries to summon up all of her cold dignity and reserve, everything Barbrey and Sara taught her, for it’s very difficult to come across as intimidating or worthy of caution when one is confined to one’s bed with child. “My lady.”

“Your Grace,” Catelyn bows her head. “You have my thanks for agreeing to speak with me at a time like this.”

A fortnight ago they’d been close as kin, and now they are back to close-lipped courtesies. Well, at least this once it is not Nell’s fault. Catelyn dug her own grave with this one. Even had Nell been a softer sort, to publicly forgive, even privately excuse, such actions would be entirely out of the question. “You’re welcome,” she says. “What would you have me hear from you?”

“Edmure tells me ravens were sent.”

It is just like Edmure, Nell thinks, to still keep up running conversation with his elder sister, even when he has been squabbling incessantly with her for months now. What should betrayal change? Family is always first for these Tullys. She admires their devotion, even when it prickles at her. “Edmure should not have told you that. But yes. I’ll not lie to you, for the respect you are still due as my goodmother. Ravens were sent out. To Harrenhal. To my father. If he can reclaim the Kingslayer, all hope may not be lost.”

“You wrote that he escaped,” Catelyn says, voice breaking slightly. “Donella, do you understand-,”

“I understand perfectly well that I cannot have it circulated that the king’s own mother broke faith and loyalty to release a prisoner of war, our most valuable hostage,” Nell snaps. “Do you understand, my lady? Do you understand what position this puts me in? I am queen. How might it look, do you think, for all to know while Robb was away fighting, I let Jaime Lannister escape?”

Catelyn sucks in a breath, then says, face tightening, “I will claim full responsibility for my actions. The fault is not yours. Ser Jaime was released by my command alone-,”

“A command you had no right to give, a command that will shame me until the day I die, a command you gave to Lady Brienne, carried out through deception, assisted by Ser Cleos- It is a farce!” Nell makes no effort to keep her voice down now. Let them hear her rage and scream. At least all will know where she stands, muffled as it might be through these sandstone walls. “What do you imagine they will do, should your Maid of Tarth get him back to the city? Send Sansa on her way with a knightly escort? Conjure up Arya out of thin air?”

Those last words were cruel, and she knows it from the look that crosses Catelyn’s face. Nell does not care. Things have been cruel for some time now. This entire situation is cruel. “At best, we look utterly incompetent! At worst- at worst, you released the bastard on a dead man’s promise- a Lannister’s offhand remark, which he would likely rather die than honor, if he is not dead already!”

“The Imp may still draw breath,” Catelyn says sharply. “And if the queen sees her brother returned to her-,”

“Aye, she’ll be pleased enough to have him back in her bed! While Tyrion Lannister dodders about with an axe in his bloody skull! Even if he lives, he may be half a man, with half a brain now, to suit! Tell me what sense that makes, then!”

“All the more sense, had you and Edmure not declared it an escape attempt!” Catelyn retorts, voice cracking again, and Nell can see the tears in her eyes. She almost feels like crying herself, and then hitting someone. “If it is not an exchange, they have no cause to give me back my girls-,”

“You created these terms out of thin air,” Nell says coldly. “I care not what Cleos claims Tyrion Lannister said, whether it was before all the court or not. None of it was in writing. Cersei will never agree to it, and now that they have the Tyrells on their side, us having the Kingslayer may very well have been the only thing keeping Sansa safe,” she spits. “Mace Tyrell has a daughter, does he not? Renly’s little widow? What do you think their terms might have been?”

Catelyn stares at her. “Joffrey’s betrothal to Sansa-,”

“Even if she is never to be his queen, they will not let her go,” Nell says in a more subdued voice. “You must know this, deep down. They’ll find some young Lannister to wed her to. If there is even a minuscule chance of somehow claiming the North through her- for if they had their way we’d all be dead and buried before the year is out!”

“And if there is even a minuscule chance of getting my daughters back, I had to try,” Catelyn tells her, blinking back tears but refusing to look away or retreat. Were circumstances different, Nell might admire it. “Yet now I may never see them again, all the same.”

“Then we shall name it both our faults,” says Nell bitterly. “I see I cannot convince you otherwise. Nor do I wish to. You left me very little choice. And Robb even less. His lords may demand he put you to a trial, upon his return. Had you considered that?”

“I can accept his judgement,” Catelyn retorts, although her tone seems to suggest ‘but not yours’. Just so. Mother and their precious firstborn sons are alike in that way. Nell imagines even Father’s mother loved him. “I pray you never know what it’s like.”

Ordering her from the room is on the tip of Nell’s tongue, but she settles back against the pillows all the same. “Treason?”

“No,” says Catelyn. “Having a child taken from you. It is the cruelest sort of pain you can imagine. I feel it like a knife in my belly, from the moment I wake every morning. And it never goes away.”

When Robb returns, the weather is cold and damp and threatening rain. Nell has not been outdoors in near a week, but she can smell it through the open windows all the same. She can also hear it; the dogs are all barking and howling at once, not just because boats are passing through the river gate, but because they can smell Grey Wind. The kennels at Winterfell… and she tastes ashes… but the kennels at Winterfell, they’d eventually grown used to the smell of the direwolves, and the dogs were only upset by their howling. But the dogs of Riverrun never had time enough to grow used to a wolf’s presence. 

She wants to jump out of bed, put on her shoes and cloak, and rush down to greet him. Of course she does. But ‘within the next fortnight, Your Grace’ has turned into ‘any day now, Your Grace’. She’s had pains on and off since last night, but nothing serious or lasting, and her water has not broken. Still, she’s been told a thousand times to keep to her rooms until the babe is born, that it is all nearly over, and as much as she hates it, they are too close now to risk anything. 

“Don’t worry, Your Grace,” says Barbara Bracken with the easy confidence afforded to the eldest of five daughters. “I’ll insist the King come to you as soon as he is able. We’ll tell him you’re terribly eager to lay eyes upon him again.”

“A man can hardly deny his pregnant wife,” Dana agrees lightly, linking elbows with Jayne, who is as quiet as ever but who manages to summon up a wavering smile all the same.

Nell rather wishes that she would not have to negotiate through secondary parties to see her own husband, but this is the way of things. She cannot physically go to him, so she must wait for him to come to her. She hates it, gods, she hates it. She’s always counted herself as active, assertive- Barbrey did not raise her to be victim to the whims of any man, she raised her to go after what she wanted, what she required. Nell has never waited for Robb when he was within her reach, but now she has no choice, and she loathes how it feels, the helplessness. As though she were somehow at, if not his mercy, then- the mercy of circumstance. Of sex, perhaps. Women are always waiting, always.

But better to be waiting here, with his child in her womb, than to be waiting in the grave for him to join her, she thinks firmly. 

Dana and the Brackens hurry out, pulling on their cloaks and chattering about who they will be glad to see again, and Jory takes up her post at Nell’s bedside. “Let’s play cards,” she says amiably enough, as though she were not bursting with excitement at the thought of being reunited with her own mother and sisters, and Nell feels so warmly towards her in that moment that she is tempted to take her by the shoulders and kiss her freckled brow. They play cards for most of the next hour, and then look over the clothes Nell and the others have constructed for the babe thus far. Nell runs her fingers over a tiny hat sewn by Roslin, unwilling to admit aloud how much she’s come to miss the presence of the Freys. Well, most of them, anyways. 

Finally, she hears the faint-but-familiar rasp of claws on the door. Jory starts, then dashes over to open the door, and Grey Wind bounds into the room. Nell is momentarily rendered speechless by the sheer size of him; when last she’d seen the direwolf, he’d been about the size of a large wolf. Now he is bigger, much bigger, perhaps the size of a small pony; when he comes up to the bed, she sees just how large his head is. But when she extends a hand he licks at her fingers as he always has, panting happily, and she is struck by how very gold his eyes are, as ever. Like winking coins or twin harvest moons. 

“Your Grace,” Jory says almost reverently, as if in the presence of Ser Arthur Dayne himself, or some other fabled hero knight, and Nell looks up from Grey Wind to gaze upon her husband, and-

And at first she does not recognize the man looking down at her at all. She’s known all her life that war changes men, but Father had come back from Greyjoy’s Rebellion exactly the same, to her child’s eyes. Yet this Robb- this cannot be the boy who left her, can it? He cannot be a boy at all. It is not just that he looks taller, or stronger, though he does. When he left her he was still a boy around his mouth, in his cheeks when he smiled, in his sometimes bashful looks. That boy is gone. War has gone to work on him, and like a meticulous seamstress snipped and trimmed away the excess. 

There is no softness left to his face, and it is all the more evident with the beard gone. Before, she’d assumed he’d grown it to look more a man, and less a boy of fifteen. Now he stands before her, sixteen and finally of his majority, and he does not need any beard to look a man. His hair is long, though, longer than she has ever seen it, falling to his shoulders, but his jaw is hard and sharp. He does not look like a miniature version of Edmure, he looks like his father, she realizes with a start. His face is no longer, but it is leaner, and she can see it now in the shadows under his eyes and the crease in his brow. 

If she stood up, she thinks, for the first time he would stand at least two inches taller than her. His shoulders are broader as well. His armor no longer seems as though it were wearing him, as if he were a boy slipping on his father’s chainmail and surcoat. But what is most telling is the crown. Nell immediately wishes she had thought to wear hers, ridiculous as it might seem to have a circlet of iron round her skull in bed. Because for the first time she feels most keenly as though she were looking upon the King of the North, not her husband, not her friend, not even her bedmate. There is no more hesitance in how he holds himself and the crown atop his head.

“Your Grace,” she echoes her sworn shield, and bows her head. “You cannot know how glad I am to see you once again. I’ve been praying for your safe return these past months. Thank the gods they saw fit to restore you to me.”

“Donella,” he says, as if struggling to contain too much in a single word, and Jory murmurs her excuses and darts out the door as quick as she’d run to open it. Nell cannot blame her. “Are you well?” The door shuts behind Jory with a soft thud. Nell waits for some softening of him, some loosening, some familiar, awkwardly boyish smile or for him to come and embrace her or even take her hands, but he remains standing, not quite rigid, but far from relaxed, either. She is reminded starkly of last year, when she came to Winterfell just before the royal visit. Has she gone so far back with him, just as she has his mother? It gnaws at her, but she cannot- will not- play the insecure woman desperate for his affection or approval. Not now. 

“As well as can be expected,” she finds herself struggling to meet his gaze for the first time that she can recall. It is just… he looks so different. He even sounds different. His voice is lower, too, and not out of disuse or ill mood. She has never been careful what she wished for, and now it comes back to smart at her once again. She complained of having to wed a green boy, and now she has a blooded and battle tested man in his place, and does not know what to do with him. “It’s fortunate that you arrived before the babe. Maester Vyman says it should be any day now.”

“He told me as much as well,” Robb says. “I apologize for not coming in sooner, but… I had to see to my mother, and reassure my lords. They are… disquieted with the news of the Kingslayer.” That is certainly one way of putting it, she supposes.

“Lord Karstark and my uncles were furious, I am sure.”

“Lord Karstark named my mother a traitor in front of the court, and your uncles were keen to go hunting for the Kingslayer themselves. I forbid it. Edmure tells me that Harrenhal was alerted as well, since Ryger failed to recapture him. There is little else to be done. I cannot afford to go chasing Jaime Lannister in circles at a time like this.” 

He doesn’t sound enraged, so that is something. Nor does he sound particularly calm. 

“Did you name her a traitor?” Nell asks very quietly.

“No,” says Robb, scowling. “I named what she did for love, and was as gentle as I could stand to be without currying mockery from my men. I know it was for the girls. For her grief. Should I condemn her as king, there would be consequences I am unwilling to carry out.”

He means it, she realizes. He is not speaking in dry humor. He does not want to have to imprison or hang his own mother for treason. “In time, I pray you can come to forgive her,” she says stiffly. “I confess I have yet to. But I must ask for your forgiveness as well. In your absence, Ser Jaime was my responsibility-,”

“There is nothing to forgive there. That fault lies solely with her.” 

Grey Wind is nosing at her hand again, but Nell cannot bring herself to touch his damp snout at the moment. Not when she is so uncertain of where she stands. It is not like with Father, there is no ice heaving under her feet, but it is close enough to make her stomach churn and the braid of hair on her wrist itch and itch. “But you fault me for something else,” she says, oh so carefully, not an accusation, an observation; she glances up at him now, and he may be leaner and harder and colder, but he wears no mask when he is angry, all the same. “Don’t you?”

Perhaps she would not feel like vomiting if she knew what that might be.

Robb hesitates for the first time since entering the room, and then says, “I’ll not be coy about it. I left commands to hold Riverrun, nothing more. I understand Edmure was eager for a fight, but…” He shakes his head. “We lingered in the west so long for a reason.”

“Conquest,” says Nell. “Lord Tywin was away, Stafford’s men were ill-prepared, it was ripe for the taking. And why not? They did far worse here.”

“I didn’t want Tywin away,” Robb snaps. “I wanted him back. We had the mounted cavalry. We needed to force his hand into coming back into the West. The Blackfish found a strong location on the gold road in the mountains. We could have run him ragged up and down the coast, got behind him, and rode them down from the hills, as we did at Oxcross, as we did here. And even if the ambush failed, we still would have had him pinned in the West, while Stannis took the capitol. When Edmure’s men pushed them back, away from the Red Fork, messengers from Bitterbridge caught up with the Lannisters, notifying them of the alliance with the Tyrells. That is why they retreated. They were able to take Stannis’ rear, turn the tide of the battle at the very end. Elsewise, Stannis would have seen the city fall, and there would be a Baratheon on the throne while we had Tywin surrounded on his own lands.”

Nell doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, heat rising in her cheeks, her neck, her chest. Robb does seem to slump slightly after getting all that out, but his rigid posture returns soon enough, regarding her, waiting for her response, her excuse. “You could not have notified us of this plot?” she finally manages. “Robb- you said nothing of the sort before you left, and when your great-uncle found this place to stage your victory-,”

“The last thing I expected was for Edmure to attempt a second chance at glory,” he retorts, “nor for you to permit it. I thought- well, I thought, another woman might be easily bowled over by his talk of smashing the Lannisters, of revenge, but you- no, I told myself, told Brynden, Nell will keep him well in hand, she would not tolerate such a thing, she would never risk it-,”

Is this better or worse than him not blaming her for Jaime’s escape? Worse, she decides. Edmure did not ‘bowl her over’. She not only consented to his plans, she improved upon them, by her reckoning. “You should have informed us-,”

“I should not have had to, nor was I willing to risk the raven being shot down!” he says angrily, furiously, and Grey Wind bristles, at her or him, she cannot be sure. “It was a command. To hold Riverrun, not to try to secure some great victory, not to bring down the Mountain- I was explicit when I commanded Edmure, and with you- well, it was my mistake, then, to think I would not have to tell my _wife_ in so many words that she was not to attempt to play at war in my absence!”

The silence that hangs after that is as swift and sudden as the fall of an ax. Nell would have preferred it had he slapped her, or cursed her. The- she does not know what to call it. Not contempt, they are not that far gone, but the… Whenever they were angry at one another before, it was largely due to circumstances. This is different. Personal. He is not angry because his father is dead, because his brothers are dead, because Theon betrayed him- or mayhaps he is, of course he is, but right now, in this instant, he is furious with her first and foremost, for disobeying him, for costing him his schemes and dreams of cornering the Old Lion at last. 

“My playing at war put Gregor Clegane’s head on your wall,” she says in a voice barely above a whisper. “My playing at war gave the rivermen something to fight for, rather than huddling here and waiting for the storm to pass and asking where their king had run off to. My playing at war may have been foolhardy and reckless, but no more so than your own plans. You were careless. Aye, you ought to have been _explicit_ with me, Your Grace. Tywin would not leave Harrenhal until Stannis was preoccupied with Storm’s End. You were not even a consideration. Do you think he was terribly upset to lose some cattle and gold? To lose the Crag? Ashemark? Nunn’s Deep? Do you think he truly cares for his people so?”

She is not whispering anymore. 

“He knew you posed no threat to the Rock, nor to Lannisport, the real seats of Lannister power. He only left because Stannis was busy reclaiming his castle. Had we let him pass, he would have taken most of his men after you, again, with no real hurry, and left behind a force to besiege Riverrun. You would have had no reliable support to count on from the rivermen here, then, and if he outfoxed you in the Westerlands- you think he does not know the _gold road_? You think Brynden Blackfish knows it better than men who were born and bred in the hills and plains? That they never set foot in those mountains?”

She has gone from defensive to accusatory to outraged to venomous all in under a minute, she knows, and she can see it from the shock on his face. No one has dared speak this way to him for months. And perhaps he might have even been chastened, for they are in private, and she is still his wife, after all, had she not added on viciously, “You should have returned as soon as you had word that Winterfell had been taken, that Bran and Rickon were at Theon’s mercy. Instead you wanted to play Lann the Clever come again in the West, while I played at war, as you say, here at Riverrun-”

“ _Enough_ ,” he says, only he doesn’t say it, he commands it, and Nell may not be very good at following his orders in his absence, but she has eighteen years of practice in painful obedience to fall back on now. She stops talking, and clamps down on every thought and feeling beyond the dread-filled sense that she has humiliated him, mocked him to his face, insinuated that he cared more for glory than his brothers’ lives, and now there are going to be consequences for it. 

And she is still angry enough to not regret it immediately, for he humiliated her as well, made her feel small, insignificant, like a foolish little girl, as though he were her elder, her superior, her teacher- And she has felt small from the instant he walked in the room, because all she can think is that these past months have brought her low, made her undignified, weak, helpless, not even in control of her own body, but gods, look what they have done for him, like some warrior king out of a song, come into his manhood with a roar. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. She almost hates him for it, and in this instant, she thinks he feels much the same. The look in his eyes is more than just anger. It is betrayal, that she would speak to him in such a manner, that she would drag her nails across an open wound. 

Grey Wind whines, low in the back of his throat. Robb seems unwilling to speak for fear of what he might say next. She has some idea of what he might want to call her. But she is pragmatic enough to not ask. Best to get this over with. She’s very tired, all of a sudden. “Your Grace,” Nell says flatly, staring past him and Grey Wind, at the closed door. What must the guards be thinking? How much did Jory overhear? “I must beg your forgiveness. Please excuse my insolence as a young wife’s folly. This babe makes me loose of tongue and short of temper. I disobeyed your commands, and cost you a great deal because of it. Edmure would not have proceeded without my approval. The fault is mine more so than his.” She swallows. “After the babe comes, I will accept whatever punishment you deem just without complaint.”

“Punishment?” he asks, queerly, and she forces herself to look at him, to school her expression into dull acceptance. He’s pale and drawn, with shock and fury, she thinks.

“I disobeyed your commands,” she repeats herself. Does he want to hear her say it again? Is that it? “If you feel that I should be confined to my rooms… or deprived of my ladies…” She feels that she had best suggest something tame enough, before his anger gets the best of him. “I can pray, if it would please you, in the godswood, and fast, or… If you should like me to present before the court and beseech your forgiveness there, as a show of deference before your lords-,”

“No,” he says sharply, and she feels some sting of betrayal herself. She had not thought he would go this way, but- She armors herself all the same, tries to fight back the swirl of panic in the back of her mind. It will not be that bad. It cannot be that bad. He may think he can hold a grudge, but he is no Roose. She will- she will be fine, whatever it is she must endure. She lowers her gaze. That may appease him. If she pretends at regret enough, or even fear, he might even believe it.

“You think I would-,” He takes a step forward, frustrated, and she flinches. Not some dramatic cringe back, but an involuntary start, the barest hint of a recoil. She’s mortified for it, both for herself and him. He freezes as if she’d whipped out a blade and held it to his throat. Grey Wind growls, warning them both, she thinks. 

Robb seems about to say something else, then exhales and turns and leaves the room, just like that. His wolf stays, though, and does not move when Robb pauses just outside the door, before shutting it after him. Nell looks warily at Grey Wind, who stares back at her, then goes around the other side of the bed, jumps up, and nestles around her like a giant, damp cat. Nell’s shoulders sag slightly, and after a few moments she lets herself crumple and put her face in his fur and wrap her arms around his familiar, heavy weight. 

She nods off like that, and wakes to find that he’s been drooling down her legs. “You beast,” Nell groans, shoving at his mouth without fear, ironically enough, then frowns when Grey Wind rolls over with a muffled grunt and her hands come away dry. Then why are her- she stops, puts a hand under her skirt. It comes back wet with a little blood. “Oh,” she says, moreso to Grey Wind than herself, He turns and looks at her, sniffing, as she takes note of the intense pressure on her lower back, and the pains- well, they certainly feel more regular than ever before. 

Nell looks at the wolf. “They’re not going to let you stay in here, you know.” She’s certain he must understand her, for he bounds down from the bed, stretching languidly, and trots over to the door, clawing at it. It swings open, revealing Dana and Barbara. Dana takes one look at Nell’s face and the stain on the sheets, and shouts for a maid. 

By the time they’ve got the sheets changed, the midwife in the room, and are moving to close the curtains, the grey skies have turned to evening rain sleeting down from the clouds. “Don’t,” Nell snaps, “leave them be, I want to see the sky. The incense is bad enough.” Her nose is running, and her eyes; she wipes at them irritably. She is not crying. Mother never cried when she went to the birthing bed. She screamed, though, sometimes, but that was not so unusual at the Dreadfort. Nell learned how to block it out easily enough. 

“It’s supposed to be calming,” says the midwife impassively, a large woman called Kella, who claims to have birthed thirty babes in the last six months, if not more. Vyman is busy unrolling bandages and arranging his instruments. “The pain will get much worse before it gets better, mind you. If you want to be naked-,”

“Not with him in here,” Nell hisses, scandalized, jerking her head at the maester.

“If you want to be on your hands an’ knees-,”

“Absolutely not!”

“An’ if you’d like somethin’ to bite down on, just tell Genny. Some babes come fast, some come slow. Let’s see how far along you are.”

They make her take a bath. Vyman excuses himself for that, at least. Then Dana comes and makes her pace the length of the room with her, barefoot and sopping wet on the stones, back and forth, back and forth. The pain swells, then lessens, then swells again, and Nell’s fingernails make bloody crescents all the way down Dana’s arms and hands. She drinks water, lots of it, ice cold, and every few minutes asks if she ought to be pushing yet, and every time the answer is ‘not yet’. 

“How long could it be?” she grits out to Dana at one point.

She shrugs. “One of my aunts lasted two days.” 

Nell pinches her, hard, for that.

At one point, just before they move her onto the bed, she works up the nerve to ask Dana if Robb knows. Dana stares at her. “What did you think he was doing, off hunting? He’s down the hall. Edmure offered him wine, but he’d only take a cup. Brooding with his wolf, that’s what he’s doing. You know Barbara had to stop him from barging in here a few minutes after me?”

Nell shakes her head, closing her eyes briefly. “No man wants to be present for this kind of thing, especially not after we…” she cuts herself off as another pain hits, the most intense one so far. 

“So you had a quarrel,” Dana rolls her eyes. “Well, that’s marriage for you, for nobles or beggars. Don’t be so dramatic. He didn’t ride off to the nearest brothel, did he? No? Good. That’s what one of my uncles did, when my aunt was having her fifth. Needed a drink to settle his nerves, he claimed. Aye, a drink and a good rub-,”

She’s cut off by Nell’s shout of pain, and they never hear the end of that particular tale. 

There’s a lot of shouting after that, when the pushing begins. The pain is awful, even worse than she expected it to be, and the fear is just as bad. Not fear that she may die, for what is the use in dwelling on that, but fear that it will either never end, or end all too suddenly. Time seems to go very slowly, yet very quickly all at once. Suddenly the sky outside is jet black. Suddenly she’s dripping with sweat, and someone is pulling her hair away from her sticky face and neck. Suddenly she doesn’t know if she’s screaming or just crying, but she can hear Grey Wind howling and howling just down the hall, and muffled voices outside the door. She's very cold; her teeth are chattering and all her limbs are trembling.

“I see the head,” Kella says encouragingly. “Come on, Your Grace, nearly there, breathe-,”

“I can’t,” Nell says raggedly, biting down onto her lower lip to restrain another shriek of pain, because it's too much, she just wants it to stop, she's not ready, “I _can’t_ -,”

“You can,” Dana will broker no disagreement, worming behind her to brace her back, gripping her wrists like vices. “When has a little blood and pain ever scared a Bolton? _Push_ ,” she snarls directly in Nell's ear.

So she does, and then she feels something slipping-

“Shoulders!” someone cries out triumphantly, “come on-,”

Then nothing, although she can feel the cord coiled up against her thigh like a rope. “It’s out?” she asks blearily, feeling as if in a haze, light-headed. The room is dark and musty around her, like a cave, and she can feel rain spraying in from a half-opened window. The sheets seem very wet. She smells blood, overwhelming copper and salt just under her nose. “It’s out? Is it breathing?” _Please_ , she thinks distantly, digging her fingers into the mattress. _Please, please, please_ -

“Good,” Dana is saying gently, maneuvering out from behind her, “you did good, just rest now, you’re done.”

“Is that the babe’s blood?” Nell asks distantly, squinting at the red blossom on the white sheets underneath her, feeling as though this were somehow part of one of her dreams. It seems fuzzy, not real at all. Her mouth is so dry, and her throat so raw, it hurts to speak. It hurts to think. Is this what it feels like after a battle? She can’t get a hold on her thoughts, flitting in and out of her head. 

“You only tore a little,” Genny, the midwife’s assistant, is praising. “Very good, Your Grace. We’ll get that stitched up after the afterbirth…”

Someone is shrieking. It takes her a minute to realize that it must be the babe. Good. It’s alive. It’s not dead. She pushes once more, at someone’s calm instruction while they knead her belly like dough, and the afterbirth slides out.

“A very healthy girl,” someone is saying, and Nell half-smiles in bemusement, eyelids heavy- surely she is no longer a girl now, now that she’s a mother, now that she has a-

A neatly wrapped bundle is placed in her limp arms, red-faced and screeching, and Dana is saying, “A daughter, you have a daughter, she’s beautiful, Nell-,”

“No,” says Nell, that must be wrong, why does her voice sound so high and girlish, she’s won, it’s over, she conquered the birthing bed, and now she never has to do it again, never- “I don’t… a son. It’s a boy, isn’t it? My son.” She peers down drowsily at the little face, mouth open in a wail as piercing as any of Grey Wind’s howls. She doesn't think the wolf is crying out anymore, just the babe. Her ears are ringing quite badly, all the same.

“A princess,” Dana tells her, smoothing back her hair from her face. “It’s alright. Just rest. They’re going to give you some milk of poppy now, so they can stitch you up. Just a little.”

“A princess?” Nell still does not understand, and then she yanks open the blanket with one clammy hand, and looks herself, and sobs aloud just once before the cup is at her lips, sickly sweet and milky white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seriously debated splitting this chapter in half, but I didn't want to torture everyone, so you're welcome! 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. Nell and Catelyn are not pleased with each other, to put it lightly. This chapter was weird to write because Nell is literally bedbound for 99% of it, so it's a bit odd writing confrontations like that. But that said, it got ugly. What I wanted to establish was that Nell 100% understands why Catelyn did it, and 100% is infuriated with her all the same. One, because Jaime is their single most valuable hostage and he's now fucked off with Brienne and Cleos to who-knows-where, Two, because this happened right under Nell's nose when Catelyn specifically knew both she and Edmure would not be able to prevent it, Three, because she feels like a fool who got taken for a ride for trusting in Catelyn in the first place, and blames her own desire to make nice and impress her goodmother, and Four, because Nell has legitimate concerns that this is going to come back to reflect badly on her, personally, not just Catelyn, and she worries it might be a lot easier for Robb to hold a grudge against his wife of less than a year than his own mother.
> 
> 2\. I saw zero point in stretching out Robb's return any longer, so we move pretty quickly from Nell fighting with Cat to her shock at how much he's grown in these past seven months. Part of it is obvious 'teenage boys have growth spurts and cut their hair and their voices drop' and part of it is more personal 'who are you and where is the bashful kid I married'. She was able to build up a very trusting and even freely affectionate relationship with the boy he was before he left for the West. She is now confronted with a man who has not just changed physically but who in some sense seems like a very different person. Not only is it very unsettling for her, it's incredibly awkward for both of them. Nell is resentful of the fact that she's been forced to change in this manner as well; her pregnancy was pretty uneventful but that doesn't mean she particularly enjoyed it, whereas she has a somewhat idealized view of the power rush she thinks men must get from battle and strategy. 
> 
> 3\. The Big Fight. This was a long time coming and something I was very anxious to get to, as I view it as being an overall a crucial character moment for both of them. In some sense it's not even about the Battle of the Fords, it's about what they expected from each other and the resentment that comes from those expectations not being fully met. Nell was looking forward to being told that she'd done a great job holding down the fort and sticking it to the Lannisters, that she was really clever and politically savvy and that Robb was proud to call her his wife. Robb, on the other hand, was thinking of Nell as a restraining force, someone he could depend on and fall back on as reliable and cautious. The consequences of all of this is that it boils over, they both say some things they mean but may come to regret, and the power imbalance at the core of this relationship, for all its many positives, is dragged kicking and screaming into the light.
> 
> 4\. "What power imbalance?" One of the major themes or gears of this fic is arguably not just Nell's trauma relating to her father's abuse of her and her mother, but the fact that his abuse is, if not propped up by, at the very least tolerated and excused by the Westerosi culture and social norms surrounding it. Nell cares about Robb, and Robb cares about Nell, but in Nell's view, that care has its natural limits, and she suspects or fears that his limit may have just been reached. She takes back what she said not because she suddenly regrets it or even feels badly, but because she thinks he may retaliate against her for it, if not physically, then certainly through other means of punishment and/or control. Nell has only ever known love to be conditional, and that is what comes through here, I hope.
> 
> 5\. We have enough suspense/uncertainty in many other facets of this fic that I didn't feel the need for the childbirth itself to be particularly long or grueling narrative-wise. We know canonically that childbirth in Westeros is incredibly dangerous, likely even more-so than in actual medieval times. Nell has to actively avoid thinking about this possibility to get through it mentally. As much as I would have liked for Robb to be physically in the room, I'm not sure that would have helped matters much, at least not in Nell's opinion!


	32. Donella XXVIII

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell realizes that the babe’s hair is as ruddy as Robb’s when she nurses for the first time. The rainstorm has passed by then, although the sun is consistently veiled with clouds. Her bedchamber no longer smells of blood and rain; now it smells like mother’s milk, she thinks, and fresh linens. When she woke from her poppy sleep the morning had come and gone, and the babe was in the next room, suckling at Genny’s teats. Nell had not realized she was also a wetnurse when she came with Kella, or if they’d told her, she’d forgotten. Vyman had insisted she eat first, and so she’d picked at a bowl of broth and crumbled her bread crusts into it and tried to forget. 

She hurts; they’d stitched her up neatly enough, Dana promises, and according to everyone the birth had been very straightforward, but she hurts. She should be grateful, she supposes. The babe was born living. The babe survived its first night. It has all its limbs and fingers and toes. It is not crippled or deformed in any manner. It can see and hear and breathe and eat. A very healthy girl, they’d called her. But Nell is not blind to the fact that every hour someone comes into this room to check on both the babe and her, feeling at foreheads for signs of fever, checking the rags between her legs for any hint of bad blood. 

She hurts quite a lot. It aches something fierce and awful between her legs, it hurt even worse when she got up to relieve herself, and the skin of her belly feels stretched and mottled. Her head hurts as well, all stuffed up and throbbing, and her throat is still raw and hoarse from shouting and screaming in pain. They say it is better to try to breathe through it, but she wasn’t very good at that. One of her nipples is cracked and bleeding while the babe suckles and grunts like a little pig, and the muscles in her arms burn from cradling the heavy bundle.

No frail little waif, this one. Over half a stone, Kella declared. And long limbs, too. She’ll be tall, when she’s older. And as auburn-haired as her father, although Nell knows that could change. Dana was right all along; her firstborn was delivered with a full head of hair. She bathed herself a bit with a washcloth earlier, around her armpits and under her heavy breasts and along the back of her neck, scrubbed her face as red and raw as she could stand, but she already feels filthy again. Her hair is matted and coarse in the braid Dana carefully put it in, and she feels sweat trickle down her back, underneath the clean shift. 

The babe keeps feeding, and Nell stares blankly at the window, listening to the distant sounds of the castle. When she first woke, they’d been ringing the bell above the sept in honor of the successful birth. She imagines they all know by now, anyways, know that both mother and child lived, and that she failed all the same. She failed. She promised Robb a son and she did not deliver. She prayed for a son and the gods refused her, as much as they did her mother. Mayhaps she should have seen that coming, a long way off. But she could not consider the possibility.

She would feel far, far worse had the babe died, she knows this.

But she cannot say she is happy, either. She looks down at the infant at her breast and feels no flood of warmth or affection or anything beyond vague curiosity and weary acceptance. It as if it were someone else’s child bestowed on her, as if she were duty bound to care for it, but not love it. Well, she is. She doesn’t know if she would feel differently were it a boy, little Eddard, if she’d have loved it instantly then. She doesn’t hate it. She didn’t rave and scream and curse as her mother did when they handed her a daughter. Then again, Nell did not have to look over the maester’s shoulder at the likes of Father lurking in the doorway, waiting, watching.

Dana says Robb came in to see her and the babe while she was sleeping, but she doesn’t remember, of course. She’s glad she wasn’t awake for that. Better to not be there to witness the first reaction. She still knows him, she assures herself. Even if he is still furious with her, even if he is even angrier with her now, he would never take it out on the child. He loves the babe, loved her from the moment he laid eyes on her. She does not have to worry about Robb not caring for his daughter. That was never in question. He’s a good man.

The babe stops feeding and starts to mewl. Nell glances down at it, then adjusts her grip behind its heavy head. “Shh,” she says, voice cracking from strain. “Shh. It’s alright.” What do people say to their children? She forgets. It hurts behind her eyes, too. She rubs at her mouth roughly, then murmurs to the babe, “I’m here, it’s alright. Don’t cry.” Thankfully, the mewling does not swell into full-fledged wails. Nell hates the screaming most of all. It makes her want to throw something. The babe quiets some, and Nell watches the tiny eyelashes flutter as it fights against sleep. 

She thinks she should hum something, so she hums Fair Maids of Summer, although it’s never been a lullaby. “All ye fair maids of summer, when the fields grow gold and green, will you come and dance, a farmer’s reel with me? And when the the sun settles down, to sleep behind the trees, will ye pity a poor boy, and love me as ye please?” 

She can’t remember anything but the chorus, so she hums a little more until the babe seems to sleep. Then she lays her down in the cradle carved with dancing fish beside the bed, the same one that served the Tullys as infants, decades ago, and rocks it with a grimace when the babe starts to whine again, until finally there is blessed silence. She is dozing off herself when she hears the soft creak of the door opening, and then she starts awake. Robb and Grey Wind are framed in the outline of it, hesitating. Seeing that she’s spotted him, Robb has no choice but to quietly slip inside the room, shutting the door carefully behind him. He is not wearing his crown.

Grey Wind prowls over to the cradle, and a spark of something curdles in Nell’s gut. She sits up, alert and adjusting her shift, and digs her nails into her palms, ready to do something, she doesn’t know what, if this introduction goes badly. But the babe sleeps on, and Grey Wind simply sniffs at her, then looks up at Nell as if in silent approval. “Good,” she says, although it’s barely audible. Grey Wind does not bound up on the bed, to her relief, but goes to lay down by the fire. The wind has picked up outside, rattling at the windows. Robb draws closer, and she blinks tiredly up at his drawn face. He looks as though he barely slept. She feels as though she hasn’t slept in years. His lips move, but he doesn’t quite say anything for a few moments, until-

“The maester says you should recover well, if… if there’s no fever yet.” Robb reports this to her with visible discomfort, like a scout returning to camp with the worst sorts of news- the enemy on the march, disaster brewing. 

“Three months,” Nell licks at her chapped lips. 

Rob frowns. “Three months?”

“He wants me abed for the next week or at least not leaving this floor. After that I can go up and downstairs again. Three moons from now, he says we can try again, if it please Your Grace.”

Robb stares at her, then maneuvers around the cradle and sits down beside her on the bed. “Nell,” he says roughly, and when she stares back at him, impassive, he puts his hand on hers. When did his hands become bigger than hers? “I am pleased enough with this. Pleased you and the babe are both alright. Pleased I did not- that my last bloody memory of you wasn’t you shrinking me from in fear-,”

“I wasn’t afraid,” she says through gritted teeth. “Just offering my apologies. As is proper. I was disobedient and disrespectful of you as my husband and my king.”

“No,” he says. “No. I took tones and used words with you that I should not have.”

She almost wants to laugh, but she’s afraid he’ll think her mad. “You were reprimanding me. You were angry. You did nothing untoward or dishonorable-”

“Reprimanding- I frightened you,” he says, hoarse and uncouth and staring at her almost wildly. “I- that you would ever think that I would… would have you on your knees begging my forgiveness before the court, or that I would take your ladies in waiting from you, or order you to starve yourself in penance- Donella. Whatever cause I’ve given you to think me like to do such a thing- to think me like to raise a hand to you in anger, tell me, so I can ask your forgiveness for it.”

“You are the king,” she says thickly, unknowing, unwilling to understand or examine this… This terror in him, or failing that, this anguish she seems to have brought out, like lancing a rotten wound. Is that all it took to crack through his newly forged shell? The thought of her dying in childbirth? Is that a compliment or insult to him? Who is he? Is he Robb the anxious boy, Robb the iron-willed commander, Robb the silver tongued king? “You do not ask for forgiveness. You’ve done nothing-,”

“I should have done something, then,” he retorts. “Had you… I was a fool to leave things like that between us, when you were so close to labor. It is all… all I could think of, when they told me your time had come, was that if you died in there, and you died thinking me… Thinking of me as some kind of jailer, or monster, I would never- Nell, look at me! I would never be able to countenance it,” he says gravely. “Mother would be ashamed of me, if she knew. My father- my father as well. They did not raise to me act like such a craven, that I could not even tell my wife I loved her before she went into the birthing bed.”

Nell tears her hand away from his as if he’d turned scalding hot. “What?” she blurts out, stupidly. Surely she must have misheard him. Or it was some impulsive slip of the tongue. But he does not redden in embarrassment or regret. He will not look away from, as much as she might want him to. The babe makes some noise in her sleep, and he gives the cradle a gentle rock, and repeats himself.

“I should have told you that I loved you, no matter how angry we were. I was a coward. I left you. Believe me when I tell you now that I would walk over hot coals before doing it again, Nell. I won’t ask your forgiveness for it- you’ve been through enough-,”

“You loved me?” It comes out strangled and choked, like vines wrapping around her throat.

“No,” Robb corrects grimly, “I love you.” He seems about to touch her braid, then restrains himself. “I’m sorry. I’ve made a fine mess of it, haven’t I?”

“You can’t love me,” she says, almost pleading. “You… Robb-”

“I don’t expect anything from you for it,” he says hastily. “I know it’s not- it’s likely not the same for you, I can’t demand you return feelings that… that may be mine alone, but I will not lie to you, either. I love you, and I’m a coward for it. I’ve loved you since we came here, Nell, and I should have told you before I left for the West, but I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” she mumbles in shock, still reeling. He- he loves-

“Afraid you wouldn’t be able to tell me the same, or that you’d feel duty bound to lie- but it was all excuses. I was weak. I was still a boy, then, and you were this- this woman, this lovely, brutally clever woman who made me want to make a fool of myself for the chance of you smiling at me, and so instead of facing up to it like a man, I took the coward’s way and said nothing at all.”

Nell is speechless; no words come to her lips, but plenty to her mind.

 _You romantic bloody damned fool_ , she thinks wildly, _what kind of- How dare you say those sort of things to me- Like we’re in a fucking song-_ The very worst part of it is that she believes him. She doesn’t think he’s lying, or exaggerating, or simply spinning a pretty tale to comfort her, to reassure her. He means it, all of it, and he’d never tell it any other way. He loves her. He has loved her. She drinks in the sight of him like a frozen pool, aching sharp in her chest, in her mouth. He loves her, and he’s not a coward, for he’s told her now. 

“You love me,” she says, shakily. 

He gives a solitary nod. 

“I’m sorry,” she blinks, hard.

“No more apologies-,” he scowls, tries to pull her close-

She puts both hands on his chest and digs in her nails. “No. I’m sorry because I love you too, and I’ve let you hurt like this for so long.”

“You didn’t know,” he manages, before it hits him. “You-,”

“I love you,” she says, desperately, “I do, truly. That’s why- I want to give you a son. I can, I promise, Robb, we love each other, and it will happen, it will- Three moons is all I’m asking for, three moons, and we can be together, and next time it’s sure to be a boy-,”

He kisses her, his mouth hard and then yielding, welcoming, against her own, and it’s been so long that she melts into it for a perilous moment before they break apart, breathless. “No,” he says. “You don’t understand. I love you. I love our daughter. Our babe. I will love you if you give me another girl, I will love you if you give me no more children at all.”

“But we need a son,” her voice splinters anew in fury. “You don’t have to coddle me-,”

“I’m not coddling, I’m telling you,” he says firmly. “Mother warned me when I saw her yesterday. As if I needed to be told- It’s dangerous to have children so close together, even if the woman is fertile. I cannot lose you, and I will not force you back into it for the sake of a son. I love you and I mean to keep you, and for you to keep me, and that will always be the way of it.”

She kisses him again, angry and mystified, and lets him cradle the back of her neck and head with his hands as though she were a babe herself, and then says, in the little space that remains between them, “They’ll talk. They won’t like it. Your lords. That you’ve no son. If you name her your heir-,”

“She was my heir the moment she drew breath,” he draws back, grips her by the shoulders. “In time, if we have a son, then it will pass to him. If not… My mother tells me a woman can rule as wisely and fairly as any man, and I look at you and know it to be true.”

“I am not wise,” she says, almost laughing incredulously. “You said it yourself, when we fought-,”

“You did what you thought was wise,” he says. “You did what you thought was best. I may not agree, I may not like it, I may be angry, but never- I’ve never doubted your ability.”

“You love me,” she says, again, and he kisses her brow. 

“Yes.”

A while later, when he has taken off his boots and is lying beside her in bed, his arm dead and stiff under the weight of her back, but refusing to move it or complain, and the babe still sleeping fitfully in the cradle beside them, she says, “I didn’t think you would hurt me, not really. I didn’t want to- You swore not to mistreat me, and I’ve believed that. But I…” She debates how to say it. How much to say. What she can bear to say at all.

“Your father hurt your mother,” he says. “In front of you, didn’t he?”

It lingers in the air around them like smoke, until she gathers up the nerve to say aloud, “When it wasn’t in front of me, it was worse, because I’d… imagine what he might be doing to her. How he might hurt her. Sometimes it was my fault. I didn’t listen. I made her angry with him. He liked that. It was an excuse.” She closes her eyes so as to not have to see his face. “And there are other ways to hurt someone besides raising a hand to them.”

“It was not your fault,” Robb says sharply. “You were a child. A little girl. He had no cause to treat his wife and daughter like that. No one does.”

And it’s on the tip of her tongue, all of it, threatening to overflow, but instead she says bitterly. “You don’t understand. I was- she loved me despite- Had I been a son… I always fail them, the people I love. Mother, Sara, you-,”

He cups her face with his hands to kiss her again. “You could never fail me. You agreed to fight a war with me. Your mother loved you. And your governess…” he hesitates. “Nell, I’m sure she’d be proud as well. You never speak of her, though.”

She debates rolling away so her back is to him, so he cannot see the shame on her face, but if she cannot tell him the full truth of Father, she at least can say this much. “My father’s bastard killed her. To hurt me. And because he knew he could get away with it.” The words sting her tongue and lips like tiny metal barbs. “I cannot prove it. She disappeared. But I know....” She can hardly say; I dream of her all the time, so instead she says, “in my heart, I know he hurt her, and she’s gone. There are rumors about him. I think they’re true.”

She waits for Robb’s brow to furrow, for him to question- how can she know such a thing, how can she say such a thing of her own blood- or for him to insist otherwise, that she must be mistaken, surely this Ramsay Snow who tried to save Winterfell is a good man, truly-

Instead he says, “If your father will not take his head for it, I will.” It is not meant to be a comfort or an angry declaration. It is a statement of fact. 

“You believe me?” Nell asks, unable to hide her surprise. She had not thought it would be so simple. But she did not even have to try to convince him, or sway him. She simply told him, and now he means to execute the Bastard. Someday. Someday soon, she hopes. What would he say if she told him about Father? Would he call for his head here and now, set off for Harrenhal at first light? Ramsay is a bastard, common born and easily disposed of. Father is a high lord, and he and his banners have helped Robb win this war thus far. 

She could- she could say all of it, she could tell Robb that Father has broken the law, that his offenses are surely punishable by death. But she won’t. She can’t. She’s a queen. They’re in the middle of a war. It might give her temporary peace, even just to see Roose punished, humiliated by Robb before his own men. But it would not stop Tywin Lannister or Stannis Baratheon. It would do nothing but sow unrest and vendettas against their own forces. Robb cannot afford to fight his own supporters, and Father has been nothing but loyal to him. 

She holds her tongue, and thinks instead of the Bastard’s headless corpse, facedown on the ground, staining the snow red. That is something sweet to dwell on, at least. It makes all her other pains ache a little less. He’ll look at her before he dies and know that it’s at her command, even as Robb swings the sword. He’ll know it was her. How dare he. How dare he. He is nothing more than a dog allowed to grow too bold, and when the wolf comes home-

“My uncle told me a king who cannot tell when he’s being lied to is seldom a king for long,” says Robb frankly, “and a husband who cannot trust his wife is no better. Of course I believe you. And I would see any man who wished harm on you or yours dead.”

She strokes the side of his jaw with her thumb as if in wonder, then leans back into his embrace, at least until the babe wakes with a sharp cry. Nell groans, moving over to lift the swaddled infant up onto her lap. “Have you held her yet?”

“No,” Robb admits, flushing now. “Before, she was with the wet nurse, and I didn’t want to disturb her sleep-,”

Nell all but thrusts the child into his arms; he starts but immediately adjusts to hold her properly. It’s obvious looking at him that he’s held many babes before, which makes sense for a man with four younger siblings. The last babe he held was likely Rickon, just four years past. Nell thinks of Rickon’s little freckled face, and can almost feel a phantom child’s hand tugging on her skirts, hear his high laughter ringing through the halls of Winterfell. Rickon used to follow Theon around, demanding to watch him shoot arrows. Theon’s face was likely the last thing he saw, before-

She shakes the thought away, shuddering under her skin, as Robb soothes their fretful daughter with a soft, even voice. The love in his eyes and mouth is evident; he softens in a way that he has not at all since his return, and briefly looks almost a boy again himself, smoothing back her auburn hairs. “If you agree,” he says after a moment, “I think my mother should see her. After we’ve named her, at least.”

Nell wants to spitefully snap ‘no’, to deprive Catelyn of this right, the right to gaze upon her granddaughter and love her instantly, love her the way Robb so clearly does, the way Nell cannot, but… A babe is owed as much love as can be afforded, perhaps, and Nell knows even should her good mother hate her now, she would always treasure this child. “Alright,” she says reluctantly. “I have some questions for her, anyways. About… womanly things,” she adds quickly, at Robb’s glance. He immediately avoids eye contact; still a boy in that sense, at least.

Angry as Nell still may be, she cannot deny that a woman like Catelyn likely knows a great deal about recovering from childbirth, and it embarrasses her so to inquire with a midwife and wetnurse whom she barely knows about such things. Besides, Kella and Genny may be already gone; Nell was rather insistent that she alone feed the babe, and she’s hardly an invalid; she’s not feverish or faint from blood loss, and the maester seems to believe she should recover quickly enough, given her good health throughout the pregnancy. 

“What shall we call her?” Robb asks, breaking her out of her somewhat grotesque thoughts. 

Nell shifts uncomfortably. “Whatever you think is best. You know your family’s history better than me, and she needs a Stark name-,”

“What about Lysara?” he asks, shocking her; she’d been certain he was about to suggest Eddara, for his father, although that would smart at her, after months of dreaming of an Eddard, or even Branda, for his brother- she doesn’t know of any prominent Lysara Starks, although she’s heard of the name before, like Lyarra and Lyanna and Lynara and all the rest. 

“Then you might call her Sara someday, if you like,” Robb amends, seeing her obvious confusion. “Lysara Karstark wed Artos the Implacable, who fought the King-Beyond-the-Wall. It’s similar enough to my grandmother’s name, but it’s not Lyanna…” he hesitates, “or my sisters.”

Nell studies the red, wrinkled little face in his arms for a moment longer. It’s impossible to tell whether she’ll grow into the long Stark face or not, or whether her eyes will be grey or blue, but she puts two fingers to her daughter’s tiny chest, feels the faint pulse of a minuscule heart. “Lysara,” she says, and the babe grunts in her half-conscious state, nestled in her father’s arms. “Alright then. Will you take her to the godswood? Tonight? And name her before them?”

“I will,” he says calmly. Grey Wind has roused himself, and comes round the bed now to look at them, sniffing at the babe once more. Robb lowers her so he can press his snout up against the blankets, and Nell watches his long tongue drag against a tiny red fist. Lysara opens her eyes, but does not cry out. She decides to take that for a good sign.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter went through about 3 rewrites and I'm still not completely satisfied with it, but here we go.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. In my outlines I always plan to cram as much plot-wise into each chapter as possible to keep the pacing chugging along, but I decided pretty quickly that this one should be more of a 'breather' despite the more emotional moments. Nell is grappling with another set of failed expectations- both the idea of having a daughter and the idea of motherhood not being an instant rush of love and euphoria. Robb is grappling with the reality that he very easily could have lost his wife in the course of one night, which I think ties into his reactions in this chapter. 
> 
> 2\. I think Nell's melancholy/depression in this chapter is in part due to all the political/social pressure for a son, and in part due to the fact that some women do just suffer from postpartum depression, and not everyone (women or men) feels an immediate tidal wave of affection and joy for their newborn infant, especially given how stressful and anxiety-inducing a newborn is, and how isolating early parenting can be. Nell's it not at all used to being in this vulnerable sort of state, and finds the changes to her body and the way she feels about her daughter to be incredibly distressing and shameful. 
> 
> 3\. Much as I'm tempted to drag things out for the angst and dramatic tension, in my view, it would have felt very out of character for Robb (even this older and harder Robb) to completely distance himself from his wife following her giving birth to his child, regardless of any disappointment or tension over the baby's sex or the fact that they had a massive screaming match hours before she was born. Robb's overwhelming love and loyalty to his family is one of his defining character traits, and he is also I think someone who tries to be very honest when communicating in private- there's no show being put on here, Robb genuinely thinks he has a duty to be sincere about his feelings and to apologize for making her feeling frightened and/or insecure about her position as his queen. It was also important to me (and to Nell) that this not be yet another plotline in ASOIAF in which someone's husband knowingly risks their health for the sake of further heirs/children. Looking at you, Jaehaerys, Rogar. 
> 
> 4\. It only took us 32 chapters to get to a confession of feelings, folks! The idea of someone loving her purely for who she is, and not expecting anything in return for that love, is very overwhelming to Nell. I do want to caution that this is not the end all of any fights or tension between Nell and Robb. They're being honest and sweet with each other, which is great, but they're still in a very difficult situation and they can't really control all the outside factors on their relationship. But I did want us to have some sort of step forward for them as a couple, now that they're parents. 
> 
> 5\. Nell's shitty family- I debated how much I wanted Nell to 'reveal' about her father and/or brother. I decided that her confirming to Robb that Roose was abusive and sharing her suspicions/accusations about Ramsay made the most sense, both for her as a character and for the circumstances. Nell decides that dragging Roose through the mud is not going to do anything but divide Robb's base and force him to make some difficult decisions about how to handle the Bolton men, but takes Robb's pledge to execute Ramsay for his accused crimes as something of a consolation prize. For Robb's part, I think he has to face the hard reality that his wife's father is not a good person who treated her very badly, and the fact that he is depending on Roose's men and the overall unison of the northern army for most of his success so far. 
> 
> 6\. The kid's got a name! I wanted something distinctive enough without seeming ridiculous for a Stark, and also something that Nell could potentially bond with- so the fact that Robb is willing to in any part name their child 'in honor of' a dead bastard woman is a very big deal to her.


	33. Donella XXIX

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell introduces her daughter to her good mother three days after Lysara is named. She is not sure if she would have preferred Robb be present or not, but she understands that he must still hold court and meet with his men, even as a new father, and there is certainly much to discuss with the Ironborn invasion, the Kingslayer’s release, and Stannis’ defeat at the Blackwater. Nell thinks she would give just about anything to switch places with him, but instead she is still primarily relegated to her bed; the furthest she has been has down the hall to sit and sew in an alcove. Even that was something of a trial. 

No one warned her that it was not over after the babe came. Oh, it is certainly a relief to have the childbirth over and done with- a tremendous relief, the more she has time to really consider it, all the things that could have gone wrong, for either her or Lysara- and some of the physical stress is certainly gone, what with no longer having a child in her womb, but she is still sore, exhausted, and bleeding. The blood. They neglected to tell her how much blood there would be, even after the birth. Vyman says she will likely still be bleeding for the next week, although it should gradually decrease. It’s foul, and it’s not as though she can afford to ignore it- if she bleeds too much, they’ll have to rush to make sure she’s not been steadily bleeding out this entire time since the birth. 

Witch hazel, ice, and very long, very hot baths- although even that is monitored, in case it somehow incites a fever. If she’d thought her world had been gradually encroached on by the pregnancy, well, this is hardly the instant reprieve she’d been expecting. It’s much the same, only now she has an infant to care for on top of everything else. Nell knows that she could hand Lysara over to a maid, instruct them only to bring her in for feedings, carry on as many other noblewomen no doubt do, and that’s not counting the ones with wet-nurses. But the shame, at least, is a useful tool to force herself to keep her daughter close. She wishes she could say it was out of overwhelming love or compassion, but really it’s because she pictures the look on Robb’s or- as much as he hates to admit it- his mother’s face upon hearing that she’s passed her newborn off on the servants. 

The jape that women in her position barely raise their own children is a common one, but the guilt of the Mother looming over your shoulder is still present, even for those who worship the old gods like herself. She hates nursing, she hates hearing Lysara cry, she hates being tired all the time, she hates constantly changing bloody rags, she hates putting ice on her sore and swollen breasts, and she hates hating all of it. She should be thrilled. Well, perhaps not thrilled, but at least relieved. Overjoyed, even. How many wives can say that their husbands reacted half so graciously, even warmly, to the idea of a firstborn daughter? How many wives can say that their husbands confessed their love to them so sweetly, like something out of a story? 

She cannot shake the sense that she should be more grateful. Robb loves her, and he loves her daughter, and she loves him too, that’s the most absurd part of it all, this perfect circle of affection. She is so very fortunate. She had barely let herself hope for such a thing. The idea of a mutual love between her and any man seemed ludicrous and a little frightening when she was a girl, after all her aunt’s stories. And then, even once she had married Robb, it still seemed like a far-off fancy. Did she not think that love was for times of peace and plenty? But there is no peace, and the plenty of summer is already dwindling, and still someone loves her, not because she gave him a son but because he simply loves her, and she him, and it should be wondrous. It is wondrous, really. She just doesn’t feel wondrous. She wishes she could somehow skip ahead. Surely it will be easier, simpler, when Lysara is no longer a squalling newborn, when she can smile and laugh and sit up in the cradle. 

“It gets easier every day,” Catelyn says, as if she’d heard her thoughts. Nell is sitting by the fire, not that it is much different from sitting up in bed, but she forced herself to bathe and dress and have her hair combed out and arranged today all the same, although she is not going to concede to the crown in private just yet. It feels rather ridiculous to be cradling your child in your arms with a metal ring round your temple, particularly in one’s own chambers. Perhaps she will never grow as comfortable with it as Robb has. Mayhaps she just does not have the necessary experience. She’s only ever felt like a queen in the terribly tense moments without it.

“I promise, it does,” her good mother adds, at the look on Nell’s face. They are not on what Nell would call ‘speaking terms’, although they are to the point of acknowledging one another, and Nell willingly gave her daughter over to her grandmother. Catelyn paces back and forth with a whining Lysara in her arms, shushing every her so often under her breath. She looks more calm and at ease with a Stark child in her embrace than Nell has seen her in months. Perhaps if the babe had been born earlier, she would never have stooped to release the Kingslayer for the hope of the girls. Or perhaps not. 

When Nell does not immediately respond, Catelyn sighs slightly, and says, “Robb was my easiest recovery, and Bran my hardest, but I felt far better a fortnight after each of my children’s births than I ever did whilst I was carrying them. You’ll see. This is still the early days.”

Nell told herself she was going to remain calm, composed, and decidedly cold when it came to Robb’s mother, but it is hard when she is holding her child and it is late at night, the castle quiet around them apart from the faint strains of one of Edmure’s singers in the hall. “I would have thought Arya would have been your hardest.” She is in dangerous territory, referencing the girls like this, but she thinks rather childishly that Catelyn brought up the matter of her own children in the first place. “Robb mentioned it once to me, that you were very sick with her. He was frightened, he said.”

Catelyn nods after a moment. “Yes. He was, I remember. He would come in every day after his lessons to curl up next to me in bed and tell me about everything he’d learned and done that day. And he was never very good at hiding his worry, much like his father. But he was so brave, I thought. Looking after Sansa and listening to his elders while I was ill. He was always a good-hearted child.”

Nell admits she has difficulty picturing a young Robb throwing a tantrum or sulking in a corner, although she supposes it must have happened at some point. Perhaps it was because he had Ned Stark for a father. Imagine being insolent to the Lord of Winterfell. Fear of one’s father is one thing, she knows that well enough, but fear of disappointing them is often even worse. She always thought of Ned Stark as being soft with his children, but even soft does not necessarily mean lenient. She wants to be able to be soft with Lysara, someday. She wants so desperately to be someone her daughter brightens to see when she walks into a room. And she wants that for Robb as well. Of course their babe will adore him. She likely already does.

“But Arya came quick, at least,” Catelyn reflects. “It was dusk and storming something fierce, with her. I remember hearing the rain sleeting against the windows, and the wind howling, and there she was- Measter Luwin was barely in the room and she was out already. My fastest birth, her. Bran was my longest. He wanted to stay a little while longer,” her look grows distant and faded, somehow, like a worn piece of stone or metal. 

“It was hell, pushing him out. I didn’t want to scream and cry and frighten Ned, but I was so afraid something was going wrong. And then he was born quiet, the cord round his neck, but they cut it in time, and I started crying myself when I heard his first wail. My little boy.” Her voice cracks slightly. “And he was a good babe; he slept so much we thought something was wrong with him, but he was just… peaceful. He was born in the middle of the night, I remember, but the sky was so very clear; I could see the moon hanging low out the window, and all the stars…”

Lysara whimpers again, and Catelyn presses a kiss to her downy head. “I apologize. You like don’t wish to hear an old woman’s ramblings.”

“Anyone who calls you old is a profound liar, grandmother or not,” Nell says dryly, pretending as though it meant very little to her. Mother never told those sort of pretty or fond details of her own birth. Just blood, pain, and rage. So much anger. Sometimes she could still hear fragments of it in her tone when she spoke of it, as much as Nell knew she’d grown to love her. It would have been nice, she thinks, to have the sort of story one could curl up on their mother’s lap to listen to. 

Lysara’s will be a good one, she’s already decided. However much she has to lie or gloss over things, she’ll make it simple and sweet and pretty, speak of how they loved her from the very start, how wanted and longed for she was, and there’ll be no mention of heirs or sons or crowns at all, just her and her mother and father, as it should be.

“But you loved all of them at once,” she says, a few moments later. “Didn’t you? Even the ones who hurt or were fretful or slow.”

Catelyn comes over and puts Lysara back in her arms, “I loved them,” she says carefully, “of course, but that does not mean I always enjoyed every moment of it. Being a mother was one of my greatest wishes, from the time I was a little girl.”

“Yes,” says Nell, “of course, it- it is every little girl’s wish, to give her husband children someday.” She is lying through her teeth, of course, but sometimes there are other stories that need to be repeated so women don’t go mad and throw their babes out windows or smother their husbands in their sleep. 

Catelyn exhales. “Wishes or not, I fear we do a poor job of preparing those girls for what they will face, both in the birthing bed and afterwards. It is either stories meant to frighten them away from a man’s embrace, or the sort of…,” she trails off, “well, seven babes for the Seven, all borne with ease and grace. And far too many are far too young when they are put into that position. I thought of eighteen as old when I wed, but what did I know then? Better eighteen than fourteen. When I think of-,” she catches herself, and presses her lips together.

Nell knows what she is thinking of, all the same. Sansa will be thirteen in a few months’ time. If she has not flowered yet, she likely will be soon, and without her mother or any kinswoman there to guide or support her, to explain such things to her. And if she has flowered… whether Jaime Lannister ever turns up in King’s Landing again or not, Nell thinks the girl’s chances of remaining unwed are slim to none. She tries not to dwell on such things, but at the very least she can say that no one forced her into wedding Robb, that she did not fear their wedding night, that she was not ignorant to what happened between a husband and wife, nor newly flowered and barely adolescent. 

But because she cannot say any of that, and because it is difficult to summon up the energy to be cutting or cruel with her daughter heavy in her arms, instead she says, “You will be here for Lysara. You’re much better at explaining these sort of things than I ever will be, my lady. I was not raised with a gentle tongue. In time, she may turn to you when I offer her little in the way of womanly advice,” she tries to smile wryly, but it seems more like a grimace on her lips instead.

“She will adore you all the same,” says Catelyn in a matter of fact tone. “I’m afraid there’s no avoiding it. All little girls idolize their mothers. I certainly did mine.”

Nell has heard little and less of Minisa Tully; Edmure has no memories of the woman, of course, and Lord Hoster has been near his deathbed for months now, in no state to recollect much of anything. Robb brought Lysara in to see him earlier today, and reported to Nell that he thought Robb to be Brynden and their daughter to be an infant Catelyn. “How old were you when she passed?”

“Newly twelve,” Catelyn sits down across from her, as they have sat together half a hundred times, however thick the tension between them now. “And newly flowered. It was… a very difficult time for all of us. She was here and then she was gone, and my brother… My father could not bear to even hold him for weeks, it seemed like. I felt more his mother than his sister, and I was distraught myself. Lysa even more so. She clung to our mother, and without her… I do not think any of us smiled or laughed again for months, not until Lord Stark came south with his heir, and my betrothal was announced.”

“Did she want you to marry Northern?” Nell isn’t even sure why she is asking this. Because she feels some renewed connection with the woman, to have both lost their mothers as girls? It is hardly uncommon. Among the nobility, widowers are far more common than widows, everyone knows this. The men of the smallfolk are exposed to far more dangers, more likely to fall off a roof and break their neck, or lose a hand and their life while trying to cut down a tree. 

But for the highborn, certainly during peacetimes, it is childbirth that stalks through the corridors, waiting to reap what it has sowed months before. Had things gone even a little differently, Robb might be a widower himself at this very moment. A widower with a very young daughter. She does not think his lords would have waited more than a month before presenting him with their own sisters and daughters. The worst part is her shade would not even be able to hate him for remarrying; it would be the only sensible option. 

“She was a Whent, and they were ever ambitious, as was any family to ever lay claim to Harrenhal,” Catelyn says thoughtfully. “No, I do not think she was at all opposed to the idea. She would have been thrilled to think of me as Lady Stark, Lysa as Lady Lannister, and Edmure as lord consort to the Martell girl- Father made an offer, I recall, but Prince Doran politely refused it. Although they say Princess Arianne yet remains unwed, and she must be past twenty by now.”

“Perhaps she found a consort among the smallfolk of Sunspear,” Nell mutters.

She will not lie. The presence of the babe makes thing easier. Neither of them could ever forget, but it can be temporarily overlooked for the sake of comforting a crying infant. Nell has no mistrust or unease when it comes to Catelyn’s affections for her granddaughter; those were evident enough the instant Lysara was placed in her arms. Perhaps Lysara’s auburn Tully hair helped that love to boil over, perhaps not. But Nell believes her when Catelyn tells her that she looks just like Sansa did as a babe. Sansa would love having a niece, most likely, although she might not enjoy being spit up on. 

Nell thinks of Robb’s siblings, living and dead, crowded around the cradle in some mirror life. Sansa would sing the babe to sleep; Arya would tickle her and make her laugh. Bran would carry her around Winterfell and show her all the best hiding places. Rickon would be like an elder brother to her; they’d grow up to play and fight together, racing horses and tussling in the godswood with Shaggydog. But that’s just a fantasy. None of them will ever lay eyes upon this child, their niece. She thinks of Jon Snow for an instant, who ironically may be the safest of them all, tucked away at the Wall. She wonders if he would smile to look upon his brother’s heir, and then pushes the thought away. Best not to consider such things. 

Yet it should have been that way. Lysara should have been born at Winterfell, with a large, joyous family around her, in a peaceful realm. She should have had both her grandparents, all her uncles and aunts, the run of Winterfell. It’s not right, that it should be like this. And I should have lived to see my daughter wed, but the gods do not bow to your demands, her mother’s voice says in her ear. Nell has never been in the habit of living on wishes and dreams; she cannot begin now. She’s a mother, the breed of men most bound by practicality. Lysara will have Winterfell, someday, and younger brothers and sisters, and a mother and father and grandmother who guard her fiercely, and that will have to be enough. She will have peace, too, and springtime. They say winter babes are solemn and grave, for they often spend the first few years of their childhood in the dark and cold. But they live to see spring, all the same. They must.

The second week is better. Physically, at least, the soreness has abated some and the bleeding lessened quite a bit. She never thought she would relish the ability to step outside into the open air, but that is exactly what she does, as soon as possible. Nell bleeds out a goat in the godswood in thanks for a safe delivery and a healthy child, her resentments and bitterness aside, and offers up her prayers with Jory and Dana. She prays for a child who lives to see a month, who lives to see six months, a year, a second year, and so on. So many babes are lost so early. She may have avoided a stillbirth, but there is a particular dread every morning when she checks on Lysara, swaddled in her cradle, a sharp slice of terror that she may find her cold and stiff. Sometimes seemingly healthy babes die in the night. They don’t know why.

As much as she would like to leave her daughter behind in her rooms, she was always taught that babes should be brought out early, to expose them to the elements so they might grow strong and hearty. That is likely less a concern in the south, but the days are cool and often damp now all the same, so Nell reluctantly binds her daughter to her sore chest, and when she cannot stand it any longer, usually passes her and her sling off to Dana or one of Brackens. Even that is not without its irritations; Dana takes to wearing an infant in a way Nell never could. She is utterly enchanted with Lysara, cooing and crooning over her little face and hands and feet, constantly humming and murmuring to her.

Babara is less devoted, but still cares for Lysara with a comfortable sort of confidence that Nell is envious of, as if is no great matter, just another simple task, like needlework or folding clothes. Even Jayne, gods, traumatized, near-mute Jayne, has an easier time getting Lysara to settle than Nell. Her one solace is that Jory, who has a young niece and nephew herself, is not terribly enthused about infants either. She smiled and praised Lysara’s healthy look upon seeing her, but she politely declines any and all opportunities to hold her, and Nell is rather more relieved than offended. 

Her first real pleasure is to draw back her bowstring once more. She has not practiced her shooting since she was six months pregnant, and she is terrible for the lack of it; nearly all her first arrows miss the target completely, but Jory runs to get them and teases her all the while. “I had thought you were a great huntress, Your Grace,” she says in mock dismay, “but now I think they must have meant you were hunting new wool dyes, or doeskins in the market-,”

That is all the incitement Nell needs to send her next arrow through the strawman’s chest. “I’ve hunted bears, too,” she smirks at Jory, who simply laughs as Nell hands her the bow to try. 

“Aye? So do my sisters, although they aren’t the ones doing the sticking.”

“That is completely improper for a young maid to be discussing,” Nell says dryly, “what sort of ladies do I have in my service?” 

Jory’s arrow strikes the shoulder; she turns and bows. “Passable archers, that’s the sort.”

But now that the Mormonts have returned along with Robb’s men, her sworn shield is somewhat less available to her, not that Nell could blame her for wanting to savor this time with her sisters. Dacey and Lyra are battle-hardened, but they are Mormont women, and so seem much the same for it, full of tales of westermen wetting themselves after dodging a blow from Dacey’s morningstar, and Lyra’s exploits in stealing (or reclaiming, as they call it) cattle with her mother, driving it out of the west and into the east to replenish the rivermen’s herds. 

It is through them that Nell hears of Jeyne Westerling, and although she might ought to take offense that Robb had not mentioned it directly, there is something to be said for the way Dacey tells it. “Alright,” she says to Nell one evening, gathered in front of the fire with cider in hand, “If I tell you, you must swear not to make it a quarrel with Robb- he’s my king and my friend, and I’ve sworn to defend him, even from the wrath of his wife.”

“You’re scaring her,” Lyra rolls her eyes. “Really, Dace, carrying on like he went to bed with the lass.”

Nell arches both eyebrows at that, and Jory chokes on her drink. 

“He didn’t,” Dacey says swiftly, flushing red as if it were her own virtue in question, and not Robb’s. “I’d tell you true if your man was disloyal, Nell, you believe that, don’t you? Robb’s as true as they come.”

“Aye,” says Lyra, grinning, “he only ever went to bed with his wolf.”

“Well, I knew that,” Nell rolls her eyes to hide any visible signs of relief. 

“He took an arrow at the Crag, it nearly unhorsed him,” Dacey recounts, “but he stayed in the saddle, though the pain must have been something fierce. He bled a good deal, though, and he was white as snow by the time the garrison had surrendered to us. Not one to show it, our Stark, of course, so he speaks with the Westerlings with the bloody thing still in his shoulder, nearly swaying on his feet, and no sooner have they scurried off then he faints.”

“Gods be good,” Nell mutters. “These men are fools.”

“So he’s tended to by their maester, of course, and the Smalljon’s in the back, the whole time, just watching, a hand on his sword, in case the old man tries anything, and then who should come creeping in- one of their bloody daughters,” Dacey says incredulously, “the elder one, Lady Jeyne. Sweet thing, she was, ever so polite, even with Jon glowering down at her and the maester rambling on with nerves, and she says her stitches are the neatest, neater than his, and what would you know, she stitches him up.”

“Perhaps I should send a letter of thanks for her skill with the needle,” Nell intones flatly.

Dacey snorts. “So the maester’s gone by dawn, and Jon declares he needs a drink, and I’m sitting by the door, because just because we’ve won the castle doesn’t mean we’ve won the household, and I won’t have it said that Robb bloody Stark was smothered in his sleep by some steward with balls of iron, and she’s fixing up the bed- and he wakes up and thanks her, of course, because he wouldn’t take milk of poppy and it must have hurt like hell-,”

“Get to the good part,” Lyra says through her teeth.

“Alright, alright, so I’m half-asleep myself, I’ll not lie, and I’m listening to them speak, and all of a sudden I hear- ‘Dacey, if you could see Lady Jeyne back to her chambers, she must be exhausted from her work.’ and so I jump up, and there he is, sitting up in bed half dressed, looking cross as anything, and her red as a Lannister cloak, standing there looking like she wants to sink into the ground.”

“She tried to kiss him?” Nell thinks she should be outraged, but really, it is a little funny- it wouldn’t have been funny had she been present for it, but to hear about it now, and from someone as frank as Dacey Mormont, does lend a certain amusement to the whole thing. 

“Very chastely, he said, but aye. He was thanking her, and the girl summoned up her nerve and took her chance,” Dacey seems to be struggling to maintain a neutral expression. “That’s what they always do in the stories, give the wounded hero a token of their love, and I’m sure she thought of herself as very brave-,”

“Mind you, the noble hero had just killed half her family’s garrison in battle,” Lyra adds dryly. “Spare us, Dacey. She had a mind to be a king’s lover for a few nights, and you know it as well as I do. If that mother of hers didn’t suggest it, I’ll be damned. Entirely too willing to turn over the keys to the castle, those ones.”

“They thought they might get more favors and freedoms if they played us sweet,” Dacey shrugs. “It’s common enough. But I don’t believe any scheming of the Westerling girl- just foolishness on her part. The look on Robb’s face! It was as if she’d stung him on the nose!”

“Well, so long as she didn’t stow away in the baggage train, I suppose I can forgive it,” Nell says flippantly, although she won’t deny the kernel of possessiveness all the same. It’s not even jealousy- she has no cause to doubt Dacey’s telling of it, or Robb, and she would never believe it of him, anyways- just the idea of some girl tenderly bandaging his wounds and then sweeping his hair out of his face to kiss him is ludicrous. Had Nell been there, she likely would have been bickering with him about his recklessness all the while, snapping and hissing while she sewed and wrapped things up just tight enough to hurt. She wishes she had been there, just as she wishes he’d been here to feel the babe kick. 

“You caught a rare breed of man with him,” Lyra advises her, raising her cup to her. “Don’t ever let him get away, Your Grace.”

“I don’t intend to,” retorts Nell, just as Barbara bustles in with her daughter, who needs to be fed yet again.

They present Lysara to the court when she is a fortnight old and showing no signs of illness or frailty. Nell wraps her daughter in grey silk and loops a string of freshwater pearls around her plump infant’s neck. Lysara smells sweet, her ugly cord stump has fallen off her belly, and she doesn’t bite so much when she tries to latch at the breast. Nell watches her daughter’s new eyes flit around the great hall, while close to a hundred men raise their swords in her name. She wonders if their cheers would have been more exuberant than polite, were she a son. She kisses her daughter’s warm head as the receiving line begins and tries to pretend she can unfurl some banner of love within if herself if she playacts at it enough.

If Robb suspects that Nell is not consumed with passion for their babe, he never says a word. They are usually only all together in the evenings, and now they often go for walks together through the castle, and if Robb is self-conscious to be seen holding a babe in his arms by his men, he does not show it. He even talks to her, the babe, telling her about his day and pointing out the people they pass by. Nell wishes she could do that. She can sing to her daughter, but she feels like a fool carrying on conversations with a newborn, all the while wishing someone would appear to magick Lysara into an older, more independent child who could talk back.

Her real fear is that it will never get any easier, that she will never feel a rush of love and warmth for her, that even when Lysara is one, two, three, it will still be all toil and frustration, while everyone else seems far more fit to care for her. 

Her uncles come bearing gifts; a richly woven blanket in the Ryswell colors and a miniature pair of deerskin slippers, lined with satin. She’d expected Roger and Rickard to be more dismissive of an infant, and a daughter at that, but they do, after all, both have wives and children of their own, and Roger holds Lysara with ease, while her tiny fist clenches Rickard’s finger. “Big babes are a Ryswell tradition,” Roger infirms Robb, who stands with Grey Wind at his side, looking somewhat skeptical. “Don’t let Bolton tell you otherwise- aye, it’s our side you have to thank for such a healthy child. My Serra’s a wee crannogwoman, and she gave me two strong sons and a daughter to boot!”

“Bee’s only a few years older,” Rickard is telling Nell gruffly, referring to his sole child, little Barba, called Bee by those who love her, named after her deceased grandmother, “might be they’ll be fast friends someday, your girl and mine, niece.”

“I’m glad she’ll have cousins a-plenty by her side in the years to come,” Nell says diplomatically- it may be she has to put her distaste for her mother’s kin aside, for the sake of her daughter. Lysara is a princess, she will need her own ladies in waiting someday, and her blood will expect to be honored first and foremost. And she thinks of Young Roose, and how there might not have been a babe at all, if not for him saving Robb’s life, and her throat tightens uncomfortably as she spreads the Ryswell colors across her lap. 

Two days later she is sitting in the godswood with Dana, listening to her read aloud her latest letter from Marianne, punctuated by frequent blushes and grins on Dana’s part, and much ribbing on Nell’s part. “Another poem?” she demands, when Dana hesitates on a line. “She’s quite the poet, your maid Marianne.”

“She’s far cleverer with her words than I could ever be,” Dana all but gushes, pushing a stray curl out of her face as she balances on a mossy log, continuing to read. “His eyes are the sky after a morning storm, his hair is dark and so lovely worn, I take his words to my heart, and know that we shall never remain apart-,”

“His?” Nell questions.

“She can hardly write ‘her’ with the bloody maester peeping over her shoulder,” Dana says indignantly, then mouths the rest of the lines to herself, as close to beaming as Nell has ever seen her. “I think she loves me, truly. I thought it might- she might break it off, once she’d gone home again, but Nell- just think, she risks so much to write to me like this.” Her voice goes high and girlish before she breaks off in embarrassment. “I just think it’s sincere on her part,” she adds almost defensively.

Sensibility demands that Nell caution her, warn her against this course. A brief affair is one thing. To speak of love under such conditions- it will lead to nothing but sorrow, surely. She ought to temper Dana’s expectations, to chasten her affections, tell her that she should prepare for the worst- that Marianne might be betrothed at any time, and thus rendered truly ‘apart’ for the rest of their lives, but-

She loves Dana as her sister, and so she cannot, however impractical and foolhardy it might be. “I’m sure it is,” she says, as she feels the first drops of rain begin to spatter down on her uncovered head. “Do you love her in turn?”

Dana does not answer, too busy folding up the letter and shielding the ink from the rain beneath her cloak. Above them, the heavens open up, and Nell stands with a groan, pulling her own cloak over her head to avoid being instantly soaked to the bone. It rains heavily for the rest of the day, and it is a proper storm by nightfall. The distant rolls of thunder and crashes of lightning keep Lysara up, and Nell is feeding her, peering out into the blackness of night from the window, when a guard pounds on her door and tells her there’s been fighting among the northmen.

Not just fighting. Murder. Nell stands in her shift with her most queenly mantle pulled tight around her, wishing she did not feel milk leaking down her chest underneath it, while the bodies are brought in. Grey Wind prowls the length of the halls, snarling and growling whenever men get to close, and Robb stands rigid beside her, his mother, and his uncle. Nell feels rather as if there were a strange, nonsensical dream, when they bring in the dead boys. Willem Lannister and Tion Frey, neither could have been any older than twelve or thirteen, shrunken and waxy and naked in death. They’re not covered in blood, due to the rain, but they are very small and very white, lying on the damp stones. 

Catelyn looks as though she might be sick. Nell simply stares, uncomprehending, still waiting to wake up to a squalling babe and a grey morning, until they bring in the men. That there is Rickard Karstark, snarling up at them, even with his wrists bound and his face bloodied, should come as no surprise. She remembers him from Lysara’s presentation, how the dark look never left his face, even as he pledged his loyalty to their daughter. She had taken it for lingering rage over the release of the Kingslayer. He certainly hates Robb’s mother. 

But the other Rickard comes as some surprise. Her uncle is not as visibly enraged as Karstark, but nor does he look gripped with remorse. No, she thinks, no, no- There must be some mistake. She could believe it of the likes of Rickard Karstark, but Rickard Ryswell- treason from him? He meets her incredulous gaze, and to her horror, does not look away or avert his eyes. “You know who it was for,” he proclaims, as Karstark growls about blood for blood.

“Uncle,” Nell’s voice whips out into the still, cold air. “How could you? They were children.”

“Don’t play the innocent, girl,” Karstark jeers at her. “You let treason come to pass yourself, when the Kingslayer stole away with his Frey cousin and the Tarth girl.”

The Greatjon cracks him across the face for that, and Robb steps down from his throne, infuriated. Catelyn unthinkingly grips her hand; Nell tears hers away, livid. “Lord Roger?” Robb demands, as her elder uncle steps forward.

“I had naught to do with this work,” Roger says defiantly, glowering at Karstark and his own brother, who stares back at him. “And had I known, I would have run my own kin through, before I let it happen.”

“He killed Roose!” Rickard her uncle roars back at him. “Father would have done as much! How long must we wait for justice? Years? Decades? Blood pays for blood.”

“Save your excuses,” Rickard Karstark inform his co-conspirator, then turns a feral, wet grin on Robb, who has a hand on his sword. “He can forgive anything, this one. Forgive his mother for freeing a murderer, forgive his uncle for tangling with Tywin, forgive his wife for disobeying his commands- tell me, King in the North, did you forgive her for the daughter, too?” He snorts. “King Who Lost the North, more like.”

Nell’s vision runs red. She takes two strides forward, outpacing even Robb, as Grey Wind comes out of the shadows, teeth bared, beside her. “Blood pays for blood,” she says. “Whose do you imagine will pay for these boys?”

“Keep the Rickards here, hang the rest,” Robb says coldly to the Greatjon and Maege Mormont. 

“Mercy, sire!” one of the men cries out desperately. “I didn’t kill anyone, I only kept watch, please, Your Grace!”

“Did you watch? Did you listen to these murders, and do nothing?” Robb rejoins, pale as the corpses at his feet, as Grey Wind growls again, nearly as loud, it seems, as the thunder overheard. “Then you’ll hang last, so can watch and listen some more.”

Near a thousand of the Karstark men gone by morning, all their fighting force, and roughly half of the Ryswell men, those loyal to Rickard’s fury before Roger’s loyalty. All flooded south to hunt for the Kingslayer, or, failing that, likely rape and pillage as they go, knowing the North is lost to them. Edmure argues that they take the Rickards as captives instead, and Nell would agree were they southerners, but cannot. Robb puts it best: the North remembers. They will remember what he does or does not do on the morrow. And blood pays for blood. 

He takes her aside, as the storm finally begins to abate, while Brynden and Edmure are still squabbling, and Catelyn sits in a chair by the fire, her head briefly in her hands.

“You know I must kill them for it,” Robb tells her, gripping her arms with his hands. 

“Yes,” says Nell. “I know. You must have justice, or no respect at all.”

“I must have justice, or no honor at all. They killed it, my honor. Lord Karstark and your uncle and the men who helped them. They’ll mark me no better than the Lannisters for this, but I must do it.”

“I know,” says Nell, although she is thinking of Rickard and Roger kneeling beside Young Roose’s corpse, of little Bee on her father’s lap at some feast, clapping her hands together in delight, of Alys Karstark kissing her father and brothers goodbye as they marched south. “They have to die.”

“You need not be present,” says Robb. “He is your kin.”

“He is my kin, and you will take off his head in the name of the gods. If you are going to wear his blood, I wear it with you. I will be there.”

It is still raining come morning, although the skies are slightly clear. Near the spot where just yesterday Nell sat with Dana and listened to a love poem, now Karstark and her uncle kneel. Karstark curses Robb’s and names him a kinslayer. Uncle Rickard, who perhaps has even more claim to such a slur, for Robb is his nephew by marriage, is as silent as Nell has ever seen him. He was ever a whoremonger and possessed of a black temper, but now he is quiet, even stoic. 

“Look my wife in the face and tell her I died with honor,” he says to Robb, before the poleaxe comes crashing down like a scythe. Robb was bloodied from killing Karstark. He is near bathed in gore by the time he’s taken Rickard’s head off. Nell, standing a few feet away, watches the rain wash the blood off her boots, and does not realize until later that some of her uncle’s lifeblood is spattered across her cheek as well. 

Robb turns back to the heart tree as the corpses are dragged away, then to her. Nell stares blankly back at him, for an instant seeing her uncle, then her father’s dead-eyed gaze on his face. He has never looked more a stranger to her. But she goes to his side all the same, and waits until the crowd has begun to dissipate before she embraces him, feeling his heart pound frantically under his bloody jerkin, and watching the rain roll red tears down his hard, broken face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I never intend for the Catelyn and Nell conversations to go on for so long, but they inevitably always do. I think I just like playing them off one another, because in personality they can be quite different, but in circumstances and experience they are really very similar. I'd say they're functioning at an uneasy truce for the moment for the sake of the baby and Robb.
> 
> 2\. People have speculated in the comments whether or not we'd see the Westerlings. I think it's safe to say we will not be seeing much, if any, of them, since Robb (obviously) didn't marry Jeyne as per Tywin's original canon schemes. Some people questioned whether there might be some infidelity drama there. I decided I really didn't need to heap on any extra drama between Robb and Nell in that regard, so instead we get a mildly entertaining recount of Jeyne shooting her shot. The whole thing seems so nonsensical to Nell that, in the wake of Robb's earnest confession of his feelings and them sharing a child together, she's really more bemused than anything else. 
> 
> 3\. We haven't seen Roger and Rickard for a while, but Nell's uncles make a big appearance in this chapter. The Ryswells are canonically known for being very argumentative and disagreeable, and here we see they couldn't even agree on treason- so Rickard joins forces with Karstark, but Roger does not. I debated there being another big fight between Nell and Robb over whether or not to execute them, but I felt like I needed to be true to her belief, along with Robb, that people have to pay with their lives for this.
> 
> 4\. I had no desire to rewrite Catelyn III from ASoS, so this chapter was a real pain in the ass at times. 
> 
> 5\. Next chapter we'll be back to Beth!


	34. Beth V

299 AC - THE DREADFORT

Beth doesn’t have to follow the Weeping Water far before she finds the clump of penny-royal. She immediately drops to her knees in the long grass, breaks off a fistful of leaves, and mashes them together with her bare hands. Then she pulls down the neck of her tunic in order to smear it up and down the back of her scalp, then around her neck, and on the insides of her wrists as well. Penny-royal drives away fleas. She remembers Maester Luwin saying that to someone once, in front of her. Maybe it was- it doesn’t matter. Now she reeks of mint, but there’s far worse things to smell like. She tears up the rest of the plant and shoves it in her fraying wicker basket. It mingles with the rest of the mint and tansy inside. 

When she stands back up again, she examines the position of the sun in the grey sky overhead. If she’s not back before it goes behind the trees, there will be trouble. But the sun is still above the treeline, so she judges she has time enough to make it to the village and back again. She adjusts her grip on her basket, shifts in her too-big boots, and plods on her way again, back to the muddy road leading down into Dreadton. In many ways, Dreadton looks much like the winter town outside Winterfell once did. It is full of cottages, some thatched, some stone, and the road is full of loose stones and dirt, and people keep chickens and goats and pigs in pens and there are children playing in the street, and old women gossiping in doorways.

But it is so very, very quiet. There is seldom any laughter or smiles, and when it occurs, it is quickly muffled and forgotten about. People turn constantly wary gazes up to the Dreadfort in the distance, at the mouth of the river, and whenever there’s the far-off sound of the gates opening and riders coming out, the children and old women vanish. Beth supposes there must be maids, too, with all the boys and men gone off to war or part of Ramsay’s garrison, but she can count the number of times she has seen a young woman on the street on one hand. People do not let their daughters roam far here. She thinks that’s wise of them. 

Of course, the winter town was quiet too, after the Starks went south. It was even quieter when the Ironborn came. Some people fled, the rest hid in their homes, and locked their old women and children and daughters away. And then it was the most quiet of all after it burned. It burned far quicker than the castle; Beth remembers that come dawn Winterfell was still burning, albeit very quietly, as if it didn’t want to be any nuisance, the fires, but the winter town was all ashes and loose timber and banners flapping flatly in the breeze. The ashes covered everything; they covered her hair and her face and her nose and lips; they nestled in her ears and eyebrows, and coated her eyelashes. They collected under her fingernails when she signed the letter Ramsay was sending off to Cerwyn.

“There’s a good girl,” he’d said afterwards, ruffling her hair when she handed him a pin that had once been Bran’s. They’d made her go back to get it. The fire hadn’t reached any of the bedchambers yet, but it was still very hot, and the smoke forced its way down her throat until she’d retched and spat. Luton had gone with her, and amused himself by dragging a maid out from under the bed, where she’d been hiding, while Beth rummaged around for anything that could be proven to be Bran or Rickon’s. Luton had been disappointed she’d found the pin so quick; he’d clouted her round the head, while the maid had tried to run for the stairwell. She had not run very far. 

But that was a long time ago. Big Walder told her it’s only been a turn of the moon, but Beth does not believe him, mostly because she does not recognize the creature in the looking glass or think ‘that’s me’ when she speaks aloud. Maester Uthor shaved near all their heads, which were crawling with lice and fleas and mites, when they arrived. Beth had cried, because she’d always been a little vain about her hair, and that was stupid. That was the last foolish thing she ever cried about, because that was before they brought in Damon Dance-for-Me and Skinner to question everyone, and she didn’t know what it meant to cry before that, not really.

Once Beth cried over skinned knees and broken nails and splinters and upset stomachs and getting snow dumped on her head and being pushed or shoved or pinched, but all those pains were short and sweet, because you could always see a clear end to it. When Damon Dance-For-Me was asking you questions and you were standing naked and your hands were bound to a post in front of you and someone else was screaming in the next room, there was no end to it, no ‘better’ or ‘over’ in sight, and your tears came and went and dried up in your swollen eyes and the pain went on and on until you felt it everywhere at once, from your teeth to your toenails. 

But that pain cured Beth’s skin like leather hide, because now when she falls over or cuts herself or scrapes an elbow or knee, or when she trips down some steps or burns her fingers cooking or is hit or kicked or shoved, she doesn’t feel much of it at all. It’s like armor, she thinks. She has armor now, built into her skin. She traces the grooves of it every night, sliding her hands up and down the raised ridges of scars up and down her back and legs, like needlework or a spider’s web. 

When she wakes up and momentarily forgets where she is, her hand goes unbidden to the back of her neck, to the X of the flayed man carved there like a brand, and she always remembers then. You’re here, she tells herself crossly now and then, you belong to the Dreadfort now, and you’d best not forget it, because no one else ever will. 

And maybe it’s best that her head is just bristle now, more brown than auburn, because no one can pull her hair or rip it out. Palla says she looks like a boy. That’s not an insult, here. It’s something to be praised. Beth dresses like a boy, too, talks like a boy, keeps her head down, like a boy, squares her shoulders when she walks and keeps her fists planted to her sides, like a boy, and when she gets breasts she’ll bind them down, like a boy, and when she flowers she’ll hide it, like a boy, and she scowls like a boy and spits like a boy and gets treated like a boy, and that’s mostly a mercy, here, because when you’re not-a-boy the trouble begins, and you have to do things like brew up moon tea and choke it down every morning.

The woods witch, who is also the nearest midwife, lives on the outskirts of the village, as is proper. Beth’s boots and breeches are covered in mud by the time she tramps up to the half-fallen down gate, pushing it open. The cottage is covered with autumn ivy, threatening to block out the windows, coiling up around the chimney. She approaches the door warily, and knocks, then waits, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. Finally someone calls to come in, and she pushes it open with a groan, stepping into the dim interior. 

It smells like wood-smoke and apples and rabbit stew. Her mouth waters immediately, but she wipes away the spittle, feeling the gap where one of her teeth used to be with her tongue. Her very last baby tooth, she thinks, got knocked loose four days ago when she spilled some of Sour Alyn’s wine and he beat her for it. At least, she hopes it was a baby tooth, not a grownup tooth. She doesn’t want a smile full of gaps and rot. Not that she’s anything to smile about. 

The woods witch is sitting by the fire, stirring her cook pot. An old cat is lounging by her feet, but smelling the dogs on Beth, immediately rouses and prowls over to a corner, casting a baleful look her way. The witch is less hostile, although she doesn’t smile until Beth holds up the small jar full of golden honey. “There’s a sweet child,” she says encouragingly, but Beth doesn’t hand it over, shoving the basket at her instead.

“This should be enough for a week’s worth of brew.” It’s a statement, not a question. Beth’s had to learn how to haggle for just about anything she wants or needs at the Dreadfort, and she’s gotten very good at it, very quickly, else she’d have a sunken stomach full of hunger, and she’d be counting the spots in her vision, not just her ribs every night. She tries to look cold and determined while the witch pores over the contents, then stands with a sigh.

“A girl in those circumstances ought to learn to brew her own tea soon enough. My old bones won’t last the winter- what’ll she do when the deep snows come?”

Beth doesn’t say anything, because she’s not sure any of them will still be here when the deep snows come. Instead she studies the dirty, hay-strewn floor. Once she would have looked around a hovel like this and recoiled in fright and disgust. Now she would give anything to curl up by that fire. She’d sleep like a dog on the floor if she had to, she’d collect all sorts of herbs and oddities from the woods, she’d do anything the old witch liked, if only she could stay, But she can’t. The X on the back of her neck says otherwise, when it sears with pain in her sleep each night, reminding her, warning her. 

It doesn’t take very long to brew moon tea, but Beth sits down unbidden in a rickety chair all the same, her cold hands wedged between her filthy knees. The witch casts her a doubtful sort of look. “When they came back with you lot, I swore to my boy you wouldn’t last the week. Thought we’d see your corpses on the wall by now. Milord Ramsay ain’t known for his mercy.”

“We’re useful,” says Beth. What she does not say is that Ramsay had no interest in killing any of them until he knew where Bran and Rickon were. That’s what she thought at first, anyways. That he suspected they were hiding some grand conspiracy to save the princes from him, that he could root it out with enough whippings and flayings. Then she realized that he didn’t think any of them clever enough to keep that sort of momentous secret. It wasn’t that he was looking for a dramatic confession, a reveal of where Bran and Rickon might be, where they might have fled to.

He was looking for a story, and sooner or later they all decided on the same one, the one he wanted most to hear. Palla told it first, and told it well, rising, weeping, from her huddle in a filthy corner to stagger, then crawl, over to Damon, sobbing hoarsely, “You saved us,” she’d panted, “please, you saved us, we’re so grateful, it was Theon, he killed them, it’s just as milord said, it was all Theon, he killed the little princes, you saved us, I know it’s true, he’s evil, it was the Ironborn who killed the boys an’ all those men, but you saved us.”

In the dark, Ramsay’s pale grey eyes gleamed like snow at night, and they gleamed the most when Palla laid her battered, shaven head on Damon’s lap and wept, clutching at the boy’d who’d been beating her within an inch of her life like he was some hero from a story, and the rest of them had joined in with the chorus, from Beth to Old Nan to Bandy and Shyra to Turnip, all proclaiming their thanks, their gratitude, all confirming what he wanted to hear- it was Theon, it was all Theon, he was the wicked one, the evil one, and Ramsay and his men had been their saviors, rescuing them from the flames and certain death at the last moment. 

No one mentioned the letter Beth and the Walders had to sign. No one mentioned the long march back to the Dreadfort, when Beth thought she dropped dead each night and rose again in the morning, like a walking corpse. No one mentioned the other survivors Ramsay’s men had brought back, only to slaughter. No one mentioned the graves they’d had to dig, the piles of corpses, how all the dead had been looted, so it was impossible to tell who had fought for who. 

No one mentioned Father or Cley Cerwyn or Leobald Tallhart, how they’d walked past their bodies, too. No one mentioned how Beth had let out one long moan of horror when she saw Father’s corpse lying face-down in the mud. No one mentioned the noises Palla made at night when Damon took her back to his bedroll. No one mentioned the girls who’d tried to run in the middle of the night, only to be brought down by Ramsay’s dogs before they so much as crossed a field. And certainly no one ever mentioned Theon, or Kyra, who Ramsay had taken to question personally. 

Sometimes Beth saw Kyra, usually bringing back food for Ramsay, usually naked and limping, and sometimes they all heard Theon’s screams, but it was easier to avert your eyes, cover your ears, and go about your work.

“Useful, are you?” the witch scoffs. “You’re small as a mouse an' near as meek, child. What’re you useful for? Target practice?”

“I’m good with a needle,” Beth mumbles, smelling the tea brew, minty and bitter and boiling hot. It will be cold by the time she brings it back, but it’s no matter. It works the same, no matter how it tastes going down. 

“Are you?” the witch huffs. “Have you mendin' their clothes, do they? I suppose that’s better work than most. Terrible for the eyes, though. You’ll be half blind by the time you’re thirty. That’s a seamstress’ fate.”

The first thing Beth sewed up at the Dreadfort was not clothes at all, but she doesn’t like to think about that. It’s easier to pretend it were a tunic, or a pair of trousers, or even someone’s leather boots. But those canvases don’t move and scream when you pull the thread taut. Seeing her discomfort, the witch changes the subject. “There’s other things I could brew, you know,” she says casually, as she steeps the tea. “Cost you more than a jar of honey, but it might be worth it.”

“Like what?” Beth asks blankly, not raising her gaze from the floor. That’s usually where she’s most comfortable looking, these days.

“Somethin' to end it quick,” the witch says, not unkindly. “S’what I’d tell one of my daughters, were it them in that snare.”

“Ramsay knows poisons,” Beth flinches at the thought of a failed attempt. “That won’t work.”

“Not for him, for her,” the witch scolds. “How long do you think this can keep on, child? I can brew a bloody year’s worth of moon tea, it won’t save her. Kinder to choose your own terms, I think.”

“Ramsay gave Palla to Damon Dance-for-Me as a war prize,” Beth rattles off. “He won’t kill her. She’s safer with him.” 

Palla says that sort of thing so often, Beth almost believes it. Damon can be sweet, even gentle, at times, when it strikes his fancy or he’s in a good mood. He treats Palla real nice then, kisses her tenderly and loops an arm around her narrow waist. He got her a new dress- well, some poor dead girl’s hand-me-downs, really, but new compared to the filthy rags they were all wearing at the time. Damon’s got no interest in stripping a girl nude and setting her loose in the wood to hunt. He likes to be kind to be cruel, instead, but when someone offers you a lump of sugar on the edge of a knife, you’ll eat it all the same, however much it hurts. 

“When he tires of her, he’ll give her right back to his lord, an' I ain’t ever known milord Ramsay to turn down a woman,” the witch says with a sardonic edge. “Else, his bastard will be the death of her, when he does get her with child. Moon tea only goes so far, an' I know she ain’t regular as she should be with it.”

“She doesn’t have time. She has to help Ben Bones in the kennels, and work in the kitchens, and serve at meals, just like the rest of us,” Beth flushes. “She’s trying really hard to be good about it, she is.”

“A skinny, broken little girl of thirteen won’t survive the birth,” the witch says. “It’ll be a bloody, brutal thing, worse than any whippin' or flayin', hear you me. The babe’s not like to live long either, and even if it did, milord would feed it to his dogs. You tell her. You tell her I can brew her up somethin' sweet as milk and honey, it’ll kill her far nicer than any man or his seed. She don’t want that. Dyin' in the birthing bed. It’ll rip her apart from the inside out. I’ve seen it before. You never get the smell of blood and shit out of the room. An' she don’t want no death out in the woods, either. They’ll never find her bones; the crows will pick 'em clean an' build their nests with them.”

Beth scuffs the toes of her boots along in the dirt, and then, as the witch pours the tea into the flask, says, “Maybe you could curse them. Um- you could give me some kind of poppet, and I could lay it under Ramsay’s pillow, or Damon’s, or Skinner’s, and it could make them sick, or kill them…”

“I can’t brew up a curse the way I can a pot of tea, child,” the witch snorts. “You don’t want me messin' around with no curses. D’you hear? It’s bloody work, to lay down a curse on a man’s life. It takes as much from you as them. An' I’m too old to hate that way no more. An' not near as ugly. That’s a hag’s work. Do I look like a hag to you?”

Beth considers the witch. She is old and weathered and wrinkled, and her grey hair is lank and stringy, and her teeth yellow, but that was not so different from most old women. She did not look like a hag or a monster. The only thing special about her was that she had a mole on each cheek. Beth supposes that means she especially good at witchy things, having two marks like that. “No,” she says, honestly.

“Good,” the witch shoves the flask at her. “Now be on your way. Sun’s windin' down, an' my children will be in for their supper soon enough.”

Beth’s heard all about the witch’s children. She had seven, as is expected of a witch, but only four lived to come of age; three girls and a boy. They say their father was a warg, because the boy has one brown eye, one grey. Beth can hear him the distant swing of the axe behind the cottage; the witch’s boy is out splitting wood while she leaves, under a gnarled old tree brimming from bottom to top branch with shifting, cawing crows. 

She holds the flask carefully under one arm, the basket under the other, all the way through the village and back up to the Dreadfort. The gate groans open at her approach, and Beth ducks her head obediently and hurries over the drawbridge and inside the castle, feet pattering across the wood and stone. The Dreadfort sometimes reminds her of Winterfell, if she doesn’t pay too close attention. It’s all grey stone and high walls, and the maester’s turret looks very similar to the one at Winterfell, and the godswood is in roughly the same location, and the kennels are near identical. Only the Dreadfort is much smaller than Winterfell. Small and cold and jagged, like it was designed to hurt. 

Inside the kennels, Palla is holding one of the dogs still so Ben Bones can pull out a splinter from its paw. It’s not one of the bitches; Palla has firmly straddled one of the breeding studs, an old half-blind, half-mad elk-hound named Ribcage, yanking back his spiked collar so his slavering jaws can’t reach Ben Bones. An elk-hound is certainly big enough to throw off a skinny girl of thirteen, but Ribcage is old and worn and prefers women to men. Beth can’t blame him. “There,” Old Ben says, holding up the bloody hunk of wood with a note of relief. 

“Good boy,” Palla kisses Ribcage on his head, then lets him go, while Ben stands up with a groan. Beth likes Ben Bones, if only because he’s not cruel or hotheaded or leering like most of the Bastard’s Boys. Palla says he claims he was the worst of them all in his youth, but when Ben Bones was a boy, Roose Bolton hadn’t even been born yet, and the Targaryens still ruled, and there were still Starks in Winterfell. Now he’s stooped and grey, but he won’t beat you unless you mess with his dogs or burn his supper.

Beth tucks the flask behind her back, and says as boldly as she dares, “Master Ben, can’t we go pray now?”

He blinks wearily and then waves them off as he forces Ribcage back into his pen. “Be off with ye. Kitchen duty starts in an hour. Best mind the time. Cook’s leg’s actin' up again.”

Palla wrinkles her nose as she wipes off her hands with a rag, then follows Beth out, snatching the flask from her and shoving it under her stained apron. “How was it?”

“How was what?” Beth glances at her in confusion.

“Outside!” Palla snaps. “Don’t act stupid. They only let you go out like that because they know you’re too scared to run.”

“You’d run,” says Beth.

“I’d run, dig my way into someone’s root cellar, an' hide there ‘til spring,” Palla says with a mocking sing-song note. She’s a lot meaner now, but so is Beth. There’s no room left to be nice. It got wrung out by Theon, then again by Damon Dance-for-Me and Skinner, then again by Ramsay. There’s nothing left inside her at all but old straw and dust, she thinks sometimes. I’m a scarecrow, she thought, when she looked at herself in a glass for the first time in weeks, and did not recognize who or what was looking back. I’m a scarecrow, you can’t hurt me, there’s nothing in me to hurt, it all got squeezed out. 

They whispered about running the first few nights on the march, but there were all the soldiers, and the dogs, and the dead girls with arrows in their throats, and Damon’s whip, and Skinner’s knives, and Ramsay’s smile to fear. So they only pretended. Beth ran in her dreams, ran until her feet peeled raw and red, ran until she couldn’t breathe anymore. She didn’t run south, she ran further north, she ran until the snows were as high as her waist and she had to walk instead. And everywhere she stepped, the snow ran red with blood, and the dead peeked back at her from under the ice, all those familiar faces. She doesn’t run in her sleep anymore. She’s too tired for that. Instead she lays on her bedroll on the cold floor and in her head, lays down beside Father and Jory, dressed in their blood-stained armor, and pulls their ragged cloaks over herself and pretends they can still keep her safe. 

“I had to go bring him water today,” Palla says as they near the godswood entrance, as if she’d heard Beth’s thoughts. “Spat in it.”

“Good,” says Beth, although she feels nothing, thinks nothing of it. Maybe she would feel badly for poor Theon if Father wasn’t dead because of him. Maybe she would feel badly for poor Theon if he hadn’t put a noose around her neck and made her stand up on the ramparts with Black Lorren. Maybe she would feel badly for poor Theon if she were still a good girl, and not a scarecrow with an X on the back of her neck. 

“You know what Ramsay calls him now?” Palla has brightened at the thought, as if a sudden beam of sunlight fell on them. “Reek. After the one he killed.”

Beth vaguely recalls how enraged Ramsay was when they first saw him, kicking a corpse on the ground. It smelled like the worst thing you could ever imagine. He called it Reek. Theon put an arrow through Reek’s eye, before Ramsay smashed his face. “Does he smell as bad?”

“Gettin' there,” Palla shrugs and slams the door behind them a little too loudly. A few birds scatter from a nearby bush. “Tried to get me to set him loose again. Laughed at him. Know what he called me?”

“What?” Beth watches as Palla digs up the cup they buried here a few days ago. She dumps the dirt out of it, the metal glinting in the dusk light. 

“A cunt,” says Palla, pouring her moon tea. “So I made him choke on it. He started cryin' like a baby then.” She takes the first sip, almost retches, and then swallows the rest with a shudder. “She was cheap with the honey. That old bitch.”

They approach the withered heart tree, and Palla carefully pours a single drop on its bare roots, then closes her eyes in prayer. Beth hangs back, hesitant to join her, and then hears the door to the godswood creak open again. She turns, and stares balefully at the girl in the frame, then stops. She has long dark hair, and her dress is faded grey. Beth sees her clearly now; she’s got a scarf tucked round her neck, and her face is long and sharp. Beth had thought she’d just been a fanciful thing, but here she stands, clear as day, and her eyes are bright with knowing, somehow. 

A twig cracks under Beth’s feet, and suddenly she glances around the godswood and realizes. Here. They were here. She saw this, a long time ago. She saw this in a dream, only she didn’t know it. The girl hesitates in the doorway, and then as Beth takes a timid step in her direction, slips out as quick as she came, the door swinging loose behind her, rattling in the wind. “What’re you starin’ at?” Palla demands warily from behind her, and Beth jumps, then turns round, almost guilty.

“Someone came in,” she says, “but then they left. One of the maids.”

Palla glances at the still swaying door, then dismisses it. “Help me bury this with the cup. The dirt will keep it good and cold.”

“I asked the witch about a curse,” Beth tells her, as they crouch down on the ground, the same way they buried Dasha, once. “But she said that was a hag’s work.”

“Yeah?” Palla glances up at her; she has wet, black dirt up to her elbows like long gloves, dried blood under her crooked nose, and the skin around her left eye is purple-blue. There’s a ring of dark fingerprints round her neck. She reaches out and pokes a scab on the corner of Beth’s lips, jabs at the hard knot of swelling in her right cheek, and Beth tastes fresh blood in between her teeth. “I reckon we’re ugly enough to manage it ourselves.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot how much I missed writing Beth. We will be back to Nell next chapter. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. To clear up any confusion, this chapter takes place about a month after Beth's last chapter, so she has not been at the Dreadfort for that long, but certainly long enough for it have had some obvious effects on her personality/motives.
> 
> 2\. I debated how to go about this chapter for a while, and ultimately decided that rather than have 4000+ words detailing all the ways Beth and the others have been traumatized, abused, and mistreated since the fall of Winterfell, it would better serve her as a character and the overall tone/pacing to explore the aftermath. If parts of this chapter seemed very vague, it's because, much like Theon's later POVs, there are things Beth saw and experienced which she does not want to dwell on, even in the safety of her own thoughts. 
> 
> 3\. I'm happy as the writer to be reintroducing the gothic horror vibes of the Dreadfort through the eyes of a second character, complete with a mysterious girl in a grey, a witch in a ramshackle cottage, and a barren godswood. Hopefully we will see some of Turnip and the others in the next Beth chapter. This is the last chapter of hers to take place during the year 299 AC.


	35. Donella XXX

299 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell has just gotten Lysara to sleep when the steward comes in to inform her that Lord Hoster has passed in his sleep. It is no great surprise; the man has been at death’s door for days now, and they’ve all been waiting for this. She feels relieved; once the funeral is out of the way, it will be one less thing to worry about. She did not know Robb’s grandfather, nor did he, for that matter. This is Catelyn and Edmure and Ser Brynden’s loss to grieve over, not hers, and yes, cruel as it might sound, there is some relief in that. She thinks she’s grieved enough, as of late.

Kinslayer, she thinks, when Roger or the remaining Ryswell men look at her. Kinslayer, I am a kinslayer, I did not beseech Robb on my uncle’s behalf, I offered him no mercy, no reconciliation before his death, I stood beside my husband while he brought down the axe. It had been a curious thing, washing your own kin’s blood off your face, scrubbing it away into a dark basin of water. 

She is not wracked with guilt, either, she is consumed with anger, and perhaps that is better. Roger is angry. He will never admit it directly, but of course he is angry. He may have been infuriated with Rickard’s treason, but that was still his younger brother, and what he did, he did for love and vengeance, something any northman could respect. So Roger and half the Ryswell men remain, however begrudgingly, but the rest have scattered to the winds with the Karstarks.

She doesn’t like that. It will give the Lannisters and Tyrells even more material against them; not only did two relatively innocent children die on their watch, now their own men have gone rogue in the Riverlands, plundering and murdering at will while hunting the Kingslayer. She does not like that at all. The Lannisters were an easy villain to paint in the hearts of the smallfolk. Little children who’d never left their villages, even they had heard of Tywin Lannister as someone to fear, of the Kingslayer as someone to revile. These Tyrells, with their handsome sons and pretty daughter, no doubt smelling of roses and handing out the Reach’s bounty to the capitol, are a much thornier matter. 

North, she thinks. That is why we must go North again. The Lannisters cannot keep a friend long. Sooner or later, there will be some disagreement between them and the Tyrells, some crack in the foundation. Tywin is too proud and Cersei too vain. That is the sorry hope she clings to, that the court will be bereft with in-fighting while they scurry home to Winterfell to drive out the remaining Ironborn and brace for winter. The war will end with winter, she reminds herself. Men cannot fight in snow that comes up to their chests. Regardless of everything else that has happened, the drastic change in seasons will force a bitter peace. 

Her eyes are dry when she goes to Robb, waiting outside his grandfather’s rooms, as are his. He kisses her on the cheek, and when he speaks, his voice is still rough from sleep. “They’ll send the body downriver at dawn tomorrow. There’s been a raven from the Freys. They’ve sent an escort for the wedding.”

The wedding, yes. Nell keeps forgetting about that, silly as it might sound, without the Frey women’s presence here to remind her. One more bothersome task to be completed before they can move north. “They are still insistent it happen before the year’s end? Edmure will still be in mourning.” She takes his arm, laying her head briefly against his shoulder. Robb’s warm breath is comforting on her scalp, before he kisses her brow briefly. 

“Yes. It is what was promised to them months ago, and they will not wait any longer. We cannot afford to give any further offense to one of our most powerful banners.”

He’s right, as much as she dislikes it. They’re vulnerable. The Karstark affair weakened them, and their forces are still divided; some men here, some men at Harrenhal with her father, some men still at the Twins. And then Duskendale; the raven from Roose came not three days past. Madness. Are their own troops losing their discipline so quickly? How is it that Robb could architect the drive into the West with such precision, but as soon as they return east- 

Father reports that Robett Glover, desperate for any sort of victory to console himself after the news of his own family’s peril at Deepwood, made the foolhardy decision to strike at Duskendale with a third of their foot, with the support of Harry Karstark. For his trouble, he’d been cornered by Randyll Tarly and lost a good thousand men. Now Glover was dead, and Karstark reportedly wounded, their forces further broken upon retreat to Harrenhal by Ser Flement Brax. 

Robb had been too initially stunned to muster up anything but shock, but Nell had raged enough for both of them later, rereading the letter again and again. “If we didn’t have enough trouble with the Karstarks,” she’d snapped, “now must you discipline Harrion as well, when you see him next? That ought to go over well! It’s not as if we’ve executed his father less than a fortnight ago!” 

“A short affair, then,” she says curtly. “We cannot afford to waste time dallying about the Twins. There could be Tyrell forces flooding up from the South at any time to try to overwhelm us before we can return to the North.”

“I’ve made it clear that it will not be a long visit,” Robb releases her as the door opens, and Catelyn slips out, eyes red-rimmed and swollen from her tears, lips pressed together. She opens her mouth as if it to say something, then just nods towards the room. 

“My lady,” Nell says soberly. “I’m sorry for your loss. Lord Hoster was a good man.”

Her good mother murmurs something like a thank you, then walks quickly off, head bowed as she struggles to compose herself. 

Inside, Edmure and Brynden Blackfish remain. Edmure is openly weeping at his father’s side, a cup of wine in his hand, while Ser Brynden stands looking pensively out the window at the bright autumn moon. “Edmure,” Nell says, going to her good uncle and embracing him freely, something she has not done since the Battle of the Fords. “I’m sorry.” 

Robb kneels at the other side of the bed to pay his respects. Lord Hoster looks small and withered and pallid in death, a strange old man in a strange bed, eyes staring sightlessly at the rich tapestries on the walls, all depicting the history of the various river kings. Nell tries to recall what Mother looked like in death, but all she can imagine is a corpse bundled in a sheet. It was different during her vigil in the godswood, before they interred her in the crypts. Then she’d had stones with carved runes over her eyes, and blue winter roses in her hair, and she’d smelled overwhelmingly of perfume and candle wax. She’d looked like a life-sized doll. It had disturbed Nell far more than seeing her wracked and convulsing with fever ever had. 

The bells are ringing above the sept again, but much more somberly and slowly than they did when Lysara was born three weeks ago; no joyous clamor now, just steady tolling for each year of life. The Dreadfort has no bells; nothing rang when Bethany Bolton died beyond the jangle of keys as they unlocked the crypts, and the wind lashing the leaves of the weirwood trees behind them. Nell can still taste the musty air of the underground on her tongue, where Roose’s dead sons and first wife lay, waiting for Mother to join them. She had only made it halfway down the steps before she had begun to sob anew and pull away, refusing to go any further. “Take her up to her room,” she remembers Father telling Barbrey in that constant tone of mild exasperation. “This is no place for a weepy child.”

“It is not,” Barbrey had agreed, and taken Nell out riding instead, down the grey knife of the Weeping Water, until the Dreadfort faded into the distance, and all she could hear were hoof beats and the wind. Her aunt had sacrificed saying her final goodbyes to her sister in order to comfort her niece. Nell has never forgotten that. When they’d finally stopped to rest and wait for the guards to catch up, Barbrey had taken her by the hand to peer into the torrid grey waters of the river. “She’s here,” she’d said, “she’s running to the sea. She loved the ocean, do you remember? Do you remember when we visited the bay, at the Last River, when you were small?”

Nell had remembered. She’d been perhaps four or five, burying her head in her mother’s cloak, as the women who had once been the sisters Ryswell walked along the shore and wet their hands in the tide and splashed and kicked sand and before the sun set, raced horses down the beach like they were girls again. They made a bonfire and watched the stars arrive in all their splendor, and Mother and Barbrey had drunk mulled wine and gotten apples in their cheeks and sparks in their eyes, and sang her songs that were popular when they were children, and told stories about the Rills and the Starks and the Old Days before the dragons died. 

_Run_ , she’d thought, watching that river as a little girl, trying not to think of Mother’s body down in the cold and the dark. _Run, run, run to the sea, Mother, only why couldn’t you take me with you_? Mother had always said they’d go visit the seashore again someday. They had not. There’d been pregnancies and bleeding and screaming and gradually that wide open, starry world where waves had crashed against the shore and embers rose up into the night had narrowed into one tiny, grey, strip of existence, and then the Greyjoys rebelled and Father left and Mother died. And she was so alone.

Some six hours later, as she watches them push Hoster Tully’s pyre into the water, she glances at his children standing up on the ramparts beside her, the fresh tears in their eyes, and thinks, _How many trips to the seashore and bonfires did you have? How many more stories and laughter and rides out into the mist? Far more than me. I should have had more. It’s not fair. He lived to see his grandchildren. My mother didn’t. They took her too soon. She deserved more. She always did her duty. She had a right to a little more life._

But even that is selfish of her. Who is she, to wish more misery upon Bethany Bolton? Lived a little longer, for what? To lie stiffly under Father while he took his pleasure a little longer? To see a bastard installed in her home? To watch them all hurtle towards war? Her life was not a happy one. It had brief spots of joy on a dark, bloody canvas. And Nell does not think the moments of levity were nearly enough to make up for the rest. But it would have been sweet, for Mother to hold the babe bound to her chest, even if only for a little while. 

Thankfully, Lysara does not wake up screaming for milk, even when Edmure misses his three shots at the boat. Nell almost offers, but has enough sense to hold her tongue as Brynden takes up the bow. His aim is true, and the floating pyre lights in a plume of flames and smoke wafting through the sun-dappled mist. And it is a beautiful morning, Nell admits, as she gazes down to watch the men wading back out of the water. The sunlight turns Robb’s hair to molten copper as he speaks quietly with their new arrival, Lame Lothar Frey. 

Most of the castle is still in prayer later, when she sits with Robb in the godswood, watching Jory spar with Lyra through a grove of trees. She knows she should say something of his grandfather, offer some comforting words for their future, but Duskendale is still on her mind. It is senseless. Perhaps Glover and Karstark thought to claim the castle and bustling port town for themselves, open up a direct line of coin and supplies back into the Riverlands, but they should have known it was folly. Duskendale is far too close to King’s Landing, far too close to the seat of Lannister and Tyrell power. They could have never hoped to hold it long with just three thousand men. 

She is trying to delay the inevitable, which is that Lysara will need to be fed soon and her breasts are already sore at the thought of it, when Robb finally speaks, taking her hand. “My mother may not join us for dinner with Lothar and Walder Rivers tonight,” he says. “I had to give her some sorry news this morning.”

Nell stiffens. “Not another raven.”

“I did not want to say anything until after the funeral,” he says. “But there was another, yes. Sansa’s been married.”

Nell exhales slowly, a long, weary acceptance. “To who?”

“Tyrion Lannister,” Robb says grimly, and she looks to him in disbelief.

“You cannot mean they wed her to the Imp.” 

He nods, jaw locked tight in fury. Nell wants to rip her hand from his so she can hit something, or better yet, throttle the life from it, but only sags instead. “I had thought they might try to marry her into the family- but the Imp-,” what goes unspoken is that surely even a hostage would be deserving of a finer match. 

The Lannister family tree has plenty of boys near Sansa in age to choose from, but instead they handed over a girl of not-yet-thirteen to a man twice her age, known to every whore in Westeros, and who has reason a-plenty to hate her mother and brother. If it was not deliberate cruelty, Nell does know what else to call it, although she knows the Lannisters, if however unlikely, are confronted on the manner, they will insist they did her a great service by wedding her to a son of Tywin’s, and not a minor cousin or nephew. 

“They want Winterfell,” Robb says. “Doubtless they will have heard of Lysara’s birth by now, but if…” he cannot even mouth the rest of it.

Nell does it for him. “Babes die,” she says flatly. “They die often, they die quickly. She is not even a month old. Should she pass, you have no heir.” Save perhaps Jon Snow at the Wall, but she cannot even think on such a foul thing. Snow took his vows over a year ago. The Night’s Watch serves until death. That is her only comfort there.

“Lysara is strong,” Robb says. “Like you. She’s putting on weight, she’s eating, and sleeping-,” he breaks off shaking his head, and when he speaks again, his voice is sheer flint. “Nothing will happen to her so long as I live. I promise, Nell. Nothing.”

“Don’t,” she snaps. “You know I hate when you say such things. I can’t- you must worry about yourself before us.”

He scowls. “Donella. Have you any idea how that sounds? To tell me to disregard the welfare of my wife and daughter-,”

“You are the one who matters. You are the one they swore fealty to. You are the one they all want dead,” she says tightly. “Keep yourself alive, Robb. That’s how you keep us safe. I will look after Sara.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and Robb sighs and puts an arm around her. “I assume your mother took it badly.”

“She released the Kingslayer in the hopes of getting the girls back. Of course she did,” he mutters. “She suggested I consider bending the knee.”

“Bend the knee, and I will leave you,” is all Nell can think to say, and he laughs suddenly, although it is cold and hard, a man’s laugh, not a boy’s, and kisses her on the cheek. 

“I’d expect nothing less.”

“Bend the knee to Stannis, if it comes to that,” she corrects herself. “But not- not to Joffrey, nor Tywin, nor the Tyrells. It would be the end of any respect for our house.” That is the first time she has ever said it like that, she realizes then. ‘Our house’. Not ‘House Stark’ or ‘your house’ or ‘your family’. Our house. Our family. Our war. 

“Stannis demanded my surrender when my mother last spoke with him,” says Robb. “I do not think him a man keen on second chances.”

“He may be keen for support wherever he can get it, at this rate,” Nell scoffs, picking up a dead leaf from the ground and letting it plaster itself to her palm. “His army is in tatters, his only holding is Dragonstone. His great scheme was to take the capitol. Now what? What else is there for him to do? He has too many enemies, not nearly enough friends.”

“I don’t know,” Robb admits. “But I thank the gods we never marched on King’s Landing ourselves. The reports of wildfire... “

Nell closes her eyes briefly, and tries to imagine the green of summer. She has never seen wildfire. She never wants to. “The Ironborn have no such weapons. We can take Moat Cailin from them. They do not know the North, and they’ve been sitting there for months, idling away, drinking and bickering, being picked off by the crannogmen. You outfoxed Tywin Lannister and all his kin. They say Victarion is dull as a sack of rocks. We will take back the Neck.”

“I will reclaim it,” Robb says. He squeezes her hand gently. “But I want you nor Lysara nowhere near it until we’ve guaranteed safe passage.”

This is not surprising, really, but Nell riles for a fight all the same. “I’ve done my waiting here. I’ll do no more. Find some fisherman to sail us to White Harbor, if you must-,”

“You’ll go to Seagard,” he says. “With my mother and Lysara and your ladies. It’s safe there, and should the South encroach, it’s not far from the Twins. As soon as it is safe, you’ll follow, I swear it. You could go to Barrowton, with your aunt, while we take back Torrhen’s Square and Deepwood Motte. Once the Ironborn have been purged, we’ll all be at Winterfell again. Together.”

He paints a pretty picture. Nell wishes she could imagine it more vividly. She thinks of Barbrey and Barrow Hall instead, thinks of the fields and hills, golden brown in late autumn, of the wooden town and its lively, friendly people. “Very well,” she says, “but first the wedding. I’ll see you off from the Twins, then go to Seagard. When does Lame Lothar want us to leave by?”

“I told him my men would be ready to march by the end of this week,” Robb says slowly. “But the weather isn’t expected to improve much- Nell, will you not wait? I will make your excuses at the Twins. You have a newborn daughter. You were in the birthing bed not long ago. You should be traveling at your own pace, not on a forced march with soldiers-,”

“You forget I came south on a forced march with soldiers,” she says bitterly. “I’ll be four weeks healed from my labor by the time we leave here. Plenty of women are back in the saddle before that- they have no choice. Gods, women give birth on the roadside all the time, Robb, or in barns. Lysara is strong, like you said, and it would be risking her health regardless; she will see plenty of travel before she’s six moons old. I helped arrange this marriage, I’ll see it sealed. I owe that much to Roslin and Edmure.” She pauses. “And it will give us a bit more time together, before we are separated once more. Robb, please. You’ve not even been back a full turn of the moon.”

She’s worn him down, she can see that much. His arms tighten around her, as if worried she might suddenly vanish into the morning mist. “I wish we had more time.”

“I do too,” Nell sighs. “But we cannot stay here any longer-,”

“No,” he says, “before. I wish we’d had more time before any of this. I wish- I wish Jon Arryn had lived a little longer. I wish Robert had waited to come north.” He is embarrassed to even speak of wishes, she knows. That is a boy’s talk, and he is not a boy any longer. But she doesn’t want him to stop, either. “I wish we’d been wed before my father, not just yours. I wish Sansa could have sung at our wedding feast. I wish Arya had been there with Bran, crawling under the tables to wrestle with their wolves. We could have- we should have had more time. Before. I used to think, if there was ever another war, I’d be… be old, like Father. Prepared. But he wasn’t old at all. I see it now. I don’t think he ever felt prepared.”

“No one does. Life is not in the habit of preparing us,” Nell replies quietly. “Not for what we want it to, anyways.” A familiar shape comes loping out of the bushes, and she smiles to see Grey Wind, who sniffs around, obviously looking for Lysara. “She’s not here, nursemaid. You’ll see her later. Mayhaps you can take a turn rocking her to sleep tonight. Would you like that, Grey?” His tongue rasps over their interlocked hands, before he rubs his head against Robb’s shoulder. 

Robb slowly clambers to his feet, helping her up as well. “I should go and make sure the preparations are going along. If the rains return- and Vyman says they will- it’s like to be a miserable march.”

“A miserable march home is better than a hopeful march into the unknown,” Nell allows herself a small smirk. “Haven’t you ever heard that one?”

“No, I’m not nearly as learned as you, Your Grace,” he rolls his eyes and kisses her. “Remind me to bring some books on the new campaign.”

“Perhaps you could read Greyjoy and his men a scary story about what happens when the wolves come home,” she says lightly, and for an instant they could be courting again, it could all be fresh and new and innocent, before they ever left Winterfell, and he smiles and kisses her again, and Grey Wind whines as the wind picks up, rustling the remaining shriveled brown leaves in the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted a more introspective chapter focused on Robb and Nell and the trust and love between them before things pick back up again. The next several chapters will all be from Nell's perspective, and will more or less be taking place back-to-back, one after another, mirroring the fairly rapid pacing ASoS took on in the middle. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. After a whopping 14 chapters taking place at Riverrun, we're finally getting the hell out! Trust me when I say that at this point I never want to write anything set at Riverrun ever again. It's a very small setting. I've exhausted it. I think I would have gone crazy without the occasional Beth chapter to break up the monotony.
> 
> 2\. Nell does not think their campaign in the south is at all looking good, especially with the Tyrells now taking up residence in King's Landing, where they quickly seem to be becoming very popular with the smallfolk after saving the city and bringing in food and supplies from the plentiful Reach. The smallfolk of the Riverlands are in much worse shape at this point, and Nell does not think the PR is looking too good with rogue Karstarks and Ryswells hunting and pillaging. So really, heading back north seems like the only sensible option at this point, especially with winter approaching.
> 
> 3\. The Battle of Duskendale has occurred here with some changes from canon. Helman Tallhart and his small force were not there, since Edmure never ordered them to help Roose take Harrenhal in the first place. Robett Glover and Harrion Karstark took charge, and while the outcome in terms of losing about 1000 men against the Tarly was still mostly the same, there was no Gregor Clegane there to chase after them, but instead Ser Flement Brax. Long story short, Robett's dead, but Harry Karstark was not captured again, only injured and presumably pretty pissed at the outcome of this battle. Roose reports it was all Glover and Karstark's idea, and that he stayed out of it. Nell is very confused as to why the fuck anyone thought attacking Duskendale was a good plan in the first place, as is Robb.
> 
> 4\. Nell reflects about her own reaction to her mother's death years ago, and is justifiably or not, somewhat bitter at the thought that, despite his gradual decline, Catelyn and Edmure both still had far more time with the father who they loved, than she ever had with her own mother. 
> 
> 5\. They have the news about Sansa, which Nell doesn't find particularly shocking, although she is disgusted that Sansa was married to Tyrion and not someone closer to her own age. Also some discussion of infant mortality, which I find tends to not really be touched on much in most fics? There's a lot of fics with pregnancies, and a surprising number of fics with miscarriages for dramatic purposes but the reality is, the survival rates for infants in Westeros are probably not fantastic, even in the summer season. Now that we're in autumn and Nell knows a long winter is ahead of them, yes, the reminder that something could happen to this baby that so much struggle and stress revolved around is a bleak one.
> 
> 6\. Nell thinks hitting up Stannis like 'so... about that time we tried to treat with Renly first instead of you... our bad?' is a great idea. Robb is less convinced. Nell *does* think the idea of surrendering to the Lannisters is a short term solution and a long term disaster for House Stark, after everything that's happened between the two families.
> 
> 7\. In the grand scheme of things, Nell and Robb had about a year together from her first arrival at Winterfell to when he left Riverrun for the Westerlands, then about seven months apart, then about a month's reunion, and now are expected to be separated once again in a few week's time. It's pretty shitty for everyone, especially with an infant in the mix! Robb wishes they'd had any time at all at a peaceful, domestic married life and family together before the war, while Nell just wants to prolong the inevitable of him leaving her again, this time with a baby.


	36. Donella XXXI

299 AC - OLDSTONES

Nell is surprised to see the wild roses still in bloom at Oldstones, but the smallfolk whisper that some strange magic keeps the flowers blooming well into autumn. Most of the elms and oaks are barren by now, but the pines stand stalwart, and the grass is not all dead yet. When they made camp here this afternoon she’d passed Lysara off to Barbara in relief, pinned up her braid, and put Roddy through his paces up and down the rocky road of the hill. They’ve been traveling briskly up from Riverrun, but the rain and subsequent flooding in some areas has made it slow, and she hasn’t gone any faster than a trot in what very well might be months. 

Just being back in the saddle to begin with was a relief, even with an infant bound to her chest to worry about. She must change Lysara’s swaddling clothes every time it rains, for her fear of her getting too wet and then catching a chill, and she checks her for any signs of fever or cough at least every few hours. But thus far there have been no serious concerns, save her near constant crying each night. Robb would never raise a complaint about it, but Nell has taken to bringing the squalling infant out of the tent and walking around camp, lest he not get any sleep at all. Sometimes Grey Wind comes with them; she has no need for a guard with Robb’s wolf at her side.

But this afternoon- oh, she’d forgotten how sweet it was to spur a horse into a gallop, to feel the wind at her face and the lift in her gut when she’d cleared a low wall with a cry. Poor Roddy, warhorse that he is, has had no exercise but stable boys taking him out to pasture or ride these past months, and she knows it must have been as miserable for him as the pregnancy was for her. Today she rode him for near two hours all around the sprawling ruins of Oldstones, ignoring the stares directed her way by Robb’s men whenever they saw her go racing past on horseback. Half mad, she probably looked, but she doesn’t care. When she is at Seagard, she shall go riding up and down the coast every day, Ironman’s Bay be damned. 

The bridge at Fairmarket is said to have washed away, which means they’ll have to go through Hag’s Mire. An unpleasant detour, but then again, no one seems particularly saddened at the thought of not arriving at the Twins early. The Freys are hardly known for being the most welcoming and generous of hosts. Nell anticipates several tiresome, tense days while they hammer down how the army will be divided once more to broach into the Neck. They left the North with roughly twenty thousand men. Robb means to take it back, when his army is reformed, with just shy of fourteen thousand. 

It will be brutal, either way. They had best pray that any enemy advancement after them is delayed enough that they have time to deal with the Ironborn first. The only way they are going to hold out during a potential siege from the south is with a united North. And if King’s Landing still has ships fit to sail… The Greyjoys proved how very weak their shores are. The North once kept a navy. Nell would not be surprised if it had one again, by the time Robb is an old man on his throne. They grew far too complacent during Robert’s reign, assured that the South could not touch them. They were wrong. 

The sun would have had to come out in order to set, but the grey day darkens all the same. There are thirty five hundred men camped out on this hill, but there is something lonely to it all the same, when men’s voices echo off the trees and broken down walls of what was once the great seat of House Mudd. Nell eats with the Mormont women, the Bracken girls, and Dana while Robb dines with his mother, Edmure, and his men. They’d left the Blackfish behind to hold Riverrun, something Nell is glad of, if only because it means less squabbling among the Tullys. 

Jory has bound a wilting white rose into her braid. Lyra pokes fun at it as they eat around a small, smoldering fire. “Think you’re fair Jenny, do you?”

Dacey snorts and shakes her head. “I don’t think fair Jenny carried sword and shield.”

“Aye, but Jory can dance just as well as she could,” Dana says; she’s been in a fine mood despite the poor weather these past days. Nell knows it is because she is looking forward to seeing Marianne again. She only hopes she is not disappointed. Much can change in a few months. Marianne might be betrothed, or even wed by now. 

But Dana’s good cheer is catching, despite their grim surroundings, and Nell even leans down to press a quick kiss to Lysara’s scalp; she is lying in a basket at their feet. She still does not feel that rush of love or joy at the very sight of her, but it must be coming soon. It is a bit easier, at any rate, now she feels better physically, although that first day of riding was awful between her legs, she will admit.

“High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts,” Barbara hums softly after finishing off the last of her mead. She prods Jayne, who sits with her head bowed as usual. “You used to love this song, didn’t you?” 

Jayne makes a small noise of assent, and looks up briefly at the faces turned towards her, then away, flushing. Lysara grunts in her basket, and Nell says, “I think she likes it when we sing. You could… you could sing it to her, Jayne, if you like.”

Maege Mormont leans back, taking a swig from her flask. “Used to sing you to sleep with war songs when you were wee babes,” she elbows Jory, who laughs and hugs her girlishly, resting her head on her brawny mother’s shoulder. “None of this sad rubbish. But go on, then. You’re like to be more pleasant to listen to than Umber’s drunken wailing that he calls singing.”

For a moment Nell is certain Jayne will shake her head and refuse, or leave their little circle, but Barbara takes her hand, and after a moment, Jayne straightens slightly, setting down her bowl of stew. Her voice is barely more than a whisper, soft and breathy. “High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts… The ones she had lost and the ones she had found, and the ones who loved her the most.”

“The ones who’d been gone for so very long, she couldn’t remember their names- They spun her around the damp old stone, spun away all her sorrow and pain... “ Jayne’s voice cracks into something firmer, louder, sweeter, almost, but not sweet like honey or sugar, sweet like a sharp, keening pain in Nell’s chest, or lodged between her ribs, or in her teeth. “And she never wanted to leave, she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave…”

“They danced through the day and all through the night,” Barbara joins in, still holding her sister’s hand, looking at her intently, “through the snow that swept through the hall… From winter to summer and winter again, ‘til the walls did crumble and fall.”

The wind is rushing in the pines around them, blurring the words and voices into a low, pleasant sort of whispering, “And she never wanted to leave… never wanted to leave… and she never wanted to leave…”

It is still echoing in Nell’s head long after the singing has stopped, and Jayne and Barbara have gone to bed, and Dacey and Lyra gone to take up their watch, and Maege with Jory back to her tent. Robb has still not come back to their bedroll; no doubt up under some pavilion with a lantern, poring over his maps yet again, and before their daughter Nell would have gone to him, but now she has a crying infant to contend with. She knows the difference between Lysara’s cries, now, knows when she is hungry, in pain, or simply alarmed. This is not any of them. She is crying just to cry. Nell rocks her, holds her, tries to sing to her, but all she can think of is Jenny’s song, and while that soothed Lysara before, now only seems to stoke up her small sobs.

Perhaps her voice just isn’t very pleasant to listen to. Nell is so tired she can feel her eyelids sagging, but she’s not like to get any sleep cramped in this tent with Lysara wailing in her arms, so at last she swaddles her daughter, carefully binds her to her chest, and slips on a cloak, ducking out into the darkness of the night. Fog has rolled in across the hills, and she can barely see more than a few feet ahead of her, but here in the safety of the camp she’s unconcerned; she picks her way along the stony path, and the fog seems to swallow up Lysara’s cries some, muffling them like thick wool. Nell is not sure how long she walks for, rubbing slow circles on her daughter’s back, until finally the ancient sepulcher of King Tristifer comes into view. 

He was of the First Men, like them. The tomb is worn away to smooth stone now; the carved figure of the man blank and expressionless, but Nell traces her bare hands along the outline of a stone sword all the same. Lights flicker in the fog wreathed around her; at first she takes them for torches, and then realizes they are fireflies. Perhaps winter is still some ways off, then, if the fireflies still come out at night. 

She vaguely recalls glimpsing them when they rode through here on their way to the Whispering Wood, but she was likely too tense and frightened to take much notice of them. She was a child then, she knows now, wedded and bedded or not, she was still a girl. Now she is a woman, and Robb a man, and one day they will go the way of this Tristifer Mudd, enshrined under a stone slab in the crypts of Winterfell. She hopes it is not for a very long time, when Lysara is a grown woman, a married mother herself. Then she might visit them from time to time, as the Starks used to visit Rickard and Brandon and Lyanna. 

Lysara’s crying has calmed to the occasional snuffle and whimper. Nell’s back aches; she slowly clambers down to sit in the long grass; seated, it comes up to her chest. She lays her head back against the cold stone, watches the flickering lights, and slips between waking and dreaming as easily as one slips into a pool of water. One instant she is seated, comforting her daughter, the next she is seated before a fire, much like the one she ate her supper around, only instead of the Mormonts and Brackens and Dana, this one is surrounded by far less familiar faces.

“You should not wander so far at night,” Mother scolds, as she turns a roasting spit over the fire. “You never know when dawn is coming.” Hungry shapes crowd around it, jostling Nell; she feels for Lysara at her chest, but her babe is gone, and she is clad in the shift she wore on her wedding night. The wind tears at the flimsy fabric; she draws her knees up to her chest, looking around in alarm. 

Jez with her freckles and her hooded eyes and her slashed throat. Pregnant Willow in her bearskin, chest and arms covered in scabs. Red-haired Maude and her broken nose, weeping blood and snot down her chin. Helicent’s crooked teeth worry at the ends of her lower lip, split neatly down the middle by some swipe of a knife. There are others; too many even for this roaring bonfire. She should not know their names, but she does. 

“Where is my babe?” she demands, rising to her feet. The fire crackles, and something fleshy and sizzling drops off the spit and onto the ashen earth. Jez plucks it up and bites down on it, tearing meat off the bone. Nell suddenly does not want to know what it is they are cooking here; it doesn’t smell like venison or boar. Maude drinks from a stained wineskin; red droplets bead around her mouth. Helicent turns an old bone knife over and over again in her small hands. 

Mother gives her an incredulous stare; she looks different, not on horseback, her hair long and wild, her face striped with green and brown war paint, cracked and greasy on her skin. She wears a strange necklace round her neck; it jangles in the wind against her bare chest, under her heavy cloak. After a moment, Nell realizes they are teeth; animal and others. “Where is my babe?” she echoes back. “Where is the child I set upon my knee, the child I taught to hold a bow? Gone well away from me. I never thought you’d stray so far.”

“I’m not far,” Nell’s head is pounding dully. She puts a hand to it, blinking hard. “Stop it, you’re confusing me again. I’m not far at all. We’re coming home. We’re almost there. Now tell me where my babe is. Have you seen her?”

“Aye,” says Mother. “I’ve seen her. But this is no place for a babe.”

“Where are your horses?” Nell questions. “Why are you here? The dead don’t eat.”

“The dead feast just as the living do, only they feed on different things,” Mother snaps as if wounded. She reaches out, puts a hand cold as ice on Nell’s. “You are not welcome here. The night is long. We’ve game to hunt before sunrise, and still you insist on following me.”

“I didn’t ask to dream of you,” Nell says roughly, jerking away from her grip. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I’ve tried to do what is best. I’ve tried to do what is right. Can you not be proud of me, this once?”

“I am proud, you foolish girl,” Mother says. A log splits in the fire, sending scattered embers into the air. Willow catches one on her finger, watches it sink into the mottled skin. “But I am also afraid.”

“You were never afraid,” Nell scoffs; she steps back uncertainly from the strange fire, the strange meat, the strange smells. “You were always angry. Not frightened.”

“I was afraid. Afraid of you.” 

Nell stares at her, eyes watering from the smoke. “Don’t say that. Don’t- I am nothing like him.”

“I loved you,” Mother makes a fist. “And when you love someone, you let them hold a knife to your throat. I loved you so, and you bled me for it. It was not your fault. Nor mine. But the knife,” she shakes her had and laughs, low and bitter. “I always felt the knife, when I held you in my arms. Sometimes it was sweet. Sometimes it was cold. I felt it all the same.”

Nell staggers around her, bracing against the wind. “Stop. No more of this. Where is Lysara?”

“Here,” someone calls, and out of the roiling fog comes Sara Snow, the babe named after her in her arms. Nell comes forward in relief, but Sara’s face is wan and still, and the bundle in her arms does not coo or cry or whimper or even move at all. Nell stops. She can’t. She won’t. “Come here,” says Sara, not unkindly. “You must.”

“No,” says Nell through her teeth. “No. Wake her up.”

“Come take her,” Sara’s eyes gleam wetly with unshed tears. “I can’t hold her any longer.”

“Wake her up!” Nell shouts, and just like that, she is awake, something wet rasping around her face.

Grey Wind is licking at her face, his muzzle mere inches from her nose. Nell shrinks back in shock, and bangs her head on the tomb, cursing just as Robb comes out of the fog, a lantern in hand. He lowers it in obvious relief at the sight of her, before scowling. “Seven hells, what are you doing out here?” He sets the lantern down on the tomb without a care, then helps her to her feet. Lysara is slumbering safely at her chest; Nell glances down at her quickly to make sure she is still breathing, and almost cries out in thanks. She’s alright. It was just a dream. She’s fine. Robb is too aggrieved to notice. “What do you think I thought,” he demands, “when I came back to the tent and found you both missing? Thank the gods I thought to look with Grey Wind myself before raising the alarm- you cannot wander off like this in the middle of the night!” 

“You always set sentries around the perimeter,” Nell says blearily, rubbing at the throbbing back of her head. “I was in no danger.”

“With this fog-,” he shakes his head. “I don’t care where we’re camped, or how many sentries. Don’t do this again. I thought-,” his jaw clenches, “I don’t know what I thought, I just… I need you to be safe. I need her to be safe.” He strokes Lysara’s still head with a tenderness that belies his curt tone. 

Nell glares at him for a moment, then leans up to kiss him. “Then don’t stay up half the night straining your eyes. The maps can wait until morning. All you’re doing is tiring yourself out for naught.”

“I wasn’t looking at the maps,” he says, “I was writing my will.”

She freezes. Robb meets her gaze steadily nonetheless. “It seemed time.”

“Is it finished?” she forces herself to ask.

“Yes. I mean to have my banners put their seals to it, and send it somewhere safe.” He takes her hand. “Should I die, Lysara is my heir. The heir of my body, our child. You will rule as her queen regent until she comes of age.” He pauses, then swallows. “She comes before my siblings. Should Arya be found alive, the claim to the throne is still Lysara’s. The same goes for Sansa and… and any sons she may have from Tyrion Lannister.” 

Nell waits. He still has one more sibling who yet lives, although she will not say it.

“Suggestions have been made to me, that I should put Jon before my daughter,” Robb says. At the look on her face, he continues, “I’ll not say who. She is an infant. He is a man grown, a man fit to lead an army or rule a kingdom, some would argue.”

“If you write him in that will, even after her, they will find a way to seat him on your throne,” Nell all but snarls. “Should you claim that the North falls to him if she dies in infancy- they will slit my throat, smother her in her sleep, and name him King. Take your pick of the lot. Any of them who have daughters they could wed to him. So I will only beg of you this once. He is your brother, and you think him a good and honest man. That may be. Good and honest men are often useful tools for terrible men.”

“A bastard cannot inherit,” Robb says, and then he brushes back her hair from her face. “My will does not legitimize him. It commands the men who set their seals to it to defend her claim to their own deaths, should I die, and to yield to you as their queen regent. The North will be yours until her sixteenth name day. I know you will rule it well.”

Nell wonders at the absence of any joy or triumph in her at that. That is all she ever wanted, isn’t it? Winterfell and the North? Power? Land? To rule? Yet in this instant she can barely summon up any emotion but relief that he is not putting a bastard brother in their daughter’s rightful place. You don’t know that I will rule it well, she wants to say, you’ve never seen me rule, you weren’t here when I was ruling in your absence, and when I was ruling, Edmure and I pushed Tywin back, straight into the Tyrell’s arms, and that is why we are losing this war now. 

“Thank you,” she says instead, and picks up the lantern. Grey Wind lopes ahead of them as they carefully make their way down the slippery incline. Robb is silent beside her, and while it is tempting to complete the rest of this walk in silence, she can still feel the heat of the bonfire from her dream- her nightmare- on her skin, and so she says, after a few moments, “You told me once you dreamed of Grey Wind. Do you ever dream other strange things?”

Robb stops walking completely. Nell, surprised, lifts the lantern to better inspect his face, and almost recoils. The expression on it is very much akin to the one he wore after he executed Karstark and her uncle. For an instant, a stranger stares back at her in the warm yellow glow of the lantern. “What sort of things?” he finally asks, his voice a hoarse rasp. “Do you… were you dreaming, when you dozed off up there?”

“Yes,” says Nell simply, lowering the lantern with clammy hands. “I… I dream of my mother, quite a bit. And… and other people. People who are gone. Do you… do you ever dream about… about Bran and Rickon? Or your father?” What she really wants to ask him is, ‘do your dreams ever come true?’ but she’s too afraid to ask. She doesn’t want to know the answer. She doesn’t want to know if their nightmares align. 

Robb will not look at her. “No,” he says tersely. “I don’t. I never dream of them, I… I wish I could. I dream about other things.”

“What sort of things?” she murmurs.

There’s a long pause. “Bloody things,” he says at last. “Fighting. Killing. Hunting. It’s… I don’t like to think about it. It’s just the war. That’s all. Mother told me that Father used to have nightmares about… about the Rebellion, and what happened. She said he would wake up crying sometimes, but he would never speak of it with her.”

“You can speak about those things with me,” Nell ventures, as they come back into the center of camp, past guards shifting in their armor and gently whinnying horses. “You… it won’t frighten me. I won’t think any less of you.”

“It’s just dreams, fancies,” Robb says in a forcibly dismissive tone, leading the way to their tent. “There’s nothing to speak of. It won’t change what’s happened.” Once they’ve slipped inside, she begins to carefully unbind Lysara’s swaddled form, and he sits down with a groan to remove his boots and cloak. Grey Wind does not follow after them, likely still prowling about the ruins. “Did you ever hear stories about beastlings, when you were a girl?” he asks suddenly, keeping his voice hushed as she lays Lysara down in her cradle.

Nell smiles slightly in bemusement as she glances back up at him. “Skinchangers? Of course. I’m a Bolton. Someone’s always accusing a Bolton of stealing a man’s skin and wearing it. There’s all sorts of legends and songs about that sort of thing.”

“No, I mean… like the Mormonts,” he says. “You know. The rumors that they can take on the form of a bear. Or Gaven Greywolf. Or the Warg King.”

“Or Rose of Red Lake,” Nell recounts with a quiet chuckle. “Didn’t they say she could turn into a crane, and fly from castle to castle, bewitching men? And I’d think if Maege Mormont could really turn into a bear, she would have done so by now.”

“Of course,” he says quickly. “They’re not… those are just japes they tell. But the Warg King was a real man.”

Nell takes his cloak from him and folds it neatly, then tosses it into one of the open trunks, then bends down and does the same with his boots while he pulls off his tunic. “Mayhaps. They say he ruled from Sea Dragon Point to the Stony Shore. Until the Starks came out of the wolfswood in a great army, and slew all his sons and beasts of the land and birds of the air, and put all his greenseers to the sword, and carried off his daughters as war prizes.”

“Aye,” says Robb, voice muffled. “I never thought that was fair, when I was a boy. I didn’t like to hear us as the villains.”

She could remind him of more recent history, in which the Starks crushed Bolton rebellions by doing much the same, although they had the tendency to leave a son or two alive to continue the line, after they’d burned their castles and carried off their daughters. But that’s neither here nor there. 

“Well, he was a terrible warlock king who practiced all sorts of dark arts,” Nell smirks as she slips off her own shoes. “And mayhaps they wanted warg children of their own. It’s just an old tale, Robb. The real history was likely much different. A thousand years from now, they’ll claim I was a witch out of the Dreadfort who gave you a potion that turned you into a wolf, and you went rampaging through the Westerlands, howling at the full moon.”

She expects him to at least smile at that, but he just stares back at her as if stricken, before composing himself. She comes forward to kiss the old scar on his shoulder, the wound he took at the Crag. “I don’t think you ought to worry so about the stories they’ll tell. We’ll hire some very good scribes to write it down just how we like it, when the war’s over. That’s what the Targaryens did.”

He shudders slightly from her kiss, but not in distaste. Nell smiles warmly up at him when he undoes her stays without even having to look down her back. “I love you,” he says, almost as if it hurts to say it. “You know I love you, don’t you?”

“Yes, but go on, remind me,” she kisses him again, more eagerly than she thought she would, and he responds with full force, at least until they accidentally bump the cradle and freeze in each other’s arms. Lysara stirs slightly in her sleep, but does not wake up, and Nell muffles her relieved exhale against his bare chest, feeling the goosebumps under her lips. His bare hand against her back feels cold and strange, but she doesn’t mind when the rest of him is warm and familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last fairly calm and introspective-ish chapter for a while. Next chapter we will be seeing some familiar faces. The next few chapters are also going to be quite long, I think, so buckle in for that. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. The only good thing the Show-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named did for this fic was give us the lyrics to Jenny's Song. And we mostly have Florence to thank for that. Some people really like it when characters sing a lot in fics, other people can't stand it. I promise this is the most singing we're going to see for a while. The purpose of this chapter was to not have everyone just teleport to the Twins, and to bring in some discussion of Robb's will and some discussion of weird dreams.
> 
> 2\. Robb's will- so obviously the big thing about Robb's will in canon is 'where is it? does it explicitly name Jon as his heir? where the fuck is Howland Reed?'. To be honest, this will probably should have been written months ago! It's not as if Robb hasn't had his share of mortal peril over the course of the past year. Anyways, the big tension here is that some people are not too keen on the idea of Robb's infant daughter inheriting the title of Queen in the North, nor are they keen on the idea of Nell ruling as her regent. So Jon is clearly an option. Nell makes it very clear to Robb of what she thinks will happen if he even *insinuates* some possibility of Jon inheriting in his will- she thinks they'll quickly dispose of her and Lysara, find Jon a nice Northern wife, and that will be that.
> 
> 3\. "This is stupid. Why is she even worried about Jon? He joined the Night's Watch!" Yeah, it's not really clear in canon either, but Robb certainly seems to believe it would be possible for Jon to leave the Watch in order to take up a ruling position once legitimized as a Stark. Is that actually possible? I have no idea. The point here is more so that Jon has not been legitimized, and according to the will, is not in line to inherit rule of the North should Robb die. Nell's concerns about Lysara are not just because of her dislike of bastards, but also due to the, as mentioned before, tale of Serena Stark, who was wed to her father's half-brother after her father's death in order to keep her from ruling as a sole female lady of House Stark.
> 
> 4\. Dreams. Nell has weird dreams. Robb has weird dreams. Are they willing to discuss these weird dreams with one another? Nope! Nell is beginning to genuinely fear that her dreams may in some way have the potential to 'come true', and Robb, for obvious reasons, does not want to tell his wife that once in a while he shifts into the body of his direwolf and does all sorts of cool stuff like find hidden passages and hunt animals in the woods and tear men limb from limb. Nell, for her part, is not a mind reader, nor does she believe in wargs as anything more than exaggerated distant history, and assumes that the violent dreams Robb experiences are the result of the trauma of war. (For that matter, I do think Robb is likely having genuine PTSD nightmares alongside his actual wolf dreams). 
> 
> 5\. I apologize if this chapter seemed like filler, but I promise the upcoming chapters will not be very filler-y at all. Thank you all again for sticking with this monstrosity of a fic, and see you on Friday.


	37. Donella XXXII

299 AC - THE TWINS

Nell is smiling to herself when they reach the Twins, to the point where Edmure gives her sidelong looks every few moments, and Catelyn’s brow is furrowed, and even Robb seems a little disconcerted with her apparent good cheer. But she can hardly help it; she has been all smiles since they heard that Balon Greyjoy was dead. It was some four days past at Hag’s Mire when they heard; she’d had to fight to keep the grin of relief off her face then, and had saved it for an extra cup of wine after her dinner that night. Thank the gods for this single boon. Balon’s dead, and that means a Kingsmoot. And a Kingsmoot means any Ironborn who wants a say in the next king to sit the Seastone Chair needs swim back to Pyke.

It’s the best they could have asked for, or near that. Victarion will be leaving Moat Cailin and the Neck entirely, if he has not set sail already. Aye, he will leave men behind, to be sure, but without their commander, with the new year fast approaching, and uncertainty in their homeland, they will be much easier targets than they would be as a united force. Nell knows that Victarion’s absence alone does not guarantee them an easy, quick victory, but surely she is allowed to hope, is she not? They are closer to the old gods now than they have been in months. They must know Robb is coming home. They must be ready for him. 

She never counted herself as an especially fervent worshiper before the war, but her hands were wet with blood again before a gnarled old tree in the Mire, where she slaughtered a rabbit amidst the exposed, sun-whitened roots, and she gave her thanks then. Thanks for Balon’s death and Lysara’s good health and safe travel out of the Riverlands. And she prayed that they would see Moat Cailin restored to them alongside the new year, and that she would not pass another name day in the South. 

Robb was pleased too; that was clear enough, although he refrained from openly rejoicing and jeering at the thought of Balon’s unkingly death, as some of his men did. He fell, they say, from one of those rickety old rope bridges the Ironborn scurry across. His body did not wash up for days. Theon is his heir, but Theon must be either dead or close enough to it. There is the sister, Asha, who took Deepwood, but mayhaps she has no desire to tangle with her remaining uncles over her father’s seat. Nell once heard a jape that most Ironborn, if forced to choose between a ship and a wife, would drown their women in a puddle for the chance to stick a mast on a log and call themselves captain. 

Her husband means to send ships of his own, or Lord Mallister’s, more precisely. Two long-ships round the Cape and up the Neck to seek out Howland Reed. Maege Mormont is taking one, Galbart Glover the other, with false orders by letter in case they are taken. With any luck, the crannogmen will find them first, secret them away to Greywater Watch, and Lord Reed and his people will be waiting at the ready when the northmen first broach the Neck again, to guide them covertly through the marshes and bogs and fens. Robb means to take the first thousand in himself, to slip undetected around the causeway, then draw out the Ironborn, make them believe that he is foolhardy enough to challenge them with so few. Yet the rest of the army will follow a few days later; Umber from the eastern side, Bolton from the western, and crannogmen all around them. Robb means to catch Greyjoy’s men in a crushing vice, bristling with the poisoned spears and arrows and knives of the crannogmen. 

That the poor weather has at least temporarily abated is also a cause for celebration; the rivers are still flooding and the ground is still sodden and slick with mud and dead leaves, but at least the rain is holding off for the time being. Lysara seems to find it easier to sleep when on horseback, so Nell is glad of that as well; she doesn’t feel like quite such a failure when her infant daughter isn’t screeching bloody murder every few minutes. Although, even if she were crying, no one would hear it over the roar of the Green Fork, far more bloated and rapid than it ran last year, when they went charging over this bridge to save Riverrun and Ned Stark.

They saved Riverrun, aye. None of the rest of it went quite as planned. 

She has not worn her crown since the executions, but she is wearing it now, and Robb his, as they approach the Twins. Nell stares up at them openly now; they simply rode past them last time, once they’d made the alliance, and neither she nor Robb have ever set foot inside either castle or the great Water Tower betwixt them. They are ugly, she thinks, certainly uglier than the Dreadfort. Riverrun, for all her complaints about its small size and isolated location, suddenly seems palatial. 

But beyond that she can see the army camped on the eastern side of the river, thousands of men, no doubt huddled around fresh cookfires to ward off the dampness and chill, and Robb seems to ease at the sight of them as well. Good. Her father’s forces were able to cross and arrive on time. Between them, the Freys, and Robb’s men, they should have enough to be a proper threat on the field once more.

Grey Wind prowls ahead across the slick, wet bridge as the Frey representatives ride forward to meet them, and Nell, seeing his gait change from a curious lope to a profound stalk, hisses to Robb, “Call him back, before he spooks their horses.”

“Grey Wind, to me!” Robb roars over the sound of the Green Fork, and the wolf hesitates, but reluctantly turns back, tail erect and growling softly at the unfamiliar smells. 

“Mind yourself,” Nell informs the direwolf, who stares up at her balefully with golden eyes. “I don’t like the smell of them either, but here we are. We can’t have you tearing off limbs at a wedding.”

Ser Ryman, the new heir after Stevron died at Oxcross, and his sons ride forth to meet them. Ryman is fleshy, near bald, and all smiles in the saddle, coming forward to shake hands with Robb and Edmure, and kissing the back of Catelyn and Nell’s. All the while, one of his beady eyes never quite leaves Grey Wind, who winds his way between the horses, watching. 

Black Walder, the one who is lying with Fair Walda and the one they all apparently fear so, who rode ahead with some men from Riverrun to prepare for the festivities, is far less effusive in his greetings, but offers a tight smile and nod of welcome along with his brothers; sallow and skinny Edwyn, with hair like black grease, and warty Petyr Pimple, barely older than Nell and clutching the reins of his palfrey with a nervous smile.

“We’d expected you earlier,” Ryman says, “but no matter. The weather’s been foul, and you’ve greater concerns than a simple affair like this, I’m sure.” He offers Nell an obsequious grin, looking to Lysara at her chest. Her own faint smile vanishes. “My lord father offers his congratulations on your child, Your Grace. We Freys know what a blessing a growing family can be.”

“And, gods be good, many sons to follow the little princess,” Edwyn adds with a chuckle that sets Nell’s teeth to gritting. If her sons grew up to look and sound like that, she’d have thrown herself into the bloody river. Perhaps that’s what their own mother did; the Twins is full of widowers, which she supposes makes sense, as none of them seem to wait long before getting their wives with child over and over again until she drops dead of exhaustion or bleeds out in the birthing bed.

Their chambers are to be in the Water Tower; Robb’s men will cross over to the eastern banks to make camp under the massive tents with the rest of the army. But first there is old Walder Frey to pay homage too, him and his four thousand men that will help them win this war, or at least keep them from losing it. Edmure is annoyed that Lord Walder did not meet them outside himself, even if the man is past ninety and far too old to sit a horse, and Nell can tell that Catelyn privately agrees with her younger brother, as loathe as she is to admit it. 

But is that not the way with these Freys? They are never satisfied. They would never dare insult Robb directly, but that does not mean they will not snap up whatever grudges they can, complain that they were not honored with battle commands the way Father and others were, complain that Nell only married off two of their daughters- although she would argue this marriage rounds that out to three- complain that Robb did not force his own men to take Frey wives and squires. Robb could have set her aside and taken a Frey wife himself, and they would still find something to grumble over.

Nell has never met the notorious Lord Walder before, although she has heard plenty. The cavernous hall renders an already shrunken man even smaller. Nell has been around plenty of large families; the Flints come chiefly to mind, and some of the mountain clans have enough sons and daughters to stand from one peak to another, but this is truly a horde. She hadn’t realize just how many men they could summon up from their own kin alone. 

There must be well over three hundred of them just in this hall; old men with whiskers, young men with fresh beards, children playing quietly at their feet; green boys and young maids and every age in between. She searches the crowded hall for any familiar faces; she does not expect to see Tyta or Alyx, since wed and with their husband’s families now, but surely the others must be among the Freys gathered here. As they approach Lord Walder’s seat, she does catch a glimpse of Arwyn and Marianne standing alongside some older women; Nell smiles briefly in their direction, and Arwyn raises a hand timidly in greeting, whereas Marianne is staring up at her great-grandfather as if afraid to look away.

Walder Frey is old and made ugly by age, it’s true, although Nell has her doubts that he was ever a particularly handsome man to begin with. No hair, no teeth, skin perilously hanging from his gaunt bones. Up close, he looks half blind as well; she wonders if he’d have any idea who they were, if not for the herald who announced them. But his eyes seem to focus on Robb and her all at once, and on Grey Wind as well. His wife draws back in fear at the sight of the direwolf; Lady Joyeuse looks far from joyous, if Nell is to be honest, and who could blame her? The girl can’t be a day older than fifteen, and she’s wed to a man old enough to be her father’s grandfather. 

“Oh no,” says Lord Walder, at the sight of Grey Wind. “You’ll excuse my- _heh_ \- insolence, Your Grace, but we can’t have a beast of that size prowling the Twins. Picking off the little precious- _heh_ \- children,” he indicates the hall around with with a frail wave of a hand spotted with age and lined with deep wrinkles. “Let one of these louts they call my grandsons bring your wolf to the kennels.”

“Grey Wind would only set your dogs mad,” Robb replies diplomatically. “And he’s only a threat to men he doesn’t trust. I promise you this much, my lord, he’ll give your kin no trouble so long as he’s with my wife and daughter.” 

“Grey Wind,” Nell says, lightly, as if showing off a trick before a crowd of admiring onlookers, and not a hall full of shifty, murmuring Freys, “to me.” Grey Wind trots over to sit by her side; his head nearly comes up to her shoulder, and she is not at all a short woman. “He’s very attached to Lysara,” she says. “So the children have nothing to fear.”

Lord Walder doesn’t look pleased, but quite literally, she observes, hasn’t a leg to stand on. “Very well,” he coughs, dabbing at his mouth with a stained kerchief. “Let’s see the little princess, then. Indulge a- _heh_ \- sentimental old man, won’t you?”

Nell moves to step forward, but Grey Wind barks suddenly, blocking her path. Black Walder tenses, and Edmure glances between her and Robb. “Here,” Catelyn says quickly, holding her arms out. Nell slips her daughter, now awake and alert, her fingers in her mouth, from the sling, and hands her over to her good mother, who steps forward to present the babe. Grey Wind watches, grumbling deep in his throat. Nell lays a hand on his neck, and he quiets some. 

“The Tully hair,” Walder Frey grins toothless at Catelyn, looking up from the babe. “I’ll wager you were pleased with that, weren’t you, my lady? Let us pray, _heh_ , she’ll be as much a beauty as her grandmother. And her mother, of course,” his gaze passes over Nell once more, lazily, “has anyone ever told you, _heh_ , my queen- that you’ve got your father’s eyes?”

“You are too kind, Lord Frey,” Catelyn says coolly, stepping back from the dais and returning Lysara to Nell, who says curtly, “Many times, my lord. I was greatly relieved to see that he and his men had returned here safely.”

“He’s a hard one to kill, that Roose!” Spittle flecks across Walder Frey’s pale lips. He turns his clouded stare to Edmure. “At last, our young groom. Last I saw you, you were a green boy. No more, eh? Not after your great victories against the Lannisters, _heh_.”

Edmure reddens, but to Nell’s relief he maintains his composure. “I’m very pleased to be here, Lord Walder. Roslin and I became very fond of another during her brief time at Riverrun.” He looks around, brow creased. “Is she here now?”

“On the eve before her wedding?” Lord Walder smiles, although it seems like more of a leer. “Terrible luck, that is. No, she’s much to do before the morrow- womanly things, you know, prayers and tears and the like. But I am glad to hear you’ve taken a liking to the girl, _heh_. The prettiest of my get, if you’ll permit an old man some vanity. And so excited for her special day. It’s not often a Frey of the Twins is honored with such a fine match as yourself, my lord Tully.”

“I look forward to welcoming your daughters and granddaughters back into my company, my lord.” Nell says, while Edmure is puzzling out whether that is a blatant insult or a backhanded compliment. “I’ve missed their companionship since their return here.”

“Of course, of course,” Walder flaps a hand dismissively. “Most eager, they are. You got two of them wed, if I recall right, and shipped two off to Burrowtown-,”

“Barrowton, my lord,” someone ventures timidly, as he descends into another harsh coughing fit.

“And I’ve no doubt you’ll see the rest wedded and bedded as well, eh, Your Grace?”

“Certainly,” Nell meets his gaze evenly, wondering idly how any of them have gone this long without pushing the old lecher down a flight of stairs. Perhaps the fear of the Twins descending into complete chaos is all that keeps some would-be kinslaying at bay. She very much doubts that a man like Black Walder would be willing to simply wait for his own father to die. 

Bread and wine and salt and cheese is brought out for them and the other lords present; Nell eats more out of formality than any real hunger, although she lets Lysara suckle a minuscule amount of salt from her finger tip. Then they are led off to the Water Tower, Lame Lothar shuffling haltingly up the narrow, winding stairwell to bring them to their rooms. They are more lavish than she’d expected from the infamously stingy Freys, with carpets and thick rugs on the floors, new tapestries on the walls, and fires in all the hearths. Robb and her are afford an entire suite at the top of the tower, something they did not even have at Riverrun. Nell runs her hand along the quilt laid across the bed, wondering if Arwyn or Roslin helped to construct it, while Lothar offers her the use of a wet-maid and nursery. “That won’t be necessary,” Nell says, without looking up. “I prefer to keep the princess with me.” Grey Wind is shaking off his damp fur in front of the hearth; Lothar murmurs his assent and goes.

A cradle was provided, to her relief, she lays her daughter down in it after changing her socks, and goes to look out the window to watch Robb’s army crossing the great bridge. The sight of them marching down below gives her some brief measure of confidence. These are battle-hardened soldiers, not some ragtag group of green boys and old men. Robb comes in briefly to change, then goes to meet with his lords, eager, no doubt, to hear reports from the likes of her Father and others. 

Nell changes into a fresh gown herself, some simple woolen dress, then sits down on the edge of the bed, letting herself relish in the feeling of a hearth once more. She was eager enough to be back on the road when they left Riverrun, but over a fortnight of travel with a crying infant was as grueling as Robb warned it would be. Still, she is glad they are here together. She’d be feeling much worse if she were at Seagard now. And what she cannot quite admit is that part of her is almost afraid to be alone with Lysara without him. 

Robb missed the majority of the pregnancy, but he has been here since their daughter’s birth, and while she naturally is the one who spends most of the time holding Lysara, comforting her, feeding her, of course, changing her and bathing her, his presence is still a comfort in many ways. Without him… She will endure it, but it will be harder. Jory is just a girl, and as fond as Dana is of infants, she doesn’t understand. The only one she can really turn to is Catelyn, and they may not be fighting with one another, but they are far from reconciled, either.

But as much as she would like to stay in this room and sleep, some things cannot be avoided. Father is one of them. Her gut tightens at the thought. No. It will be fine. She didn’t… Robb may know some of the truth of him, now, but he will still know better than to let it affect the way he treats with Roose. Robb loves her- and she uses that to gird herself like steel- but he is also practical. He will not let on to Father that he is anything but honored and pleased to be his good son. And she must do the same, no matter- she glances at Lysara, and feels a queer twist of fluttering fear in her chest, like a trapped bird. 

“No one is going to hurt you,” she says aloud, and is not sure whether she’s speaking to her daughter or attempting to comfort herself.

Robb is meeting with her father, stoic Robin Widowsflint, portly Ser Wendel Manderly, the Greatjon and the Smalljon, one as fiery and boisterous as the other, and of course, Father. Catelyn is there as well, sitting by the table, a cup of mulled cider in her hands. The men are warming their cold hands before the fire, but Robb and Grey Wind both look up when she enters the room, having left Lysara under the capable care of a bored Jory, and the other men turn and bow briefly to her. Even Father. She feels a brief flash of triumph at this show of deference, and then it is gone as soon as she meets his eyes, and married mother or not, she is a girl again, and it is all she can do not to look away guilty, as if she’d committed some wrong he was about to discover. “Daughter,” he says mildly as ever, and comes over to kiss her on the cheek, his hands like iron on her elbows. “A pleasure to see you looking so radiant in motherhood. How is the babe?”

“Well, Father,” Nell is almost surprised at how easily she falls back into the public role of the dutiful little daughter, smiling blandly and meekly at him, recoiling under her skin at the brush of his dry lips against her cheek. “And yourself? We were worried you might meet with trouble on the way back here.” She looks past him to Ser Wendel, whose round face is uncharacteristically grim and drawn.

“Alas,” Father says, “we did, although not from enemy soldiers. By the time we reached the Trident the river was flooding at the banks. As I was telling His Grace, fording became impossible. We were forced to use small boats, and it was perilous work, especially for men unused to the wild waters. Two boats were overturned, and a dozen good men drowned. Ser Wylis among them.” His tone grows faint, as Ser Wendel turns away to compose himself. “I blame myself. Had I made better time…”

“There is naught you could have done, my lord,” Robin Flint says plainly. “Nature is a cruel mother at the best of times.”

“At least you were not harried on your way across,” the Smalljon speaks up emphatically, his father nodding in agreement. “But where the hells is Karstark? King Robb means to make him answer for that sorry business at Duskendale he and Glover concocted.”

“Young Harrion took a wound at Duskendale,” Father says with a sigh, “as you all well know. Not mortal, but grievous enough that it was strained by our crossing. He elected to remain behind with the six hundred men I meant to leave there to guard the north bank against the South, along with the Karstarks under his command- some four hundred, I believe. They rallied to his command, although I expressed my… misgivings.”

Robb is grave. “I am glad to hear we will be well defended as we prepare to take back the Neck,” he says slowly, “but I gave commands for Karstark to remand here with his men yet loyal to our cause. Six hundred would have been ample men to hold the shore.”

“I have a hundred Karstark soldiers among my own forces present here,” Roose admits, “but I would have rathered them all. This Harry, as they call him, proves to be as stubborn as his late lord father.” His lips press together into a thin line. “I commend your hard line towards treachery, Your Grace. Such things cannot be tolerated, even from men who were once leal. Once a dog learns he is free to bite at will, it is not long before he snaps off a few fingers.”

He is genuinely perturbed, Nell thinks, by this business with Harry Karstark. That may be some cause for concern. Father is always unflappable. If Karstark managed to get under his leathery skin… She feels a slight prickle of something cold and slick, like sweat, down her spine. Robb looks ill at ease as well. One thousand men is no great army, for sure. Most mercenary brotherhoods are at least thrice that. But it is still enough to do no shortage of damage. 

Were Harry Karstark to take those thousand men and use them against them, or worse, turn to the Lannisters or Tyrells- No. Jaime Lannister slaughtered his brothers. Harrion is not that sort, she thinks. Wants to think. But if they sent a Tyrell representative instead, and made a sweet enough offer…”I’ll send a raven,” Robb says coldly. “He has a fortnight to take his men from the north shore to here, to join up with the rest of this army. Otherwise... “ He lets it hang in the air, unsaid, much like an axe.

Father smiles faintly; the Greatjon scowls in approval.

“There is also the matter of my natural son,” Father says, looking now. Grey Wind was lying down under the table at Robb’s mother’s feet, but now he comes prowling out. For a split second, Roose Bolton pauses, then continues smoothly. “I’ll not deny I had my doubts when I took Ramsay on, but he has proven himself amply with his defense of Winterfell and the salvation of those people. I hope he shall be rewarded justly upon your return to the North, my king. He has sworn to not sheathe his sword until every Ironborn who plagues our kingdom is dead upon it.”

However briefly, his gaze flickers to her. This is a test, Nell thinks, to see how much she has told Robb, what she has told Robb. But she does not crack, nor does Robb, whose expression is smooth and neutral as he says, without so much as a moment’s hesitation. “I shall be sure to deliver to Master Snow his just rewards when this war is over. Does he still hold Theon Greyjoy?”

“The turncloak,” Greatjon spits in disgust, but Father only inclines his head.

“In a fashion. Ramsay is a courageous man, to be sure, but what is courage without a touch of cruelty? Even the best of us must never be afraid to shed blood where it is due, and I am sure Lady Catelyn would agree…” He is taking something from a pouch at his belt. Ser Wendel makes a sound faintly like a retch. Roose holds out a dried strip of skin. It could be anyone’s, Nell knows, but she is also certain it is Theon’s. “This is nothing, against what was done to those poor children… Yet I offer it all the same.”

Catelyn has stood, trembling. She nearly reaches for it, then stops herself; Nell watches her fingers twitch. Robb takes it, turns it over in his bare palm. “Leave it be, Robb,” Catelyn murmurs, gripping the back of the chair so tightly that she is white-knuckled. Nell stares at the skin, then takes it from Robb and tosses it into the hearth in one fluid movement.

“He should have taken his head.”

“We currently hold the rightful King of the Iron Islands,” says Father calmly. “I would advise caution in this regard, Your Grace.”

“Caution?” Catelyn snaps, before Nell or Robb can speak. “He murdered my sons. He is not our hostage. He deserves death.”

“Euron or Victarion, whichever uncle triumphs at the Kingsmoot needs kill Theon himself to hold his seat,” Father makes it all sound so obvious. “If we name a price for his head, they will pay it. It could prove the key to retaking the North completely from these Ironborn.”

Robb sounds tired, suddenly. “Then let your bastard hold him. I will take Theon’s head myself when the time comes.” 

Nell spends the rest of the evening laying out her clothes for the next day and going over the baggage inventory for what will be brought to Seagard with Dana, whose gaze keeps flitting to the door. Lysara begins crying again, this time to be fed, and Nell stands up at last with a groan. “Dana, go. I’m sure Marianne is around here somewhere, waiting-,”

No sooner are the words out of her mouth then there is a polite knock on the door. “Enter,” Nell calls out wearily, sitting down on the bed with Lysara in her arms; she’s not about to delay nursing unless it’s a man, and it is not; the Waldas are the ones to bustle into the room, followed by a wan Arwyn, who nevertheless summons up a smile at the sight of her and Dana. 

“My ladies,” Nell says in surprise, as she reaches round her back to loosen her stays so she can pull down the bodice of her gown and feed her daughter. “I was uncertain if I’d see you before the wedding on the morrow.”

“Well, it was only polite that Walda come see her granddaughter.” 

Nell had conveniently put any thought of her father’s new wife out of her mind, but now once and for all she knows who it is; Fat Walda, not Fair, who blushes pink as spring and who hesitates beside her sardonic cousin, who nonetheless indicates Lysara with a tilt of her head.

Fat Walda curtsies deeply; Fair Walda curtsies moderately, and Arwyn curtsies poorly, fumbling with her skirts like a little girl. Nell mislikes this effect the Twins seems to have on them. Fair Walda seems colder once more, Fat Walda meeker, and Arwyn tongue-tied. If any of them flourished at Riverrun, well away from their family, they have receded back into their respective shells here. Thank the gods they will all be at Seagard within a few days’ time. 

“Your Grace, I was honored when your lord father chose me to be his bride,” Fat Walda recites awkwardly, barely able to meet Nell’s eyes. “He… he is a good and true husband to me, and I pray that we can be like a family when the war is over and done with.”

For all her annoyance and discomfort, Nell cannot help the pity. Walda did not choose this. She cannot say why Roose would have picked her, specifically, but it is yet another waste, another misfortune. For all that Walda’s looks are mocked, Nell has only ever known her as a gentle-natured girl, cleverer than many take her for, and surely deserving of a decent man to share a bed and raise children with, not… not what she was given. 

“I look forward to it as well,” she says evenly, then nods to Fair Walda and Arwyn as she waits impatiently for Lysara to latch at her breast. “Well, what say you of my daughter?”

“Healthy,” Fair Walda observes with an arched eyebrow. “If she is always so eager to eat.”

Nell winces as tiny nails claw at her breast, rearranges Lysara, and relaxes slightly, as she always does, when she begins to suckle successfully. “She’ll be a tall, strong girl in time for winter, I pray.”

Arwyn finally speaks, her hands clasped tightly before her. “Roslin is so excited for the wedding, Your Grace. It’s- it’s been all she can think of, all any of us can think of, these past weeks.”

“Wedding are always so exciting,” Dana says. “Where are the others? Helping her prepare for the morrow? We had not seen Zia or Marissa… or Marianne?”

Arwyn’s tentative smile falls. “Zia and Marissa took ill last week. Spots and fevers, the both of them, but Maester Bennett says it should pass in time. They are sorely upset to miss the festivities, but when they have recovered, they will join us at Seagard. And Marianne…” she hesitates.

“Marianne is in mourning,” Fair Walda says flatly, giving Arwyn a sharp look as if to chasten her. “There’s no prettier way to put it. Her father passed in his sleep a fortnight ago. Her mother has been dead for many years now-,”

Dana makes a small noise of shock, a hand coming up to her mouth.

“I am sorry to hear that,” Nell says genuinely, shifting her grip on Lysara as she continues to nurse. “Please share our deepest sympathies with her and her… her brothers, was it? I seem to recall her mentioning them.”

“The boys, yes,” says Fat Walda, lips pursed in pity. “Walder and Patrek. They’re devoted to one another now that they’re… well, orphans.”

“But no one is ever truly alone here at the Twins.” Fair Walda brushes a lock of blonde hair behind an ear. “Everyone has lent a hand to them in their grief. Why, our uncle Ryman has taken them on as his own squires. In time, Marianne will recover.”

“I- I should go to her,” Dana says hoarsely. “To… just to offer my comfort-,”

Nell tenses, unsure of how much the other women suspect, but while Fat Walda looks away, Fair Walda doesn’t seem very suspicious. “Of course. She cannot tolerate visitors for long, but she may be glad to see you all the same.”

She escorts Dana from the room, skirts whispering around the door-frame, leaving Fat Walda, who shifts from foot to foot uncomfortably, and Arwyn who says, “We should let you rest, of course. You’ve just come off days of hard travel and… and we’ll all be traveling again, the day after tomorrow, won’t we?”

“I see no point in delaying things any further,” Nell says. “Robb intends to march just before dawn, and so shall we, so long as the weather holds. I hope you are prepared for the ride- if we make good time we should only have to spend a single night on the road on the way to Seagard.” She pauses and then adds meaningfully, “Patrek Mallister will accompany us as part of our escort. He can be quite charming when he sets his mind to it.”

Arwyn flushes bright red, and bobs her head. “Of course, Your Grace. Thank you for your consideration.” 

The rain holds off until nightfall, but even then it is a mild pattering, not the onslaught of buckets pouring from the skies that it was on the way here. Nell stokes up the fire and listens to the rush of the river all around them, as if they were underwater, and to the even more distant sounds of the men camped out on the banks, their banners flapping in the wind. She does not want to admit or consider that tomorrow is her and Robb’s last day together for some time. It isn’t fair. He’s right. They deserved more time. But there’s nothing to be done for it now.

She meant to stay up and wait for him, but after feeding Lysara again, she falls asleep on top of the bed, having not even bound back her hair so it won’t tangle. She half-wakes at some point to hear him and Grey Wind entering the room, and she listens to him undress and put out the fire in the hearth with a bucket of water, before he clambers onto the bed beside her. Nell knows it is childish of her, but there is something comforting about pretending to be fully asleep.

Robb gently moves her over so he can pull the covers out from under her, then slips under them beside her, his right leg flung over her own as it always is, his chin resting on the warm crook of her neck. He puts his arm around her waist and seems to nestle into her hair, and she feels something like a sob in her throat, but not of despair or heartbreak.

Early in the morning Robb is roused by his squire, Olyvar, to speak with Helman Tallhart, who, if Nell is hearing correctly, would like to share some updated maps of the southern half of the Neck, since the Freys have been sending him out to scout it for weeks now, arguing that it would come in good use when Robb returned. At least the garrison left here was good for something other than drinking and wenching, Nell thinks, and then falls back asleep for a few minutes, luxuriating in the warmth of the bed, until Lysara wakes with her customary wail. Yet for all of the dark circles under her husband’s eyes and the truly horrendous porridge they serve for breakfast, the day has dawned clear and fair, the skies a faint blue-grey with wispy clouds. 

The river churns muddy brown and grey as always, but the weather is warmer than it has been in weeks, and the breeze is refreshing compared to the stiff winds they faced on the way up here. Nell dresses in silvery grey, a finer gown than she has worn in months, and wears deerskin slippers on her feet instead of boots. When she sees Robb in a fine midnight blue doublet, his hair combed, she realizes she had almost forgotten what it was like to see him without armor on. Grey Wind is in a foul mood, snapping and snarling at the breeze, any passing Frey, dogs and cats that flee in terror, but calms some when Robb gets him a leg of lamb to tear apart. 

Predictably, it takes just as long as expected to organize several hundred wedding guests; Nell feels this makes her own wedding look rather quant in comparison, but at least they did not have to suffer through the tedious, long-winded bore of a sermon they do at the Twins’ sept. The Freys are not, it seems, the most devout of families and it’s reflected in their rather shabby place of worship; the statues of the Seven are oily carved black wood, their faces barely distinguishable from one another. The candles flickering make it seem much later in the day than it actually is, but Edmure is smiling broadly in the shadows all the same when Roslin takes her place beside him. 

Nell watches her closely; Roslin’s eyes are red-rimmed and her nose wet, but she seems relieved enough when they finally seal the union with the kiss, clutching Edmure’s hands as if she were drowning, and smiling waveringly as they lead the procession out of the sept. She’s not the only one; Dana looks similarly distraught over something, but when Nell tries to lean in to murmur to her, she merely shakes her head and shoos her towards the aisle. During their brief walk outdoors, Nell can just make out the feasting beginning under the tents on the banks; men laughing and drinking and singing. Not drinking too much, she hopes.

As if he’d read her mind, Robb comments aloud, “I don’t want hammers inside their heads on the morn. I mean to set off with my thousand before first light.”

“Any man who is derelict of his duties on the morrow will be scourged,” Father says from behind them, keeping easy pace with Dacey Mormont and Owen Norrey. “You have my solemn word on that, Your Grace.”

“Aye, we’ll threaten to drown them in a cask of ale, the way Mad Euron did with Lord Botley,” the Smalljon japes, and Nell laughs with the rest as they make their way into the feasting hall.

This is Nell’s third wedding feast of this year alone, and it is not so different from any of the rest, aside from the sheer size of it. Nell is seated at the high table along with all the other guests of honor; Edmure and Roslin command the center of it, as is their right as the newly married couple, and she and Robb are on opposite sides of them; Nell is wedged in between Catelyn and Roose, Fat Walda on the other side of him, Robb in between old Walder himself and Ser Ryman. Several offers are made to take Lysara and put her in the nursery for the evening, but Nell demures each time, declaring that she means to retire early anyways. The noise level inside the hall quickly grows deafening, even during the long spree of speeches. 

When the first courses are finally brought out, Nell is relieved, her stomach growling in protest, but while they are all being served the very best of the wine and ale, from what she can tell- although Robb nor his honor guard will so much as touch a drop- the food itself certainly leaves something to be desired. It’s not the worst spread Nell has ever eaten, and certainly still better than hard tack bread and sausages, as one might eat on march, but the stew is watery and lukewarm, the green beans are slathered in onions, the pike is entirely flavorless, and the calves’ brains are revolting. She lets Grey Wind have them; if he has complaints, he does not voice them, licking the plate clean. Ryman and Black Walder never quite take their eyes off the direwolf, but while Grey Wind does not move from his position lying at her feet.

Most of the guests seem more interested in dancing than eating. Nell dances one of the opening songs with Robb, as is expected of them as king and queen, and then another round with Marq Piper, and then one with Lucas Blackwood, before she finds herself twisted into her father’s arms. Breathless, Nell goes momentarily rigid, then forces herself to relax, sparing a quick glance for Lysara, who is looking around with a babe’s wide eyes at the festivities, safe in her grandmother’s arms. “A sweet babe, my granddaughter,” Father says mildly. Nell isn’t even sure what song is playing; these musicians the Freys hired are truly terrible, their music a discordant jangle of harp and drums and flutes. 

“Thank you, Father,” Nell says, making even eye contact with him. She will not be intimidated. Not here, not now. He answers to Robb. “We count ourselves very lucky to have seen her grow and thrive.”

“It is a blessing,” Father says, as they move fluidly past several other dancing pairs- Fair Walda and Robin Flint, Arwyn and Smalljon, Marianne clad in mourning black and lanky Daryn Hornwood- “I am relieved you have not had to endure the losses your mother and I had.”

Nell is silent; she does not trust herself to speak.

“I hope you might find it in your heart to forgive me, someday, for taking a new wife,” Father continues. “But I thought it wise to give these Freys even further incentive to stay loyal to our cause. And when they offered me the bride’s weight in silver for a dowry, well, Walda seemed the most attractive choice by far.” His tone is faintly amused, as if he actually expects her to laugh with him over this.

“I pray she is very happy in her marriage,” Nell says flatly. “She was a loyal and dear lady in waiting to me at Riverrun. I would be most grieved to hear she found the Dreadfort anything less than welcoming and hospitable.”

“She will want for nothing,” he replies. “As you did. I regret that I could not be present for your coronation, daughter. Such a historic event should be shared with those closest to us.”

“You were serving Robb’s orders,” Nell is proud of herself, for not rising to the bait, for not flinching or scowling or snapping at him. She’s stronger now. This war has made her cold and unbendable, even in his hands. “We all must do our duties.”

“Of course,” Father’s pale eyes gleam in the torchlight. It reminds her of snow at night. “I am glad you recall that particular lesson from your childhood.”

The song, whatever it was, has ended, and the shouts for the bedding are going up. Nell lets go of his hands, resisting the urge to wipe them on her skirt as if he were covered in filth. It must show on her face when she takes her seat beside Catelyn once more; her good mother looks at her in concern. “Are you alright?”

“I’m very well,” Nell says tightly, taking another sip of her wine, before chucking Lysara under her round little chin. “Has she been good?”

“Not a peep from her,” Catelyn presses a fond kiss to the babe’s downy head. “Perhaps she likes this poor excuse for music,” she lowers her voice so as not to be overheard by any passing Freys. Nell exhales in amusement, then glances over to where Robb is finishing a dance with Jory, who is flushed prettily from the heat in the hall, all those great hearths aflame. As Robb approaches the dais, Jory walks over to where Dacey is sitting and laughing with Owen Norrey.

Most of them men are now pulling Roslin out of her seat, and the women crowding around Edmure. Nell reluctantly goes to join them, putting on a game smile and offering up her own fresh japes and jests about Tully trouts swimming upstream to Frey gates. Both bride and groom are nude by the time they reach the corridor. Nell lets the others go on ahead, then turns back for the hall, only to find her pace quickening at a familiar sound. Grey Wind is growling, teeth bared, at Edwyn Frey, who is pressed up against a doorway, his cup in hand. 

“Grey Wind!” Nell snaps, and the wolf hesitates, then continues to the menace the man.

“A castle is no place for a wolf,” Edwyn curses as Nell whistles sharply. 

Finally Grey Wind falls back, heeling to her side. “I’m sorry, Ser,” she says curtly. “All this noise and people set him on edge.”

“He ought to be chained in a kennel,” Edwyn scowls; he seems about to say more, when Catelyn steps out into the darkness of the hall, Robb at her side. Inside, the musicians have struck up one of the last songs of the night, The Bear and the Maiden Fair. Nell can barely make out the tuneless melody, but the singing is familiar enough.

“You didn’t help with the bedding?” Nell asks Robb, eager to change the subject as Edwyn slinks off, face red. 

“Roslin seemed frightened enough,” he shakes his head. “I thought she might burst into tears at any moment.”

“Many girls go tearful to their marriage beds,” Catelyn puts a hand on his arm; her other arm cradling Lysara. “If Edmure has sense enough, he’ll put her at ease once the rest of them have gone.”

Robb nods tiredly, then takes Lysara from his mother. “We should retire. It’s going to be an early start tomorrow for all of us.”

They are at the base of the Water Tower when they see the Bracken sisters on the steps; Nell doesn’t recall seeing other at the feast past the first course, but that is to be expected; Jayne still cannot tolerate them, and Barbara is not one to leave her sister alone while she enjoys the festivities. They both look well enough, if slightly troubled. “Is something wrong?” Nell asks, as Robb speaks quietly with his mother about the plans for the morrow.

“No,” says Barbara swiftly, “we were only… well, Jayne is very fond of little Shirei, she reminds her of our youngest sister, Alysanne, but we couldn’t find her. She wasn’t with the other children in the nursery.”

“Is she ill?” Nell frowns. “Arwyn told me that Marissa and Zia had both taken sick with spots and a fever.” Although she does not think Arwyn would have neglected to mention that her own little sister was sick as well; the two of them have always been so close.

Barbara shrugs. “It’s no matter. Perhaps she just wandered off to play. Children are always up to mischief on nights like this.”

Nell can recall many a feast at Barrow Hall as a girl, where she would spend half the night out in the stables, chattering away to the workers there, a cup of hot cider in her hands, watching the stars appear over the fields. The thought almost warms her against the cold draft in their bedchamber when they finally reach the top of the tower. Robb steps into the other room to change, and Nell finds Dana already abed across the hall. She knocks lightly on the door to see if she is awake, but Dana doesn’t budge, so she quietly closes the door once more. Perhaps things went poorly with Marianne. Grief often does that. 

Robb has gotten the windows shut and a small fire going by the time she’s changed into her own shift. Neither of them are in much mood to speak, exhausted from the day’s events, so they more or less collapse into bed beside each other. Nell thinks she ought to say something, though, in case they are too tired when they wake, so she does say sleepily at one point, “They were playing the Bear and the Maiden Fair when we left. Do you remember that feast at Winterfell?”

For a moment she thinks Robb has already nodded off, but instead he says, “Yes. Everyone was drunk and singing, and you tripped, and I caught you.”

“I tripped because I was looking at you,” Nell murmurs, eyes closed and her hand on his chest.

“Was I that distracting?”

“You scared me,” she recounts in a whisper. “Because I thought for a moment that I might really begin to like you. And that terrified me.”

“Oh,” he says. “I thought I was the only one afraid of that.” And he squeezes her hand, and then they say no more to each other. 

They wake in the dark, what feels like barely five hours later, dress in the dark, and make their way down the torch-lit stairwell in the dark. Their horses and respective companions are waiting on the bridge outside. Robb’s battle guard is ready to cross to the eastern side of the river and head north, Nell’s ladies are ready to cross to the western side of the river and head south. But the weather has held; it’s much colder than it was the day prior, and the air is dry, not damp.

Lysara is mercifully sleeping at her chest, and Nell doesn’t want to disturb her, so as is difficult as it is, she keeps the goodbye brief. “Be safe,” she warns him.

“It won’t be long,” he promises her. Grey Wind whines low in his throat, a guttural complaint.

He kisses Lysara’s head, her face, one of her small fists. She kisses him thrice; once on the cheek, once on the forehead, once on the lips. They stand there locked together for a moment, his hand holding the back of her head, and then let go. Nell turns away quickly, so she can’t stare after him helplessly as he swings into the saddle. Grey Wind starts to follow her, at least until Robb sharply call him back. He obeys; growling softly. Patrek Mallister moves to help her onto Roddy, but she waves him off; he helps Dana mount instead, and then asks quietly, “My lady, are you alright?”

Nell glances over, and sees that Dana’s eyes are wet with unshed tears. She moves to lay a concerned hand on her, but Dana waves them both off. “I’m fine,” she says roughly. “Just catching a cold.”

Patrek rides ahead, and Nell mouths, ‘Marianne?’ at her. Dana just gives a tiny nod, and presses her lips together. She can barely make out Marianne riding ahead, head bowed against the breeze. Their escort is some thirty men; Patrek and perhaps a dozen northern guards Robb personally selected, and the rest are Freys, Ser Edwyn chief among them. Nell takes some pleasure in quickly outpacing him and his pale white courser. Catelyn keeps good pace with her own mount; Dana hangs back with the Bracken sisters on their geldings. They break into a trot once across the bridge, and the towering outline of the Twins grows slightly smaller behind them as they reach the treeline. The sun is not yet up, but the moon hangs round and full, a pure beacon above them, so bright on this night that the horses have little trouble at all finding the path.

They’ve gone perhaps twenty minutes when Nell finally takes a headcount and realizes someone is missing. She hangs back with Roddy for a moment, letting Catelyn go ahead, and riding alongside Arwyn instead. Normally a small girl of seven like Shirei would either be afforded a pony of her own, or ride in front of one of the other women, but Nell doesn’t see her in their group. “Did Shirei stay behind at the Twins?” she asks Arwyn quietly. “Has something happened?”

“She… She’s not well,” Arwyn says, as if it pains her to even think of it. “I… I didn’t want-,”

“Arwyn!” Nell does not recognize the man who has reined up alongside them at first, but after a moment realizes this is Fair Walda’s father, Walton, a gruff looking man with an equally curt demeanor. “Her Grace is tired and carrying a babe. She wants none of your gossip.”

Nell scowls, and opens her mouth to rebuke him, when suddenly Patrek Mallister stops.

“Wait,” he says, as they come to the trail-head. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Edwyn Frey snaps in exasperation. “The river?”

“No,” says Patrek, “I thought-,”

Nell listens, suddenly, drops all thoughts of little Shirei and Dana and Arwyn and really listens, and beyond the usual sounds of the woodlands around them and the rushing of the river, she hears a single, long note of a horn. That doesn’t make any sense. Robb wants a covert approach by nightfall to the Neck; why would he announce it with a warhorn?

A second, answering bellow comes, this one far closer. Catelyn looks suddenly back at her, her face white, her mouth open in a silent question. Arwyn makes a noise like a muffled sob. Nell glances at her, blurts out, “Where is Shirei, Arwyn?” She doesn’t know why she’s asking this question, she knows, she doesn’t know how but she knows, something is wrong-

“I’m sorry,” Arwyn cries, “please- I’m sorry, I didn’t want to-,”

“Be quiet,” Walton Frey orders, a hand going to his sword.

“For gods’ sake, we need to know what’s going on, let’s have the ladies ride hard for Seagard, send two scouts back to the banks-,” Patrek Mallister is arguing loudly with Edwyn.

“Donella,” Catelyn says clearly above the unraveling arguments and cries, as Jayne looks wide-eyed with terror at her older sister, and Dana straightens suddenly in the saddle, and Jory Mormont reaches for the shield strapped to her back- “We need to go.”

Several things happen at once then. Arwyn continues to weep, Barbara reaches for Jayne’s hand, Dana shouts when the man beside her grabs at her reins, Walton Frey unsheathes his sword and slashes in one lunge towards Jory, who just barely blocks the blow with her shield, and Nell sees the riders coming through the trees, just as the horns bellow again, and there is a distant roar of noise across the river, and-

Someone's spear opens up Patrek’s throat; he slumps over in the saddle. Marianne Vance screams, Dana shouts, “NELL, GO!”, Catelyn lunges for the squire beside her’s dagger at his belt, and the Stark men and Frey men around them fall onto each other with shouts and curses. Nell takes her reins in one hand, spurs Roddy into motion, and evades Edwyn Frey by a hair’s breadth when he comes for her reins. She breaks out of the line of riders, setting her heels to Roddy’s sides with a shout, and wrenches loose the roundel that she’s kept at her belt for weeks now. 

The first man who rides up alongside her, she slashes not at him but at his horse’s exposed neck; the stallion rears back with a scream. Nell spurs Roddy on, clears a fallen tree with a yelp, and sees the Green Fork come into view once more before her, only this time the far side is alight with flames and screams, and beyond all of that, Grey Wind howls, and it bounces off the hills like a wailing wind. She chances a glance behind her, and sees at least four riders; Dana breaks off through the trees with two Freys on her horse’s heels, and Jory is standing up in the stirrups as she slides a knife from her boot and plunges it a man’s shoulder; he falls from his horse with a scream. 

Nell is not afraid; she is in shock, and this all feels like a dream, because the river runs to her left, a silvery black stream whispering to itself a thousand times over, and beyond that a wolf is howling and men are screaming and a tent bathed in flames collapses in on itself, and to her right is the dark and the woods and a hunt of sorts, and then she hears the horn again, and she reaches for her bow at her back, and feels her arrows rattling in her quiver, and more riders come streaming out of the trees, and she can’t make out their faces but she can hear their voices.

_You could be snatched up by a grumkin_ , Mother says in her head, from a dream a lifetime ago. _How am I to protect you_?

_You can’t_ , Nell thinks, glances down at Lysara, screeching against her chest, and locks her thighs taut against Roddy’s heaving flanks, lets go of the reins, and grips her bow in order to notch her first arrow. _You can’t_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did warn everyone this was going to be a long one. I expect the next chapter to be nearly as lengthy, and it will be alternating rapidly between different POVs. Please don't ask me directly 'oh so is *insert* going to happen?' 'is *insert* going to die?' in the comment section, because you know I'm not going to explicitly answer your questions in between two chapters like this. As a general forewarning, because I've had people raise the question of whether this fic is ending on a cliffhanger: THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE FIC. WE ARE NOT 'NEAR' THE END OF THE FIC. WE ARE NOT IN THE 'FINAL STRETCH' OF THE FIC. WE ARE *NOT* ENDING ON A CLIFFHANGER. To put it bluntly: the crazy train is not stopping any time soon. 
> 
> Some notes (please read these notes if you are confused):
> 
> 1\. 'I just skimmed this entire chapter, and I don't have time to go back and pick apart every detail. Can you summarize?' Yes.
> 
> Major Point One: Robb and co. have reached the Twins safely. They are welcomed in by the Freys and given bread and salt.
> 
> Major Point Two: Balon Greyjoy is dead. Nell believes this will make retaking the Neck much easier, as it means Victarion and many of his men are leaving with all haste, if they haven't left already.
> 
> Major Point Three: Robb's plan to retake the Neck involves sending Maege Mormont and Galbart Glover ahead on longships to get help from Howland Reed, who will send guides to meet Robb's initial 'lure' fighting force of 1000 men, sneak them into the Neck, and draw out the Ironborn. At the same time, the Greatjon and Roose will lead forces coming up on the eastern and western sides to crush the Ironborn and Moat Cailin in the middle like a vice.
> 
> Major Point Four: Robb is marching 1000 men before dawn the morning after the wedding to do this. Nell is getting an early start on the ride back to Seagard at the same time. Everyone is aware of these plans.
> 
> Major Point Five: Roose has arrived with his men, but claims he lost some men crossing the Red Fork at the Trident, Ser Wylis Manderly among them. He also states that Harry Karstark insisted on hanging back with about 400 Karstarks, on top of the 600 men Roose planned on leaving there to guard the north shore. Robb is not at all happy about this, as he wanted Harrion present for the march north to ensure his loyalty to their cause after the Rickard debacle.
> 
> Major Point Six: Some of Nell's former ladies are missing. Marissa and Zia are supposedly ill, Marianne is grieving the sudden death of her father, Roslin is busy with 'wedding preparations', and the Waldas and Arwyn are far from forthcoming. Little Shirei, Arwyn and Roslin's baby sister, is curiously absent. Marianne's little brothers are squiring for good old Uncle Ryman.
> 
> Major Point Seven: Helman Tallhart has some great new maps of the southern portion of the Neck, because the Freys took the initiative to send him and a large portion of his garrison stationed at the Twins out to scout it in recent weeks. 
> 
> 2\. As annoying as it probably was to read all those little 'heh's, it was even more annoying to write them all out, trust me. And as nerve-wracking as it (hopefully) was to get through that feast, it was just as nerve-wracking to write it. It's never been my intention with this fic to strictly adhere to the canonical road-map at every single turn. I had exactly zero interest in rewriting the infamous Red Wedding scene. There was no way I was going to make it carry the same emotional weight. What I do want to make carry the same emotional weight is that the horns at the end of this chapter, horns very similar to the ones she's been hearing in dreams for months now, are 100% Nell's 'Rains of Castamere'. 
> 
> 3\. I did not want this chapter to be nearly 10,000 words; I was hoping to be able to convey all this in about 7000, but here we are. This fic is like my baby and this chapter was like my baby learning how to walk or something. I'm very proud but I'm also a little terrified and trying to resist the urge to pick said baby up and run away with it. In my initial outline, this happened around chapter 20? So we see what kind of monster I've created here. I really appreciate everyone who leaves comments and kudos and bookmarks this, because this fic has seen the sort of feedback and attention I never could have predicted, given the incredibly niche pairing and characters and the fact that there's many better-written fics out there with similar plot-lines. You guys put a lot of faith into my writing in order to come back and keep up with such a long-winded and at times convoluted plot, and I really appreciate you making this such a rewarding experience for me.


	38. Donella XXXIII - Dacey - Dana I

299 AC - THE CROSSING

UP THE RIDGE

Nell first held a bow as a little girl of five or six; she remembers Mother’s hair tickling her face and neck as she crouched behind her, correctly positioning her arms and legs. “There,” she’d said. “Try to draw back the string now.” But as hard as she pulled and strained, Nell could not move it back an inch. She’d been close to tears when Mother had taken the bow away, complaining that she could do it, next time she’d do it for sure. 

“You won’t,” Mother had told her bluntly. “You’re more likely to learn how to fly than be able to use a bow at six, sweetling. But someday you will.”

“Learn how to fly?” Nell had teased, wiping at her stinging eyes with the back of a child’s round fist. 

“Oh, funny girl,” Mother had said sarcastically, then scooped her up off and her feet and tickled her until she screamed shrilly, the sound ringing off the grove of trees around them. 

There are different screams ringing off the trees now, and at eighteen Nell had little trouble drawing back a bowstring. But hitting a deer standing stock-still in the forest, drinking from a pool of water or nibbling at a bush is one thing. Hitting a rabbit as it darts across a meadow is another. Hitting a man while he comes towards you on a horse, sword drawn, is yet another. And trying to hit riders on horseback while you are twisted round in the saddle at a full gallop yourself, in the dark, on unfamiliar terrain, with a screaming babe at your chest, is yet another.

Nell is a very good shot, under typical circumstances. These are not typical circumstances, so she holds her breath, releases the first arrow, and misses by a mile. Still, they were not expecting archer fire, and they are not sending arrows her way, either, so she keeps it up for three more arrows, and strikes a horse in the chest and a man in the arm for two of them, and then Jory screams, “BRANCH!” and she twists back round and flattens herself and Lysara against the saddle in order to duck under a low hanging pine branch, which scratches at her hair and scalp as they go beneath it. 

But the men pursuing them have fallen back, however briefly. Roddy is heaving and panting underneath his halter; Nell eases up slightly in order to fall into a canter alongside Jory, still gripping her bow tightly. “They fell back,” she says hoarsely; there’s no time to discuss anything else beyond what’s immediately happening. “But not for long. We need to-,” her breath hitches in her throat. “We need to-,” What do they need to do? She doesn’t know. She can’t remember. Where are they going? Who are they running from? “I don’t-,”

“Breathe,” Jory calls back encouragingly, as if they are not fleeing for their lives from men they thought were allies. “Just breathe. We’ll- we’ll make out alright, Nell, we will, I swear.” She glances around the darkened wood; there is still the sound of distant screams and fighting, the familiar clash of steel. The breeze is carrying the thick and oppressive stench of smoke on it, among other things. “We need to find high ground. I don’t know where we are relative to the Twins.”

“Seagard,” Nell licks her lips, then says it louder, in case Jory couldn’t hear over the horses and the twigs and branches cracking under hooves. “We need to get to Seagard.” She chooses to ignore the fact for now that even for a lone rider traveling light, Seagard is still at least a day’s hard ride. And their horses are already exhausted. And within the next hour, the sun will be up, and these woods and entire stretch of the river will be crawling with Freys. There is no choice left. 

There’s a distant shout behind them. Nell only now looks around wildly. “Where’s Dana? Did you see- I don’t know where she-,” Lysara is still wailing, although she has quieted slightly. Nell rubs her head soothingly, looking desperately at Jory’s, whose face is grave and still. “Did you see Dana-,”

“I don’t know where Dana went,” Jory says honestly. “But we can’t look for her now. They’ll be on us again in a few minutes.” She braces her shield with one arm, the reins with the other, and jerks her head to the right. “Go up the ridge. Go! I’ll block the path. Dace and I scouted around here when we first came over the Crossing. You get down the other end, you ride southwest, or just south. There’s caves at the tip of the Hag’s Mire. Take the princess and hide in one of them.”

The shouts are growing louder; in this moonlight and the fresh mud, their tracks must be clear as day. 

“Jorelle,” Nell says through her teeth. “There’s too many of them. You ride with me-,”

“No,” Jory snarls, and for an instant she could be old Maege Mormont, because she seems mostly bear, very little girl. “No. Don’t you argue with me, Your Grace, go!”

Nell goes. She drives Roddy hard up the precarious ridge, the path picked clean by some treecutter’s mule, and Jory Mormont guides her own horse to block the way, drops the reins, and grips both sword and shield to meet the coming onslaught. 

Nell’s not fool enough to try to gallop along this ridge; one wrong move and she could send herself, Roddy, and Lysara all together toppling over into the river rushing below. She picks her way along, taut with nerves, trying to block out all other sounds, and jerks her mount to a halt when she gets her first clear view of the riverfront. When she saw the Battle of the Whispering Wood from a distance and heard the screams of the men and the horses, she’d thought it’d been something like a mouth of hell. 

This must be a mouth of hell, without any doubts. The water is mottled orange and brown from the reflection of the flames. The camps the Freys had set up just days prior are burning. All she can make out are small, distant shapes, but she knows what men on fire look like all the same. Beyond that, a swollen crush of soldiers and horses around the eastern castle, one bloated mass of slaughter, ringed by shields and spears glinting metallic in the moonlight. 

A few men break off, fleeing into the woods, while others willingly throw themselves into the fast-moving river, attempting to let the current sweep them away. She can’t pick out any banners, any distinguishing armor from this distance. When she looks back towards the bridge to the north and the western castle, the bridge is similarly alight with torches and horses and men pitching themselves off it, shouting and screaming. 

She’s shaking so badly, she realizes, that her teeth are chattering together, and not from the cold. Nell digs her nails into her palms, sucks in a breath, and guides Roddy along the remainder of the ridge. Don’t think. Don’t think, just move. There’s no time. Just move, just keep moving-

“Fuck!” the curse slips out easily enough when she’s confronted with the sight of two Freys, swords drawn, waiting down below. There’s no way to avoid being spotted; they see her and eagerly press forward, shouting for her to dismount, that they mean her no harm, just get off the horse and come down nice and gentle- Nell jerks back the reins, trying to turn Roddy, but there’s barely enough room for a mild little mare, nevermind a stallion of his size, and he whinnies in protest, hooves skittering across the rocky ground, and then-

Nell feels the lurch, she thinks, almost before her own horse does. He’s lost a footing, twisted a leg in some hole or gap in the loose soil up here, and as he goes down, all she is cognizant of is that she cannot be under him, or she and her daughter won’t have to worry about any Freys, because they’ll be crushed instantly. Roddy screams, so does she, and she wrenches her boots from the stirrups, tosses her bow aside, grabs the pommel, and in one motion throws herself from his back as he falls. There’s a sickly cracking noise, her Roddy, her horse, he’s screaming again in panic and pain, a deep bellow, and then she’s flat on her back on the ground, watching in winded horror as he goes over the edge and disappears from the sight. 

For a few moments she’s simply lying there in stunned shock, unable to even breathe, and then it all hits her. She fumbles at Lysara, breathes again when she hears her daughter cry, because if she’s making noise she must be alright, and then scrambles onto her hands and knees, clawing at the earth and rocks around her, looking for her bow. She finds it- miraculously, the string is still intact, and the wood hasn’t broken apart, and her quiver is still at her side, and the rondel- she feels it, snug inside the leather belt of her riding dress, and then she’s up and running, back the way she rode up just moments before, sending rocks and gravel flying as she staggers down the slope, searching for Jory-

Jory’s horse is there, but there’s no rider, and Edwyn Frey is stumbling over two corpses. “JORY! JORELLE!” Nell screams- what else can she do, she’s got the river on one side, jagged rocks on the other- she slips and almost falls to the ground, but instead skids down the next few feet, and hears the pounding of boots on the ground above her. Nell whirls around, notches another arrow too quickly to even consider if her aim is anywhere near good, and looses it. It hits one man in the thigh; he crumples with a scream, her next takes the boy beside him in the chest, her third goes far too wide and sails off into the river. The sky is lightening, not that it matters. There’s nowhere left to run, she’d never make it on foot anyways, and now there’s nowhere to hide.

“Your Grace!” 

Nell skirts along the rock wall behind her, ducking beneath overhanging roots of some dead tree, as Edwyn Frey affixes a slick smile he must think looks reassuring, and raises a gloved hand, the other hand still holding his sword. “There’s no need for this. We mean you no harm. We’re all under attack- can’t you see? Put the bow down. Think of your babe.”

No. She can’t think at all. Lysara’s wails have taken up residence inside her head. She has no idea if her daughter is still screaming or if she’s just hearing the same echoes, ringing in her ears, pounding inside her skull. Hammers. Isn’t that what Robb said? I don’t want hammers inside their head on the morn. And then Father had said-

“Call off your men,” she says, only it must be someone else speaking, because she doesn’t sound like that, so frightened and shrill, she would never cry like that, she wouldn’t break down and beg, she wouldn’t, “call them off, Frey. You’ve got what you want. Robb’s men are being slaughtered. The army’s broken. Let us go. You don’t need to do this.”

Edwyn’s smile thins into a sneer. “Put down the bow. You brought this on yourself. You shouldn’t have run. The Mormont girl didn’t have to die.”

Seeing the horrified question in her eyes, he jerks his head towards the rushing Green Fork. “She went over the edge. Like your horse. Enough. Drop the bow, and give me the babe.”

Nell notches an arrow and fires as he starts forward; it misses his ear by inches. The wailing goes on and on. Is Grey Wind still howling, somewhere out there? She can’t hear anything but the crying, and the curses of wounded men, and Edwyn’s shouts for her to stop. Another arrow, he catches this one on the tip of his shield, keeps advancing. If she tries to run, he’ll be on in her in an instant. Another arrow, this one goes too wide as well- how many left? How many left does she have? How many has it been? Does she have another ten? Fifteen? She notches another one, but fumbles it, the iron tipped head scrapes open one of her fingers, stinging in the cold.

How many-

He’s too close, he’s too close, he lowers the shield and she lowers her bow, fumbling at her dress, babbles so he’ll look at her face, not her hands, don’t look at her hands, don’t see- “Don’t hurt my babe, please, don’t hurt her, please-,”

Edwyn Frey is making soft little shushing noises like he’s soothing a frightened horse that needs to be broken in. That slick smile is back, at least until she drives the roundel through his thin mail shirt. It skids along his ribs, then finds a place to call home. His words stutter in his throat; he blanches and topples forward, onto her and Lysara; she shoves him away with a yell, tries to run, and someone slams into her. 

Nell hits the ground, smacks her head, hard, and sees speckled white stars wink out across the steadily lightening sky overhead. Her hands rise again, a useless defense, and then someone is tearing at her chest, and Lysara is screaming, and she tries to grab for her but she’s rolled over onto her stomach, and her face is in the dirt, someone’s knee is on her back, and there’s a mailed hand in her hair, tearing and ripping- She tastes something rusty and thick between her teeth, and screams again against the earth, and then something strikes her across the scalp, and the pain is so absolute and blinding that it is almost a relief. 

ON THE BANKS

Dacey knows it’s over when the banks of the Green Fork come back into view, and the ground turns soft and muddy beneath her boots. They’ve been steadily pushed back further and further for the better part of an hour, as if they were loose cattle being rounded up, and now it’s clear enough that the Freys means to drive them into the water. Her helm hangs crooked, too low over her left eye. She shoves it up with a gloved hand, then pivots and swings, her morning-star smashing into the skull of the Ryswell who’d been struggling to stab Smalljon in the side. He crumples against Smalljon, who shrugs the corpse off the way other men might a gnat, and grins toothily at her under his helm. “How many drinks do I owe you, Mormont?” he shouts, as he shields them both from a fresh hail of arrows.

“Four, by my count,” she yells back, and then darts out from under the cover of the shield as the last arrow hits, swinging her morningstar once more back into the fray. In any other battle you could tell the man you ought to be killing by his armor, the banner he fought under, his position, even the sound of his accent. She knows what a westerman sounds like well enough by now, she’s heard so many of them scream curses at her before they die. But not this one, if you can even call this a battle. Dacey’s not given up hope yet, she wasn’t raised that way, but she knows a slaughter when she sees one, and this is as much a massacre as the one they brought down on Lannister’s men at the Whispering Wood.

Almost eerily similar, in a sense. They’d gone marching through the hilly valley, and no one had been any wiser until the first note of the warhorn, and then suddenly there were riders rushing down from the hills, and foot-soldiers after them, and they’d all been wondering how the hells Tarly or Brax or Marbrand could have gotten this far north without being detected when the first shouts of “FREY” went up. Then, while they were trying to divide into a left, right, and center before the next wave hit, someone had spotted pink banners and there’d been cries of relief- Lord Leech had rallied his men and the Boltons were here to save them. Then the cries of relief had turned to screams, and all that pink went scything down into the mass of panicked men, and after that there was no rhyme or reason to it. 

Anyone could be an enemy, and they all had to be killed. So any man with a sword who points it her way, Dacey kills him, and she kills him quick. That’s the way of it with a morningstar. Smash the face, the back, the legs, get them down on the ground and finish the job, keep a knife strapped to your leg in case you lose the star, and don’t drop your fucking shield. A grey blur streaks past her, charges into a rearing horse to tear out its throat in a steaming spray of blood, and another knight falls, screaming, to Grey Wind. 

Robb is never more than ten feet away from his wolf, as if they were chained together, and the first time Dacey fought at his side she expected the wolf, dire or not, to turn tail and run at the first sign of men on horses- wolves aren’t usually stupid enough to go after someone on horseback, or to hang around once they hear the clash of steel on steel, but Grey Wind’s stupid enough to stay, and clever enough to know where to bite and savage an armored man or horse. Truth be told, she doesn’t know what the fuck he is. A beast with the mind of a man? A man trapped inside a wolf’s skin? She has to wonder, because those gold eyes are far too knowing for her liking.

“TO ME!” Robb bellows again, and they fall back another few paces, tightening ranks around him. She can smell the river now, and she spares a glance for their king, but his face is steeped so much in blood and gore under his helm that it’s impossible to read his expression. Dacey’s ridden into war with the Young Wolf half a hundred times by now, and Robb’s always fought bravely and cunningly, but now he fights like a man possessed, spitting and cursing, and she watches him grip a Karstark by the back of his furred neck and ram his longsword through his back with one swift motion. 

Were Mother here, she’d tell her that because he’s whelped a pup now, and men fight differently when they have something real to protect, beyond just their honor and their lands. Dacey can believe it; Mother has five girls and fights with the strength of five men to protect them, and Aly was a right bitch to take down in the wrestling pit after she had her children. Somewhere on the other side of this accursed river, Robb Stark has a wife and a babe at her breast, and Dacey could rightly believe without any prompting that he’d cut down a thousand men to get to them. 

But they’re the ones being cut down, right now. Every so often she tries to take a headcount. Robin Flint was one of the first to die, and Donnel Locke soon to follow him. Will Flint and his nephew Jonnel died on the same spearpoint. Roger Ryswell tried to rally his men, and one of his own traitors put an arrow through his eye. She hasn’t seen Daryn Hornwood in what feels like ages; he’s either, dead, wounded, or already in the fucking river. Same for Manderly, who went down with his horse withing minutes of the initial attack. Oly Frey was never with them to begin, nor his uncle Perwyn; they both got called back to the Twins on some nonsensical request while they were forming up marching order, with assurances that they’d quickly catch up with the rest. Either they were traitors too, all along, or the Freys called them back to keep them from the slaughter. Doesn’t matter now.

Some men must have been able to escape, she tries to tell herself, as she smashes another skull, catching pieces of it on her bloody lips as he she snarls. They had a thousand on march, the Freys and Boltons tried to pen them in as quickly as possible, but some must have made a run for it all the same, into the woodlands or down the river or back towards the bridge. The Greatjon might be able to rally them, launch a counterattack. That man could rally a herd of wild stallions, if it came down to it. But the bridge is brimming with Freys as well by now, she can hear the thunder of hooves on it in the distance, and sunrise will make the chances of anyone successfully slipping away harder and harder.

“MORMONT! HEAD DOWN!” Owen Norrey screams from behind her, and she ducks, shield raised, as he thrusts his sword through the eye-slit of a Frey’s helm over her shoulder.

Some of these men- these boys, really, she’s twenty seven in a moon and older than most of them, turned up their crooked noses at the thought of fighting alongside a woman, even a Mormont woman, no green girl but a warrior as battle-tested, even moreso, than any of them, but even the Smalljon had tried to tell her she ought to be hurrying on home to let some bear of a man wed and bed her and give her a little babe to tend to…

Owen never said a word about it- didn’t call her a spinster, didn’t call her a whore who was asking for it with her mere presence, didn’t call her a shrew for not acting the role of a camp follower when men got lonely and desperate after weeks of fighting, didn’t mock her teats, her cunt, her face, or her arse in an attempt to scare her off, and that’s not even half the reason why he’s the first man she let crawl under the furs with her in months. Dacey’s never let a man bed her simply because he was sweet to her, or because he tolerated her existence. 

She’s got more worth than that, and she knows exactly what her worth its, because she’s a bloody fucking Mormont of Bear Island and she’s no one’s damned reward or their consolation or their little wife. She’s been lying with Owen because he’s kind, and honorable, and a damn good fighter, and the first time they had each other he whistled long and hard when she hitched off her tunic and made her blush from forehead to chest like a green maid, not a woman grown who ought to be immune to that sort of thing. In battle he calls her Mormont, and she calls him Norrey, but in her head he’s always been Owen, twenty and baby-faced under that shaggy beard and wild hair.

“Alright, Dacey?” he rasps in her ear as she turns, shaking out a crick in her shoulder, and she nods grimly, raises her shield and morningstar again, and sends a passing Bolton toppling from his horse with a wail of shock.

“TO ME!” Robb is as loud as ever, but there’s a fresh crack of exhaustion in his voice, and they fall back again, and the shallows are very close now, as is the bridge. The crush of men and horses around them shows no signs of lessening. Dacey’s been waiting for some sign, some kind of escape route, some chance to break free of this, to rally, to turn the tides, but there’s none. Any chance they had, they lost that when they lost the higher ground, nearly an hour ago. And the sky has gone from black to midnight to now a deep blue, like that of the sea, and the moon’s hanging low, and soon the sun’ll be coming through those trees-

Grey Wind is ripping out a feebly protesting man’s throat when the first bolt hits him from the bridge. Dacey whips around to see that they’ve got a line of fucking archers, some four of them with crossbows, straddling the bridge in order to better their aim. “BEHIND US! FIRE BEHIND US!” she screeches to the men around her, and everyone gets down as the next hail hits, and Owen is trying to cover Grey Wind when a bolt catches Robb in the thigh, and he goes down on one knee with a grunt.

There’s a panicked stillness around them, a momentary lapse, and then their rudimentary outer shield wall splits in half as one Frey lancer leads the charge, and the enemy comes pouring in, and although Dacey knows it’s not true, in that moment it seems like there is no more fucking army, it’s just them, it’s just this guard of perhaps a dozen men left standing and Robb, and any other hope of help is a good ways away, fighting their own fight, and then she’s down, not up, she’s down-

Dacey rolls over in the mud, coughing, and isn’t sure if she was lying there stunned for a just a few moments, or a few minutes. Owen’s lying beside her, staring sightless up at the early morning sky overhead, still bleeding out. She palms his wet chest in shock, squeezes his limp sword arm, and staggers to her feet before she can vomit. Grey Wind is bringing down another horse, while two men hack at his thick fur, so she rounds on them with a guttural, deep scream of rage. 

She wonders if this is battle lust, if she’s gone berserk the way they say men touched by the old gods could. She caves them in like butter, and feels impossibly strong, flecked with blood and bone between her teeth, as she turns round, only to see that Robb’s finally lost his horse, and his sword on the way to the ground, and is grasping for the latter while the former heaves its last breath in the shallows.

Grey Wind races past her, snarling, and then staggers, a bolt buried deep in the fur of his flank. He stumbles on massive paws and slumps forward, and Dacey cries out and scrambles over corpses to reach his side, under the blind belief that if she can just- if she can just pull the bolt out of him, he’ll be alright, he’ll be alright-

Smalljon’s down under the weight of three men, but still screaming and fighting. Lucas Blackwood is grappling in the mud with a Frey. Marq Piper is half conscious at the feet of some Bolton. And while there’s still fighting raging around her, Dacey realizes that the waters of the river are lapping up around her ankles now. They’re lost. The battle might not be lost yet, the war might not be lost yet, but they- these men here, these boys, they’re lost. All of them. No one gets out alive. No one gets to win this one. She can still hear Owen’s rasp in her ear. She heaves up her morningstar again, and someone’s sword slashes down her back, and she’s on the ground once more, the pain too much to do anything but lie there and struggle to breath, every breath a slice of glass at her ribcage.

Her vision flutters black and flurried, and even when she blinks hard and clears it some, all she sees is pink. The deep blue of the sky has turned to a purple splotched with pink. How long was she out? Did she ever go out? Where’s her star? She grapples blindly in the mud, limply turns her head, and sees more pink. Roose Bolton’s warhorse picks its way over the corpses as daintily as a little goat, and he dismounts as neatly as a lady, but he walks with the familiar lunge of a big predator- a shadowcat, a bear, a wolf-

Grey Wind, she thinks, where is Grey Wind, where is Robb-

But she doesn’t see any trace of fur around her, just mud and blood and broken, mangled bodies, and Robb-

Robb’s got his sword but lost his helm, and he’s screaming for his wolf, and then he sees Bolton coming at him oh so steady and self-assured, and he stops shouting and staggers into a crouch on shaking legs. Bolton’s saying something, but she can’t hear it, she’s got mud and blood in her ears. She swipes around again, blindly, for her morningstar, grips the handle, and strains to lift it. She can’t. She can’t. She’s not strong enough anymore. Her back sears in agony, and she tastes blood under her tongue.

Dacey manages to roll over, onto her belly, and pulls the knife strapped to her thigh instead, then begins to crawl.

Robb’s off balance, Dacey sees Bolton block his first blow with ease, then force him further back into the red-black-brown water, eddying with foam around his waist, like it’s waiting to swallow him whole. She shakes her head, hard, and and her vision swims but her hearing clears a little. 

“You’re a traitor,” Robb is saying, and it’s not a defiant roar or an angry note of disbelief but a statement, and he’s only sixteen, this Stark she followed south, this boy she privately feared wouldn’t survive his first battle, but he sounds like an old man now, old and tired and not afraid, just… disgusted. “You’re a traitor and an oathbreaker, Roose, but you don’t have to be a kinslayer.”

“I’m afraid you’re no blood of mine,” Bolton says as if in sympathy; she can’t see his face, but he’s the sort of man, when he smiles, and it’s rare enough, you can hear it in his voice, even if you’re not looking at him. Lord Leech. They used to jape he drained all his joy and sorrow out each night, a thousand black leeches throbbing on his pale skin. 

“I’m not,” Robb grits out, staggering backwards as he blocks the next blow. “But Donella and Lysara are your blood. No man’s so reviled as a kinslayer. Leave them be. Don’t touch them-,” he’s coughing, badly. “Do what you want with me, don’t hurt them-,”

Dacey has managed to get to her hands and knees; she hears Bolton say swiftly, “Jaime Lannister sends his regards,” as if worried Robb might not hear it in time, and she looks up to see him pulling his sword free from Robb’s chest. The king crumples with a dull splash into the shallows, and Dacey continues to crawl forward, the knife clenched in her fist, as Roose pries something off his armor. 

She’s reaching for the leech lord, the blade glinting darkly in the purple-pink light of the sunrise dappled across the Green Fork, when he turns and drives his sword deep into her belly. Dacey doesn’t make a sound; she goes limp and stiff all at once, and presses her cheek flat against the sand and silt. She’s half in the water, half out, and the current tugs playfully at her long braid as he crouches down beside her.

“It’s a pity,” Roose Bolton says, a cold, wet hand on her neck, his thumb gently stroking the underside of her blood-crusted chin. “I’d hoped they’d take you alive. You were always the prettiest of Maege’s litter.” He twists his sword in her belly, but she doesn’t feel that anymore, she doesn’t feel much of anything.

Owen, she thinks sadly, Mother, Aly, Lyra, Jory, Lyanna, and her eyelids flutter.

His hand tightens around her throat, and they snap back open. He’s smiling faintly at her. “Is that all? Not going to stay and fight a little longer?”

Dacey looks past him wearily. She has known she would someday die on the end of some man’s sword for years now, and long ago made her peace with it. The man, the sword, that does not matter. She looks to the reflection of the rising sun shimmering on the bloodied water, listens to the sounds of the battle fall away like snow. He's squeezing her throat again, trying to coax out a cry or whimper or a death rattle. She summons up the last of her strength, and spits her mouthful of blood and phlegm directly into his pale face. 

BEYOND THE BRIDGE

Dana’s heart drops into her stomach when the bridge comes back into sight. It’s swarming with Freys, heavily guarded on both sides, and they’ve got men fanned out under and around it as well. As the western castle’s windows are blazing with torch and lamp light, and she keeps down to a low crouch in the brush as she moves past. She left her horse behind in the process of giving the two Freys after her the run-around; it was simple enough to slip out of the saddle, slap his flank and get him running again, and then take off in the opposite direction. They’re not looking for a girl on the ground, they’re looking for a girl on a horse. She buried herself in rotting leaves beside a tree trunk covered in moss and dead branches, then waited until she didn’t hear any distant shouts or hoof-beats.

But while it’s still dark out, the sun is winding its way up, slowly but steadily, the sky a deep purple-orange-pink overhead. And she’s headed north. They can’t all have been killed. Some men will have fled north of the Twins, and try to cross where the Green Fork meets the numerous streams and brooks and creeks coming out of the Neck. If she find them, she can form a rescue party, and they can save Nell and the babe. There’s still time. Nell wouldn’t have gone easily. If she’s still out there, running or hiding, there’s still a chance.

A chance for what, Dana’s not sure, but she can’t think like that. She has to keep going. She has to. Slow and steady. She’s not worried about being heard; there’s too much noise around them for anyone to notice the crackle of twigs and leaves underfoot as she moves, but she can’t be seen. She’s covered in dirt and her dress is more a ragged bundle of cloth than anything else, but if they see her, they’ll kill her. She’s no value as a hostage and there’d be nothing to lose by dumping her corpse in the river with the rest. 

Hand over hand she goes, chin tucked against her heaving chest, slow and steady, until she’s past the bridge. Once she thinks she’s well enough away to move more freely, she staggers to her feet and runs, runs so far she feels as though she’s barely touching the ground, runs until the grey trees blur around her, and when she can’t run anymore because her chest and legs are screaming in protest, she finally slows down, slipping and stumbling on the ground slick with morning dew. The river still winds along, albeit a little less viciously than it does further downstream, but still far too fast for anyone to risk swimming it.

So when she does see the men, they’re not swimming it, they’re fording it with a large fallen tree. Laid across the narrowest span of the river bend, it just barely wide enough for someone to carefully clamber across it. These men don’t bother with that; half of them run it, one or two fall into the river, pop back up, grasping at the brittle branches to haul themselves back onto the trunk, and at least one unlucky soldier is swept downstream, shouting and flailing weakly. 

But as she watches from the treeline, most of them make it across, and fall to their hands and knees, panting, on her side. They’re northmen, Dana knows that much, can faintly hear their voices, and many of them are wearing shaggy- and sodden- furs, but that doesn’t mean she’s stupid enough to running over to them in relief. 

Not until she recognizes the shape of one of their helms, at least. Then she moves unbidden, as if she doesn’t really have any control over her limbs, and she’s shouting and yelling as she breaks though the brush. “DA! DA!” Sobbing helplessly like a little girl, she collides with him with a frantic grunt, clutching at his wet form, while the other men stare in shock, a few with hands on their swords, if they’ve managed to keep ahold of them.

Artos Flint stares blearily back at her for a moment, before the shock registers, and his grip on her tightens. 

“You’re alright,” Dana says, and it’s stupid but she could be eight again, so easily assured by his mere presence, as though she were that same little girl who didn’t realize all his failings and flaws. “Oh gods, you’re alright- we have to go, we have to go back, we have to help them- Nell, and the babe, and the others- come on-,”

He hits her, not hard, but firmly enough to get her to stop talking. Dana stares at him in mute confusion, rubbing at her throbbing cheek, and then he nods to the rest of the men and with a vice grip on her arm, propels her before him as they move towards the trees. “Walk. No talking. Come on,” he says, low and urgent in her ear. “I’ll tell you when you can talk. Move, girl. Don’t make me carry you.”

“Stop!” she tries to wrench free of him, squirming and balking, so he hits her again, hard, this time in the back of the head, hard enough to make her teeth clack together dully. “Wait, stop, we have to go back, listen to me!”

“Shut her up before I do, Flint,” one of the other men snarls. “She’ll bring them all fuckin’ down on us-,”

“No one’s going back anywhere,” he growls in her ear again, shoving her firmly ahead of him. “We’re heading for the Cape. Get a boat there, make for the Cliffs.”

“Are you mad?” Dana spits furiously, twisting in his grip wildly, but he’s strong, still much stronger than her, even if he is an old and battered drunk who’s nerves have gone to shit. “You want to just run away! We have to go back! We can still save them!”

“Save who?” he demands furiously. “There’s no one left to fucking save. It’s over, girl. It’s over. Stark’s either dead or captured, same goes for his wife an’ the babe. Everyone else is either dead, dying, or running for their bloody lives.”

“You don’t know that!” she stomps down hard on his feet, but if he feels it at all, he makes no sign of it, only pinches the back of her neck, in an effort to keep her walking. “The battle could have turned. We could be winning now! We can still win, we can go back and help-,”

“There’s no one to help,” his spittle flies into her ear in his fury, and she cringes, then stiffens and throws an elbow directly into his nose with a crack. He roars in pain, and a few of the other men take off sprinting ahead, having washed their hands of this fight between father and daughter. 

“You bloody bitch,” he snarls, and he grabs her by the hair and pushes her, face-first into the nearest tree, its bark scraping and tearing at her face. Dana is too angry to even register the pain; she whirls back around and throws a punch, which misses, badly, and then he’s got her by the arm and wrenched it up behind her back.

“Listen to me,” he says thickly, even as his voice shakes and trembles in pitch like a little boy’s. “Listen! I’m too old to die here, an’ you’re too young, damn you. We get well away from here, we hide out for a few days, we keep moving at night, we go home. Home, Dana. The war’s over. It was over with Blackwater, they just couldn’t admit it. I’m not dying for a war that’s over an’ done with, for a king that’s just lost his fucking head like his father-,”

“COWARD!” she screams at him, so loudly that he drops her arm in surprise, and she turns on him again, letting every facet of her contempt show on her face, so much rage and loathing broiling behind her eyes, her lips, in her ears, her flaring nostrils. “YOU FUCKING COWARD! You should have died back there if you were just going to run away! What kind of man are you?!” she jeers, shoving at him, and he takes half a step back in shock, as if she’d just started breathing fire. 

“You’re a coward and an oathbreaker if you run! You swore! You swore, to the death, to the last breath, you’d fight, and now you want to go! Fine! Go! I’m staying! I’m staying and I’m going to kill every last fucking one of them!” She grapples at his sword belt. “Give me, this, then, and I’ll do what you’re too scared to do! You-,”

Her rant withers up in her throat when the riders come into view along the bank, pink Bolton cloaks flapping in the wind, and he whips around, sees them as well as she does, and wrenches loose his sword. “Run.” She runs, and he after her, and everything fades away until all she can see is the ground beneath her feet, and all she can hear is her breath rattling in her lungs, and the pounding of hoofbeats getting louder and louder and-

Artos grunts when the first arrow strikes him in the shoulder, yelps in pain when the second hits him in the back of the leg, he stumbles, plows into her, sending them both tumbling to the ground, over the edge of a slope, and rolling down, down onto the rocky ground below. Dana lies limply on the forest floor, her head roiling and her chest heaving, until a pair of bloody hands roll her over so she’s face-down. 

Her father presses his weight atop her, and for a few moments of dull shock she doesn’t understand what he’s doing, and then she feels his warm blood coat across her cheek, the bridge of her nose, over her mouth, and she recoils, but his hand is hard and slick with blood on the back of her neck, and he rasps in her ear, “Don’t. Move.” and she lets him do the rest of her, and mash dirt and leaves and stones in her hair, and then listens to him start to crawl away from her. At least one of the men chasing them, maybe more, has dismounted and drawn his blade. 

She listens to her father pound his fist into his injured leg, grunt with pain and rage, and then awkwardly stagger forward, sword raised. The man, whoever he is, laughs, and disarms him easily, then knocks him to the ground. She doesn’t move. Her father rolls over, gasping in pain, and starts to crawl, then with a sudden burst of energy propels himself back on his feet and runs again, in the wrong direction, back towards the river. The man snorts in contempt, and calls lazily to someone else, “Check the bitch while I deal with the old bastard.”

 _Why is he running towards the river_ , Dana thinks dully, _there’s more soldiers that way, why would he_ -

A boot toes along the skirt of her ruined and blood-soaked dress, then finds the indent of her stomach. It draws back, and slams into her with full force. Dana does not move, just lets herself loll back limply, like the dead weight she is pretending to be. The boot crushes down on her bruised and scraped hand next, down on her fingers, and she lets herself scream and cry inside, deep in some dark pit of herself, but does not react. 

Then he moves off, and she listens faintly to the sounds from the bank, and then it goes silent. 

She lays there for a very long time, until she hears the familiar morning birdcalls, and then somehow, at some point, she feels her body get up and walk, but she’s not really there, she’s not really in it, she doesn’t feel the bruises or cuts or the broken and twisted fingers of her left hand, and she doesn’t see anything but the grey of the river through the trees, and when she reaches it, and the tree they’d used to cross, and starts to crawl, hand over hand, not caring if anyone’s around to see or hear. 

There was a body, back there, that used to be her father’s and the head was a ways off from the body, because they’d kicked it into the shallows, but she didn’t look, not really, because it’s only real if you let yourself look. It’s only real if you let yourself feel it. 

When she reaches the other side, she realizes she has no idea what to do, or where to go, only that she’s so hungry and cold she can’t think straight, so she walks a little ways more, until the orchard comes into view, that sprawling plot of land around the eastern castle. Most of the apples are gone from the trees by now, but she doesn’t care. There’s probably Freys out here, combing the fields for survivors to kill or capture, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t feel like they could see her; she’s just a corpse dragging itself along the muddy ground, they could probably look straight through the hollowness of her. 

Dana stumbles blindly forward, clambers over the waist-high stone wall coated green with lichen, and limps to the foot of the nearest tree. The apples on the ground are rotted brown. She is licking their sour pulp off her fingers when she really looks at her other, crooked fingers, feels faint, and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, someone is kneeling down beside her. She recognizes the voice, but his face is swimming in and out of her vision.

“My lady? Lady Danelle? Dana Flint?” She murmurs something, and grunts as he pulls her to her swaying feet, then picks her up with a grunt of his own, shifting her weight across his arms as though she were some princess from a story. “It’s alright. You’re going to be alright. I’ve got you, my lady.”

She knows him. Some… some boy. Not a Northerner. One of… one of the Vances? _Marianne_ , she thinks, and sobs aloud. “Shh,” he hushes her. “Please- please don’t cry, it’ll be alright, I’m going to help you. I’m going to… you’ll see. Don’t cry. Just be quiet, my lady, please.”

Not one of the Vances, none of them are this polite. A Piper? A Blackwood boy? There’s so many of those. She blinks tiredly up at him, and finally his face comes into focus. Dana stares dumbly up at an ashen Olyvar Frey, and begins to jerk and twist in his arms, at least until he, in an effort to calm her, grabs at her hands, inadvertently squeezes her broken fingers, and the burst of white-hot pain is so bad that she blacks out again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, before we get into the notes I just want to say how much I appreciate all the comments and feedback for the last chapter. It was really cool to hear from so many people in the comment section, so thank you all so much for jumping in to tell me what you liked about the chapter. 
> 
> That said, I completely understand if everyone's readying the pitchforks after this one. Anyways, in the interest of just getting right to the point: the next chapter will be from entirely Nell's POV, and it will feature a lot of Freys. The chapter following that will be from entirely Dana's POV, and it will feature a lot of outlaws and some very familiar faces. I know this chapter was depressing as hell, even for *this* fic, but hopefully people are willing to stick around to see how things shake out. 
> 
> I know I am going to get a lot of questions in the comments as to the fates of specific characters, since we've got a lot of people's lives up in the air at the end of this chapter. The next few chapters are going to make it very clear who's alive, who's dead, who escaped, who's a prisoner. THIS IS GOING TO INCLUDE SOME SIGNIFICANT DIVERGENCES FROM CANON. Feel free to yell at me AFTER we get the final dead/alive/captive/on-the-run breakdown. 
> 
> Some (More) Notes:
> 
> 1\. This chapter is divided into 3 POVs at 3 different locations, all roughly around the area of the Twins/Crossing. I did this because this is not a TV show or a full-length novel, and I can't just write a 2 page chapter that you can quickly flip through, nor can I suddenly switch to a 'new scene' and immediately establish everything with a few camera angles. The first POV is Nell, fleeing from some Freys with Jory. Over the course of this we see her get a good look at the shit going down on the opposite side of the river, lose her horse, and put some arrows in some Freys. "Is Nell dead?" No. "Is Jory dead?" That depends on how good of a swimmer she is.
> 
> 2\. The second POV is Dacey Mormont, fighting a losing battle with the remainder of Robb's honor guard. The Freys and Boltons have been steadily forcing them back towards the river and the Twins. Dacey doesn't really know who they're fighting, exactly, as some Ryswells and Karstarks present also appear to have turned. She and her companions initially mistook the attack for a surprise hit from some Lannister bannermen. Writing action is not my strong suit, I'd like to think I'm slowly but steadily improving, I apologize if you are a military tactician and going 'what the fuck' while reading this. Dacey confirms that several people are dead or have just died through the course of her POV: Robin Flint, Donnel Locke, Willam and Jonnel Flint, Roger Ryswell, Owen Norrey, etc. She also speculates on several missing or injured people: Daryn Hornwood, Wendel Manderly, Greatjon and Smalljon Umber, Lucas Blackwood, Marq Piper, GREY WIND, etc. Roose then arrives on the scene when most of them are down for the count in order to finish off Robb, who spends his last moments attempting to reason with Roose not to harm his wife or child, because that's the sort of man Robb is. Roose is in a rush to get his stupid catchphrase out, because that's the sort of dork Roose is. Dacey sprays some-definitely-bad-blood in his face, because that's the sort of Mormont lady she is.
> 
> 3\. The third POV is Dana, who has doubled back towards the Twins in the hopes of finding some survivors to rally to rescue Nell and Lysara. Instead, she finds her dear old dad, and the reunion goes about as well as could be expected. After a very spirited debate, they're discovered by Bolton outriders combing the woods for survivors, forced to run, and Dana plays dead at Artos' instruction while he attempts to lead the men away from her 'corpse'. Some time later, Dana stumbles out of the woods in a daze, crosses the river, and manages to make her way to the Freys' apple orchard where she's found by, drum-roll please, everyone's favorite loyal squire, Olyvar. 
> 
> 4\. If this fic had 'seasons', Chapter 14 would have been the Season 1 finale, Chapter 29 would have been the Season 2 finale, and this would be the dramatic midway point of Season 3, complete with a different theme song than usual playing during the credits.


	39. Donella XXXIV

299 AC - THE TWINS

Nell wakes in the same warm, soft bed she’d slept in before, in the Water Tower, and for an instant, it is as if it were a dream. Was she not just here, in this bed, in this room, the morning of the wedding? Did she not wake just like this, listening to the churning of the river far below, the distant sounds of the Twins around her, horses clopping across the bridge beneath her window, doors opening and closing, servants murmuring on the stairs? She lets herself believe it for a few hopeful moments, unwilling to completely open her eyes, unwilling to take another breath, and then the back of her head throbs something fierce, and her wrists burn and chafe, and she is awake.

She can’t really feel her hands or fingers, just a numb sort of heavy stiffness, and for an instant what terrifies her is the thought that they have chopped them off, because she can’t feel her fingers, and if she doesn’t have any fingers she can’t hold a bow, or a quill, or a knife- and her thumbnails scrapes raggedly along the headboard behind her, and she inhales shakily. She has her fingers. Why is she crying? 

She has her fingers, and here she was trembling like a rabbit at the foolish thought that she might not… That she might… Her wrists are bound above her head; she can’t see them without trying to crane her sore neck back, but her arms have been forced back and upwards over her right shoulder, so that she is not truly lying in bed, but slumped over some pillows, her head resting painfully against the same headboard her wrists are lashed to. 

She can feel her legs and feet, and they’re not bound to anything; if she really tried, she could contort her body and get her legs off the bed, but she would still be bound by the wrists, and that would just wrench at her shoulders all the more. Nell curls her legs up under her thighs instead, and with a hoarse grunt manages to maneuver herself into a kneeling position, but there’s not enough slack on the cords for her to do anything else. 

She gives her wrists an experimental jerk, and then tries to see if she can reach the rope with her teeth. She can’t, not unless she’s willing to remove her spine in order to do so. She sags back down, kicks her legs out from under her again, and wriggles into a seated position, the plump pillows wedged in between her back and the headboard. It’s not that painful if she just sits like this.

Nell sits there for a few moments, looking around the room, trying to get some sense of bearing, and grimacing at every steady pulse of pain from the back of her scalp. It feels oddly light. Did they cut her hair? Not all of it, because she can feel some hanging in a tangled mass of dark waves over her shoulders, but… It doesn’t matter. Her hair doesn’t matter. The pain in her head doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s here, in a tower, tied to a bed. She needs to decide what she’s going to do about it. The bedchamber is just as lavishly decorated as it was before, but there is absolutely nothing within her reach beyond the thick quilt pulled over her legs. She can’t even get a proper glimpse out the window from where she is, although she can see daylight coming in, and hear the steady pour of rain outside. 

How long has she been here? Her stomach snarls raggedly in response, and her breath hitches in her throat. How long has it been? _No. No. Stop. You have to stop_ , she tells herself coldly, sharply. _Stop it. Don’t panic. You’re alive. You’re not seriously injured. You have your hands, your feet, and your tongue_. She licks her cracked lips as if to test that. The bedchamber is absolutely empty; there’s no Freys lurking in some shadowy corner, no maids fretting at her bedside, no… The cradle beside the great oaken wardrobe is empty. She can see that much. The next wave of panic is much harder to crush then the first. Her chest aches fiercely, and she feels hot bile creep up her throat. 

Nell closes her eyes in an attempt to calm the rapid kicking of her heart. She can’t- _No_. She has to stop this. She’s acting like a frightened girl, not a queen. Just because Lysara isn’t in the room with her doesn’t mean she’s dead. They wouldn’t dare. She’s a hostage. They are both hostages, and Nell knows how this works, or how it ought to work. So long as they have something to gain through keeping them alive and mostly well, they will be alright. Walder Frey did not go to all that trouble to snare them just to kill them.

 _What did the Lannisters do to little Lord Tarbeck, the last of his line_ , the voice in her head says with a harsh edge and a sing-song cadence. _They threw him down the well, a little boy of three, while his mother kicked and screamed. The Tarbecks gave them far less trouble than you have given Tywin Lannister_. She has to open her eyes then, because all she sees is a bundle of white blankets, sinking down, down into the dark, tiny fists and feet flailing and kicking in the frigid water. Then they took his mother’s tongue out, and packed her off to the Silent Sisters. Nell almost retches, but controls it at the last moment, swallowing hot spittle and feeling her face flush bright red. _No. No_. She will see Lysara again, and Robb- and Robb will come for them, Robb will join up with Harry Karstark’s men and come for them, they could not have taken him, not with Grey Wind…

He will be out there, somewhere, and he will come for them, and they will put every Frey in this bloody castle, and the next, to the sword. The thought is enough to momentarily calm her, although she wonders if this is the sort of comforting story Sansa used to tell herself in King’s Landing, before they gave her to the Imp. _No_. Don’t think about that. This is not how it goes. This is not how it is going to go, they have won every battle, what is one more fight, one more enemy? Robb will rally the survivors, and there must be plenty of survivors, surely, and they will come for them. He has faced worse odds. He has never failed. 

She thinks of how he must feel, how angry he must be, how determined, she thinks of how it will be when the Greatjon kicks down her door or Daryn Hornwood hauls his lanky frame through a window, when she hears Grey Wind’s howls again, when she is in his arms, her and their daughter. He will kiss her until she can’t breathe, never let go of her again, and won’t that be fair and sweet? Like something out of a song. Her shoulders shudder with a repressed moan. _No. Stop_. She is not- she is not going to act like a dead woman already, lying here limply, waiting for whatever comes next, and she is not going to rave and wail like a madwoman, either. 

In fact, over the course of the next few minutes Nell is almost able to convince herself that this is just another test. She’s seen herself through worse, surely. The bitter days after Bran fell. That cold afternoon in the wolfswood, the knife against her throat. The Whispering Wood, the news of Ned Stark’s death, of Robb’s coronation, she saw them through the Battle of the Fords, she saw the Mountain’s head on her wall, she is not weak, she is strong, and she can be strong a little while longer. They will expect to find her distraught and terrified, when they inevitably arrive to gloat or question her. She will not give them the satisfaction. Robb made her a queen and she is still the queen and if they think she is going to break down and weep like some frightened child-

The door slowly opens and she goes so rigid with paralyzing terror that she almost wants to laugh at what a fool she is. She broke before she even saw who came through the door. But it is just a maid, a pitcher clutched in her freckled hands, and behind her Fair Walda, who’s only reaction to seeing her very much awake is to take the pitcher from the maid with an insistent tug, mutter something to her, and shoo her out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind her. “You’re up,” she says nonchalantly, as if Nell had just risen from a pleasant afternoon nap. Fair Walda approaches the bed carefully, stopping before she is anywhere close to in reach, although Nell can hardly grab at her like this.

For a split second Nell debates screaming in her face, and then catches herself. A girl like Fair Walda likes to hear herself talk. Better to play mute, and see what she lets slip. So she says nothing. Walda regards her warily, her knuckles white around the porcelain pitcher. It’s painted with flowers. A pretty piece of ware, the sort you might serve rosewater or apple cider in. Nell is so terribly hungry, she can feel it snarling inside her belly like a beast. But she does not say a word. If Walda intends to make her beg for food and water, she would rather starve. 

“I know you’re not addled,” Fair Walda huffs, still watching her closely. “So don’t bother trying to pretend you’ve gone and lost your wits. Maester says you took a hard knock, that’s all. Black Walder wasn’t very pleased with that. You weren’t supposed to be damaged, but Edwyn bungled the whole thing. As usual,” her lip curls faintly. She has pretty little lips, Fair Walda. Like rosebuds shriveling up under the autumn sun. “I suppose I should congratulate you for doing us all a service and putting an end to him. He bled out in the saddle. My father, though, you only got _him_ in the leg. He’s awfully angry.”

Good, Nell thinks, but still she says nothing, barely even blinking. Fair Walda glances away for a moment from the intensity of her pale-eyed stare, before looking back at her with a vague aura of defiance. “You know, they beat Arwyn something fierce for trying to warn you,” she says waspishly. “She’s a little fool, but if you’d come quietly there needn’t have been any trouble. Instead you and Catelyn Tully had to go raising a fuss-,”

Nell’s eyes widen inadvertently at the mention of Catelyn, and Walda sniffs. “Oh, you haven’t heard? I’ll wager not. She went for Petyr’s knife, and tried to stick it in his armpit. They had to tie her hand and foot and throw her over the back of someone’s saddle like a goat.” Then seeing Nell’s glower, rolls her eyes. “Well? Do you want your water, or not?”

Nell bites down hard on her tongue, and does not speak. Walda wrinkles her nose, turns as if to go, then stops. Begrudgingly, she crouches down beside the bed and holds up the pitcher. “Drink. I don’t want you telling them I wouldn’t give you any.” Her tone is that of a harried elder sister dealing with a sulking younger sibling.

Nell stares at her a moment longer, then drinks, tilting her chin back to catch the water in her mouth better. It’s so cold it’s almost sweet, and for a moment she thinks if they wanted to poison or drug her with something, this would certainly be the way to do it, but she doesn’t taste anything to it. Fair Walda holds it steady for as long as she will drink, then pulls it away as Nell sucks in a breath, water dripping down her chin. She’s got a scrape there, where it hit the ground. 

“I don’t hate you,” says Walda. “Don’t go thinking that’s what it is. You were a fair enough mistress with us girls.” Her tone is half sardonic, half defensive, almost, as if she still thinks she ought to clear the air between them. As if this were some squabble between young women, and not a war. “But you couldn’t have done much for me but some thirdborn son with a face full of pock-marks and a scraggly little beard, could you? Pretty as I am, heirs don’t take Frey wives unless they owe us money or they’ve got a blade to their throat. There’s nothing for me in the North, and nothing for me in the Riverlands. The only kingdom that matters,” she jerks her head around the tower room, to the rain pounding at the window, “is right here. If you were one of us, you’d understand.”

“Had I been born a Frey,” Nell says, unbidden, and her voice is far lower and more guttural than usual, closer to a growl than anything else, “I’d have thrown myself out a window when I flowered, and saved my father the trouble of trying to sell me off to an uncle.”

Fair Walda’s grip on the pitcher slackens; it crashes to the floor, shattering, and sends a burgeoning puddle of water across the thick rugs. She curses rough as any free rider, then stalks from the room, yelling for the maid, without a backwards glance at Nell. Presently, a girl scurries in to clear up the pieces. Nell’s not even sure if it is a servant, or just one of the bastard Freys. They certainly have enough to use for their own household workers. 

“Untie my wrists,” she says in a low, cold voice to the girl as she mops up the water with a stained rag. “ _Now_.” She’s using her lady’s voice again, not the feral sort of growl she put on for Walda, but the crisp, clear ‘do as I say, this instant, or there will be consequences’ tone she learned years and years ago from Barbrey.

For half a heartbeat, she thinks the girl might really do it; the maid jumps to her feet, face flushed with shame as if she were the one who bound Nell there, but then she shakes her head quickly. “I can’t, m’lady- Your Grace- m’lady,” she corrects and then re-corrects herself, still shaking her head fervently. “It’s for your own good. Milord doesn’t want you hurting yourself, trying to get out.”

“Lord Walder?” Nell questions sharply. She pulls at the wrists, grits her teeth, and says in slightly softer voice. “Please. It hurts. Surely Lord Walder doesn’t want me hurt. He needs me healthy and hale.”

The maid hesitates again, then shakes her head. “No. Not Lord Walder, m’lady, I- _please_ , m’lady, don’t pull like that, you’ll split the skin open.” 

Nell can feel a thin, warm little tendril of blood snaking its way down the mottled skin of her wrists. She decides to try a different tactic. “Where is my babe? How can I feed her like this? She must be hungry.” She pretends her voice does not waver on the last few words. “Can’t you bring her to me? She’s not even two moons old. She needs me.”

The maid’s mouth opens and shuts, like a dying fish, her eyes wide. Nell feels a flash of rage and fear, all at once, like a bolt of lightning. No. This girl is just a lackwit. Lysara is here, she’s safe, she must be somewhere nearby, crying- “Where is my baby?” she demands, straining at the cords again. “Tell me where they’ve taken her. Tell me-,”

“That’s quite enough.” The door, half open as Walda left it when she stormed out, opens with a quiet groan, and Nell’s furious tirade muddles on her tongue as Father steps into the room. The maid goes stiff with terror, like a deer caught up in some thicket, and then fumbles her way around the edge of the bedchamber, murmuring excuses and apologies. Roose waves her off dismissively. “Be on your way now. Fetch some food for my daughter. Quickly. She must be half starved.” 

The door slams shut behind the girl with a dull thud. Nell stops pulling at her bonds, and watches her father the way she thinks a rabbit must watch a hawk as its shadow passes over it. He was never that much taller than her, but he seems it now, with her bound to the bed like this, and him standing over her. Roose pulls up a high-backed chair from the fireplace with a faint expression of distaste for the mere act of having to bring over his own seat. He never did think such things were for him, no more than he would ever shine his own boots or saddle his own horse or string his own bow.

“Donella,” he says, studying her closely. She does not shrink back or recoil or flinch. Robb would be proud, she thinks distantly. But she cannot. She feels as though all the fight was sucked out of her, like the air in her lungs, when he came in. She knew, all along, of course. She knew from the instant she heard the horns that the Freys could not do such a thing alone, would never have the gall to without some support, some traitor, and she knew- _I didn’t know_ , she argues with herself fiercely, _I couldn’t have, how could I have known, why would he? What cause could he have to turn on us? None. This is madness. He had everything to gain from having a queen for a daughter, and nothing-_

“Are you well?” he asks, as though she were recovering from some mild illness, and not sitting here, frozen, with her wrists lashed to the bedpost. She says nothing, not out of stubbornness, now, but because she genuinely has no idea what to say. What could she say? None of this makes sense. He doesn’t wait for much of a response. His gaze is roving across her flushed cheeks, the scrape on her chin, her red-rimmed eyes. 

“It was always my intention to keep you and the babe well away from any fighting. But they tell me you resisted quite fiercely.” He glances for a moment at her wrists. “Hence the bonds. I know it must be uncomfortable. You need only ask, and I will you cut loose. We could not be sure when you would awaken, and there was some…” his lip curls slightly, “concern about how you might react.”

How she might react? How she might react to what? To being betrayed by their own men? To being hunted down in the woods like an animal? To being dragged back here unconscious and tied up? She wants to scream. She wants to spit in his face. But all he has to do is look at her, so steadily and coolly, and all the defiance bleeds away into nothing but curdling dread and fear. “You need only ask,” he says, a bit slower, as if she might not have heard him the first time.

“Cut me loose,” Nell says, in a voice barely above a whisper, so different from her snarl of rage towards Walda or her furious demands towards the maid.

He has the audacity to smile at her. “Now, is that how one asks for a favor, daughter?”

“Cut me loose,” she says again, thickly, and has to close her eyes to be able to add, “please,” without retching up all the water she just drank onto him. Perhaps this is for the best. If she were screaming and cursing, or outright begging and pleading with him, he might simply leave the room. She needs him here, because she needs to know. She needs to understand. Why. How. Where her daughter is. He must have her. He must. 

He saws through the cords with a small knife in a few swift motions, and her arms come sagging limply down, stiff and aching with pain. Nell wriggles her fingers, rolls back her shoulders, wincing, as he puts the knife back in his belt. He’s looking at her patiently. “Thank you,” she says, although it’s really more like she mouths it, for she can barely get the words out.

“Of course.” He sits back down. “You must understand, Donella, that no one here means you any harm, nor your ladies. Lady Catelyn is well, as are the Bracken sisters. These Freys can be crude, yes, but they are not animals. You are to be treated as befits a highborn woman.”

As befits a highborn woman. Yes. She knows all about how he would treat a highborn woman. How he treats all his wives. It must show on her face, the sheer revulsion, in spite of her fear, because he smiles slightly again. “It makes no difference whether you believe me or not. I simply mean to reassure a frightened daughter. As any father would. You’ve been through a terrible shock. You are grieving.”

Grieving? What is she grieving? She hasn’t lost. They haven’t lost yet. It’s not- it’s not lost, this is just- this is only-

He presses a scrap of something soft into her bloodied and bruised palm. Nell jerks away from him, but he closes her stiff fingers around it all the same. She forces herself to look down at it. It is her favor- Robb’s favor. What he wore into every battle, at her request. What he was wearing when he fought at Whispering Wood. When he left for the West, and when he returned. What he rode off with on his right arm for the Neck, before- before-

“No,” she says, and it comes out in a ragged sort of moan. “ _No_. How did you get this? No, he’s not- he’s still out there, isn’t he? He’s-,”

“I’m afraid Lord Walder laid claim to that crown of his as the spoils of a hard-won victory, and Black Walder carries his sword, but I insisted that you have something to remember him by,” Father says, all unblinking eyes and false concern, and greedy and grasping and wretched underneath it, perversely delighted, she thinks, like a little child caught with their fingers in the pie or cake, who takes another wicked little bite or lick while threatened with a wooden spoon.

Her hand tightens into a painful fist around the pink silken favor, stained once again with blood. “No,” she says. “No. He’s not dead, he’s not- no. You’re lying. You’ve always lied to me, and now- this is some… some trick, some- some game of yours, to make me- to make me renounce him, but-,” she shakes her head furiously at his unchanging stare. “Stop it, you’re _lying_ , you are-,”

He takes her by the arm, not roughly but not gently either, and physically pulls her from the bed, towards the window. Nell digs in her heels and screams, loud and hoarse, but he simply gives her a good shake, like one might a barking little lapdog who won’t shut up, and forces her to look out, and down. The Green Fork churns and the bridge stands as it has for hundreds of years, only it is… 

The river runs much slower, she sees, from all the corpses in it. Hundreds, there must be, gently floating downstream, and from the bridge hang more bodies, and- and- Despite herself her eyes rove desperately for a head of auburn hair, for a freckled and scarred chest or back she knows all too well, but he’s not-

“He’s not down there,” she spits, twisting in Roose’s grip defiantly, “he’s not, you think to scare me with a little carnage?”

“Consider it another kindness,” he says calmly. “After they’d looted his corpse I made sure the current carried him away. That is how the Tullys go, is it not? Certainly a far better end for a king than to hang from a bridge like some common brigand.”

“No,” she says, but she can see it, in her mind’s eyes, she can see him pushing Robb’s body further into the dark river, watching him be swept and pummeled away by the racing waters, smiling faintly to himself in satisfaction on a job well done-

He brings her back to the bed. Her legs don’t seem to work properly anymore; they’ve gone to rotten wood. Nell sits there on the soft mattress, still shaking her head, her eyes wet with unshed tears, and she moves to wrench away from him, but he catches her by the wrist. “Settle down. As I said, a shock. Death always is, for the young and reckless. But you must have known this was a possibility, Donella. Did your aunt not prepare you, as a widow herself? We men live dangerous lives, in our efforts to protect what belongs to us.”

“Murderer,” she says. It settles thick and sour on her lips like spoiled milk. “Murderer. You are a kinslayer. How can you-,” she jerks against his grip, but he holds her fast, bruisingly, and she refuses to cry out. “The gods will not forget this, when you go. You’ll rot. You will rot in the earth with the maggots and the worms. Rot. He was your son by the blood of marriage.”

“And yet I recall that there was no blood on your wedding sheets,” he says, and she forgets who she is and who he is to her and what he has done and she slaps him, hard and fast, her hand lashes across his mouth, and he releases her in surprise, worms his tongue over his lips, then takes her by the hair and twists, wrenching her head down and into the pillow. 

It doesn’t hurt, beyond the dull impact of being crushed against the mattress, and she’d thought he would have smashed her face into the wooden headboard for striking him, but after a moment she realizes she can’t breathe, can’t move with his weight pressing down on her back, her arms trapped behind her, and she begins to struggle and gasp, and she can’t see or smell or hear anything but blood rushing in her ears, until he lets her up what seems like an eternity later.

“I should have known wedding you to a Stark might bring out the fight in you,” he says, rubbing once more at his jaw while she struggles to catch her breath, chest heaving. “But I’ve not the patience for it at the moment, Donella. Strike me again, and I will break two fingers of my choice. I imagine that might make your needlework a trifle difficult.”

“He’s not dead,” she protests, and her voice cracks, and she knows it is over.

“You are a widow,” Roose speaks over her calmly. “Your husband is dead. The majority of his army is dead, captured, or broken men, roaming the woodlands. They will plunder and rape at will until winter, and then they will starve. These are hard truths for you to face, but you will come to accept them all the same. There is no King in the North, nor of the Trident, and you are not a queen. You are a captive.”

“I am a Stark,” Nell says, although she feels as though someone wrenched a dagger down her throat, slicing at her insides in a thousand different places. “If Robb is dead then Lysara is to be queen, and I am her regent, his will named it so-,”

“His will is nowhere to be found,” Roose says with a hint of derision. “Unless you had any knowledge of that?”

Nell presses her lips together and fights back a fresh wave of nausea. The will went with Maege, or Galbart. One of them. She is not sure who herself, and she would lose all her fingers before she ever confessed it, even if she did. 

“No matter,” he says. “Royal decrees are in the process of being issued. House Stark is no longer the Great House of the North. Your husband renounced the title of warden when he declared independence, and no kin of his will hold it again.” His lips part slightly in a familiar shadow of a smile. “The Dreadfort is the new seat of Northern rule.”

“No,” says Nell. “No. Are you mad? They will never accept this.”

“Men will accept a great many things when winter is on the slow march,” Roose tells her patiently. “Men will accept a great many things when they begin to think of a warm hearth and food in their bellies. Once the rest of the Ironborn have been ousted by Ramsay and his men, I will offer them a peaceful land in exchange for a quiet people. It seems fair enough.”

“The North does not forget,” she all but hisses at him. “You are one of them, you know as well as I do- these men you have slaughtered, their families-,”

“Their families?” he scoffs. “Perhaps I was not clear enough with you. Donella, they are dead or taken prisoner. The Stark boy left just shy of nine thousand men behind in his camps to march north a few days after him. Forty five hundred of those men were mine and the Freys’. Do you imagine they were prepared for a fight, when we set their tents ablaze with them still sleeping off the ale or abed with whores? Walder Rivers cut the horses loose first to send them trampling. He learned that from your husband at Oxcross. At the same time, we still had thrice as many coming down on his thousand from the hills. Did you think it was some great battle of yore?”

“I think it was a slaughter. I think you massacred them,” she says, voice breaking clean in two with fury and grief, “because you are a coward and a traitor and you were afraid-,”

“Afraid?” He seems amused by that. “Afraid of what? A boy of sixteen who thought himself a Winter King because he won a few battles in the West? He was a proud, foolish child who thought he might goad the lions and live to tell the tale. The war was over long ago. A king with no seat, no home, and no sons is nothing more than a rebel with a crown.”

“You were always afraid of Grey Wind,” she says venomously, and catches the minuscule movement of his jaw, the tightening of frustration. “Did you kill him too? Or did he get away?”

“The last I saw the beast, it had at least one crossbow bolt in it,” he says, a split-second too quickly. “A direwolf is like any other dog. He will have found some bush to drag himself under to die.”

“I think you’re lying,” Nell says, searching for any other signs of weakness, probing insistently for the smallest of cracks, anything she can use, anything she can comfort herself with- “They are not all dead. Some of them must have gotten away. And they will come for you. Believe that, Father. The Umbers, the Hornwoods, the Flints, the Manderlys-,”

“The Greatjon is likely off in some wooded grove, holding aloft a sword and ranting and raving about revenge,” Father says with nothing more than vague irritation. “But as pigheaded as he is, the Freys hold his heir, and Rodwell Flint, Beron’s oaf he called a firstborn son, and Wendel Manderly. They are scattered. They have no army, no leader. No one is coming, Donella. The sooner you accept this, the better. It is over.”

“The rivermen will come, Harry Karstark will come-,”

“The river lords are tired of war, tired of losing their keeps and seeing their lands ravaged,” Father speaks over her in the tired drawl of a lecturing tutor of some sort, eager to get this out of the way. “The Freys hold many of their sons as well, of that you can be sure. Some may put up some semblance of a fight, but they will yield. Joffrey weds the Tyrell girl with the new year, and Tarly firmly defends the Crownlands. No help is coming from the Vale, and the Martells care not for your plight.” His tone turns derisive once more. “And if you believe Harrion Karstark is at all eager to come charging in with his pittance of soldiers on the behalf of the woman whose husband executed his father, you are more of a fool than I thought. The Twins cannot be taken.”

“Is that what you intend to do?” she says raggedly. “Hole up here until the Lannisters arrive to set things right? Who will rule the North in your place? The dog you call a bastard son?”

“I have no intention of letting Ramsay enjoy my rewards,” his chair scrapes back as he stands. “Although your concern is touching, daughter. No. I will be returning to the North.”

“How?” she sneers, digging her nails into the bedspread. “Pray tell, how? On dragon-back? You’ll never make it through the Neck.”

He smiles at that. “It will be a long, arduous journey, to be sure, but I should think Helman Tallhart’s new maps will prove quite useful. The crannogmen are crafty, but even Greywater Watch cannot be everywhere at once. And even so, I expect to be well guarded, not only by my own men, but by the Dustins, Ryswells, and Manderlys as well. Perhaps even the Karstarks will throw their lot in, when Arnolf realizes that his brave young nephew is an attainted outlaw condemned by the Iron Throne.”

“My aunt and my grandfather will never lift a finger to assist you,” she snarls.

“I disagree,” he says. “Their great-niece and great-granddaughter will be traveling with me and my doting wife as my ward. The Neck can be perilous for grown men, never mind a babe.”

Nell simply looks at him for a moment, not understanding, not wanting to understand. But she does. “No,” she says. “No, you _can’t_ \- I won’t let you-,”

“You won’t let me?” he echoes her dubiously. “You lost any rights to your child when your husband died a branded traitor. Do you truly think she would ever be permitted to remain with you? You should count yourself fortunate that they are not sending her to a motherhouse, or Casterly Rock. She comes North with me, and perhaps, in time, she will make a good marriage of her own. A very close marriage. Walda prays night and day for a babe, and she surely has the hips and teats for it.” 

“No,” says Nell, although she's close to a shout, standing up, fists balled at her sides, the room momentarily bleeding red around, “no, you will not-,” 

He strikes her quite casually; hard enough to send her staggering onto the bed once more, the back of her head inflamed with pain. “Lord Walder requires my presence. You’ll forgive me for not staying and arguing this particular point with you.”

“Tell me,” she says hoarsely, as he approaches the door. “Tell me why you would do this. Why. You had everything to gain through my marriage. Your grandchildren would have ruled the North. They might have been kings and queens.”

The glance he spares her is one of bemused indifference. “What of it?”

“What of it?” she echoes shakily, in disbelief. “Think of your legacy. Of House Bolton’s legacy. All those years of rebellions and uprisings, and finally there would be a child of Bolton blood sitting the high seat in Winterfell. And you would have been well-rewarded for your loyalty-,”

“No,” he muses, “I don’t think I would have. You are a cold child, and I do not think you would have spared much for your father, even had you lasted a decade as Robb Stark’s queen. I think you would have turned his head with foul rumors about myself and your brother, who has only ever strove to prove himself… however clumsily.” His lips curl up slightly like a dead leaf at the edges. 

“What do I care for my legacy, Donella? Did you think I was the same sort as Tywin Lannister, to brood over the gold and the heirs and the lands I leave behind me? We have but one life. As you tell me, when mine is done I will rot. The maggots will have me then. I am not a young man anymore. In my position, at my age, my desires run far simpler. I tire of marching and making war for the sake of Starks and their honor. I care not if I leave behind a hundred descendants or none at all. I care not if the Dreadfort burns the day after I die. I care not how or where I die, only that I die with a full stomach and a warm fur around me.”

“You will die a traitor.”

“I will die quite satisfied, now that I have first choice of the meat and the mead and the hunting grounds. A man cannot be content eating off another’s plate, no matter how pretty it is. If you live long enough, you may come to appreciate such things.”

“You’re a fool,” she grounds out. “A weak fool.”

“Call me what you like,” he shrugs. “The war was lost many times before I ever raised so much as a finger against your husband. He lost it first when he let Greyjoy run home, again when Greyjoy took his home in a night, again when you and the Tully buffoon chose to have a dance with the Mountain and push Tywin back to the capitol. Stannis Baratheon lost the southern war and the northern war for you both when he failed to take the city. We could never have stood against the combined might of the South. It would have been a long, bloody crawl to winter.”

“You swore oaths before the gods. You pledged the loyalty of House Bolton to House Stark, while all along you considered betraying us at any moment,” Nell spits. “A man cannot lie before a heart tree. You’re accursed now.”

“Accursed,” he says thoughtfully. “Yes. You do remind me of your mother. I found her more spirited moments almost endearing, at times. But let us hope Walda proves a more durable sort. I fear the North can be a harsh place for southern flowers, particularly in the winter.” 

He leaves, and she listens to the door being barred shut again behind him. Shortly thereafter the maid returns with a tray full of food; the Freys must not intend her to starve, for there is stew and bread and dried fruit, a far heartier fare than was offered at the wedding feast. Her only utensil is a wooden spoon. Nell takes a few numb bites and sips, and then shoves the tray away when it begins to sink in again, her hands shaking. It’s not real. If she doesn’t break down and weep, it’s not real. She is a queen, she will not weep, it’s not real. 

He’s lying. He must be lying. It was all some ploy to manipulate her, just as he has been manipulating her, toying with her, all her life. It’s not real, it can’t be real. She should keep her strength up. She will need it when they rescue her. She takes a bigger gulp of the soup, and then her stomach roils, and it nearly comes right back up. She clambers out of the bed, runs her fingers through her matted and filthy hair, feels at the bristle of her scalp where they shaved part of the back of her head. If she had a pair of scissors, she’d hack it all off. Then she’d sink them into the eyes of the next person to walk through that door. Nell paces, stomach churning, breasts aching. This is when she would usually feed Lysara. But Lysara isn’t here. He’s going to take her. He can’t. She’s too young. Ramsay will kill her, or she’ll catch a cold and die, or she’ll-

 _Or she’ll forget_ , that voice says, _the same way you have been forgetting your mother for years now. She will forget. You, your face, your voice, if she ever knew it at all. No mother, no father, just the Dreadfort, as it was for you. Nothing. And they will marry her to a half-uncle, as they did with Serena Stark, and your names will be blotted out of history, and she will never hear of you or her father or any of her true kin_. 

When the maid returns, she finds Nell backed into a corner like a wild animal, the tray discarded on the bed.

“I want to see my daughter. She needs to be fed.” 

“She’s with a wet-nurse, m’lady.”

“I’m her mother,” Nell snaps. “She needs me, not some cow. Bring me to her. Or bring her here.”

“I can’t, m’lady. Milord’s orders-,”

Nell strides over to the tray, and upends it onto the floor, crushing dishes and lukewarm food underfoot. The maid watches her with a weary sort of acceptance. “Clean this up and get out,”

“M’lady could have a bath drawn, if that would please her-,”

“ _Get out_ ,” Nell kicks the wooden tray over again, and stands by the window, scanning the rainy landscape outside, while the maid cleans the mess up and takes it out. The thought of making a wild dash for the door does occur to her, but she’s also not foolish enough to believe they don’t have guard stationed just outside, and likely throughout this tower as well. If she were going to run, it would have to be while they were taking her from one place to another. When the room is utterly silent once more, she turns away from the window, and looks around blankly. Part of her is still waiting to wake up.

But it doesn’t come. Nothing changes. There is no sudden or shocking revelation, no great relief that she just dreamed this or imagined it or hallucinated it. A day ago she laid in that bed with Robb and held him as tightly as she could, and now he is gone. He is dead. He is dead. She repeats it in her mind, but it doesn’t seem to stick. He is dead. She needs to… She needs to do a thousand things. She needs to see her daughter and see Catelyn and the Brackens and find out what happened to Dana and if Jory is alive and how many men survived and whether or not the Greatjon is out there plotting a rescue, is Harry Karstark still loyal, and where is Robb and where is Grey Wind and what about the Freys, did they all turn or only some, are there any yet loyal to her that she could turn to, is there any hope, where are the Lannisters, are they sending the Kingslayer back to invade the Riverlands once more, what do they mean to do with her, will they chain her to a wall or lock her in this room or send her to the Silent Sisters? Will they marry her off? Do they intend to keep her here for the rest of her life, a madwoman in a tower? 

She settles down onto her haunches on the floor, and draws her legs up under her chin like a little girl, and tries to block out the hammer of her heart in her chest and her blood in her ears. “He’s not coming,” she says aloud, tries to tell herself sternly. “You need to find your own way out.” But she doesn’t want to believe it, can’t believe it anymore than she could believe that he might die at the Whispering Wood, because that’s not how it’s meant to go. She didn’t come this far to never go home again.

The bed beckons to her, for what else is there to do right now but sleep, and try to forget for a little while, but it seems too soft, too spongy, rotten and tainted after what’s happened. This bed they laid in while Freys plotted murder. Eventually, she drags off the quilt, wraps herself in that, and lies down on the carpeted floor. She does not expect to fall asleep quickly, but she finds she does, if only in her haste to make all of this go away, to try to go back, as if she could stumble into some dream and make that the new future.

She does dream, of course she does, but not of Mother or other women, and there are no horses or horns or fires. She dreams she sleeps in this same quilt beneath a great tree, not in a godswood but somewhere else, atop a high hill, and the trees roots were gnarled feet, and its bark was bruised and scabbed skin, and its branches were a dead man’s arms, rising towards the moon, and leaves sprouted from his fingertips, wrinkled from the river water, and his hair was russet leaves, and how it shook and sighed in the wind. His mouth was but a slash of red lichen, and his eyes were miniature pools of amber sap, and they watched her but did not weep. 

She lays there under his crooked shade up on the hill, and at the base of the hill the river full of corpses carries on flowing, all around a lonely little island where a dead king and his lover slept, and in her dream her long hair rooted to the ground, and her arms, and her legs, and she could not touch him, however much she wanted to, but she could lay there beside him, and listen to the wind creak and moan, and feel the earth and the moss and the leaves creep up and over her skin. There is a hollow place between the roots of her arms, where a babe might nestle, but it filled up with wild roses instead, and their petals brushed soft as satin against her dirty cheek, and brushed away her tears.

When she wakes it is night again, and Nell lies there in her soft cocoon of a quilt, listening to the river and the rain, and then the faint, far off, howling of a pack of wolves. She wonders if she is just imagining them. She wonders if they can smell death. She wonders if they can smell her. The first sob stutters out then, and then another, a slow hiccuping sort of motion, but it feels good, almost. It feels good. She can pretend everyone else is dead and it is just her, in this room, and the wind and the rain and the wolves. She balls up her fists in her filthy dress, and lets it all rush out, a retching, keening sort of cry that wavers on, long and sharp, then again, another one, because she is not a queen in the dark, not strong in the dark, not good in the dark. It’s safer in the dark, she told herself once, lying beside Robb in a tent the night before the Whispering Wood. It is always safer in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I really do appreciate the feedback and responses in the comments of the last chapter, and though out this fic in general. I know it is very long and people take personal time out of their busy day to read, and even more time to write up a comment, and I really don't take it for granted. I would also like to recommend some other works by other writers which are all interesting takes on the War of the Five Kings: 
> 
> [ **Orphans of the Frost** ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12135471)   
>  [ **I'm trying hard to hide your soul / from things it's not meant to see** ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19386535)   
>  [ **Our Blades Are Sharp** ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8229550)   
>  [ **Love and Honor** ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/570829)   
>  [ **Acts of Treason** ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3967165)
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Next chapter will be a Dana POV, it will involve Olyvar Frey and some other people, both from the North and the Riverlands, and it will be doing some set-up for some future events.
> 
> 2\. If this fic could be tagged more effectively, please let me know. I generally try to tag with caution, but not to the point of spoiling major story events. It's tagged as 'Dark Fantasy', "Not a Fix-It', 'Horror Elements', etc, for a reason, but if you feel that it is missing a tag or that the tags are misleading, I will try to fix it to avoid any confusion or irritation. If the consensus is that it needs to be tagged as 'Red Wedding' and/or 'Canon Divergence - Red Wedding' as well, I will adjust that.
> 
> 3\. This chapter reveals some things such as Roose's motivations or what he feels are justifications (however much someone like Roose even feels the need to justify anything), as well as some other key pieces of information: Catelyn is not dead, she's a captive as well, the Greatjon escaped, others such as the Smalljon, Wendel Manderly and several sons of prominent river lords are all prisoners, Grey Wind went missing from the banks of the river, and Harry Karstark is still out there with his men. Future chapters will explain in greater detail everyone's relative locations and statuses. I don't want to info-dump to the point where people are overwhelmed trying to keep track of everything and everyone, so I am trying to convey stuff like this in a fairly measured manner. 
> 
> 4\. I really enjoy reading the ASOIAF meta of [**turtle-paced**](https://turtle-paced.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr and I think the following quotes from their blog about Roose Bolton are really relevant here: 
> 
> “What becomes of House Bolton after Roose is dead doesn’t matter to him. Roose cares about Roose. What happens to his descendants after he’s gone doesn’t figure into his calculations.” 
> 
> “Rape? Waste of good rope, in hindsight. Murder? Forget that, we didn’t get to hunt that fox. Mutilation? How annoying. Ramsay’s going to kill all Roose’s other sons? Oh well. Sucks to be Walda I guess. There’s no difference between people and things in Roose’s mind. Even if he was moderately fond of Domeric, I have trouble believing he would have substantially modified his self-serving behaviour for Domeric’s benefit.”
> 
> 5\. Nell is in shock this chapter, which I think explains a lot of her reactions here. She's kind of going in circles of anger, disbelief, and denial, and not really processing anything right off the bat. Roose runs his mouth so much to Theon in canon that I did not think it was unbelievable that he would also be doing a couple of monologues to his own daughter. Practically, I also don't want to write 5 chapters of Nell going 'what the fuck is going on, what just happened' and no one telling her anything, as that would be... really frustrating for all of us.
> 
> 6\. In the next Nell POV we will be seeing or hearing about multiple other characters, such as Catelyn, Edmure, Roslin, Arwyn, the Waldas, etc. I would like to think she has been a fairly proactive main character thus far who is not one to give up hope and resign herself to complete despair, especially not now that she is a parent. I want to be realistic to the fact that what just happened was a massive shock and a horrific event, while also not having her POV spiral into just constant whumping and despairing. So yes, we will be getting out of this shitty tower room, and seeing more of the Twins, and more of the Freys, and some other folks as well.


	40. Dana II

299 AC - THE GREEN FORK

Dana comes back to herself some while later. It’s not so much that she was unconscious for that long; the pain kept her awake, or at at least something approaching awake. But she wasn’t really aware, either. She remembers a horse, and Olyvar asking her if she could sit up to ride, and her mumbling something about him tying her to the saddle, and then she remembers distant shouts and hoof-beats, and cursing, and then they were off, and the orchard disappeared from view just as they disappeared into the woodlands. 

Then it was a blur of greens and browns as the day lightened, and then the rains came again, and everything was wet and lush, and still she did not quite know herself or where she was or where he meant to take her, and at some point she may have nodded off in the saddle in front of him, in spite of everything, all the bruises and scrapes and the agonizing throbbing pain in her fingers. 

Then she was being pulled down from the saddle and there were voices and someone was holding her by the shoulders and then the rain got heavier and the forest got wetter, seemed to melt down around her, and there were men talking and arguing, and when she does come back to herself, it’s late in the day. The rains have tapered off some. They’re deep in the wood. The woodlands of the Riverlands are similar enough to those of the North, only all the trees are much smaller, and even the brush seems milder. But everything is so vivid. Dana is a Flint of the Finger; she was raised in a spiny castle overlooking the Blazewater Bay, and there were no real forests there, just endless plains and hills and cliffs, all varying shades of pale green or brown or grey, all facing a dark, dark sea. 

She’s sitting on the ground, at the base of a uprooted tree, facing a cave in a rocky outcropping, covered in moss and fallen leaves. There’s a few horses tethered nearby, but no one is standing or moving about; all the men around her sit in huddled clumps, speaking in low, tense voices, shoulders hunched, shifting uncomfortably in their wet clothes. A few are injured, although none so badly that they cannot walk. 

Dana instantly registers most of their accents as Northern brogues, but that doesn’t do much to set her at ease. They weren’t just betrayed by Freys. And men like this are broken; she can see it from the blank looks on their faces and their glassy eyes. Broken men do terrible things when they feel they have nothing left to live or fight for. She’s not tied or bound in any way, but she gropes around as quietly as she can for some sort of sharp rock or stick anyways, just in case.

“My lady,” someone says, and she flinches slightly, then peers up at Olyvar Frey, who is the first to notice that she’s awake and alert once more. “Is your- are your fingers… do they feel any better? We tried to bind them while you were…” he appears to be groping for a word the way she was groping for a rock a few moments ago. Dana knows Oly Frey, has spent time around him and other men of Robb’s battleguard before. He looks more Rosby than Frey, she once heard someone remark, and while she doesn’t know the Rosbys, she could believe it. His hair and eyes are- were- darker than most of his kin, and he’s not very tall for a man- boy- of nearly nineteen, slender-faced and lean under his armor, with small hands and feet. It makes him look several years younger than his age. She doesn’t feel very comforted by his martial prospects. A strong wind could send him sprawling.

But she does look to her fingers. The broken, twisted ones have been haphazardly lashed together with some leather strips. The pain has deadened slightly, but not much. They're swollen stiff and reddish purple. “Do you have any water?” she asks, or more like rasps, her throat burning. Olyvar nods, bounds over to his saddlepack to fetch her some, but before he can return someone’s tossed a flask at her; it lands with a dull, wet thud by her feet. 

“That’ll serve you better,” someone says hoarsely. “Take some of the bite out of the pain, anyways.”

Dana squints in his general direction, then blanches at the sight of Daryn Hornwood. He’s lost an ear, or most of it, at least; the left side of his face and head and neck is coated in dried, black blood, his hair matted and greasy and plastered to his scalp. He’s sprawled under a tree himself, practically lying down, and his axe is embedded into the trunk beside him. He raises a hand limply in greeting. “It’s wine.” He says. “From the feast last night. They gave us the best of it. Their honored guests,” his voice cracks high and jagged at that, and he coughs, then turns a baleful stare on Olyvar, who’s come back with the water. “I trust him not to slit our throats in our sleep. Not much more than that.”

To his credit, Oly does not descend into earnest apologies or defensive outrage. Instead he says calmly, “If you wanted to turn and kill me for what my family’s done, you already would have. I got you this far away safely, didn’t I? And I gave you my word, on my honor-,”

“Sod your fucking honor,” one of the men growls, standing up, and Dana chokes on her long draught of wine as she recognizes his voice as well. “You haven’t got any. Your whole fucking family- what honor have they got, after this? None. You’re lucky we haven’t strung you up by the bloody ankles and started taking turns poking holes in you yet, Frey.”

“On my honor as a squire,” Olyvar snaps, meeting Bennard Flint’s furious gaze steadily. “And keep your fucking voice down, will you?” Then he flushes, and glances down at Dana, who is still chugging a draught of wine. “My apologies, my lady. You shouldn’t be hearing that sort of language-,”

“Stow it,” she says at last, wiping at her mouth and setting down the flask. “I’m not your lady fair and you’re not Ser Aemon the Dragon Knight, Oly. Give me some of that water, will you? Wine’s gone stale.” He hands it to her, and she takes a swig, swishes it around in her mouth until the taste of blood and spice fades, then spits it out. “But you were Dacey and Lyra’s friend. So I trust you that far. Where’s Dacey? And the others?” She struggles to think of faces. “Owen, Lucas, Smalljon-,”

“Dead,” Ben Flint tells her flatly. “Dead or taken. I saw Robin Widowsflint die, gods rest him well. Don Locke too. Some of these boys say Roger Ryswell took an arrow through the damn eye, so he’s lost, then, and Uncle Will and Jonny…” his voice breaks, and he clamps up. Dana has more cousins than she can count, and as a rule, loathes most of them, but Willam Flint was still her uncle… and Jonnel Flint was still Ben’s big brother. And Ben already lost his father and brother Donnor at Oxcross.

“What about Gawen?” she presses after a moment. “Errold?”

But Ben just shakes his head. “I don’t fucking know! Dead! Or taken. Or out here in the woods somewhere, hiding from more fucking Freys.” He scoops up a handful of loose stones and hurls them at nothing in particular; they go scattering to the ground with a series of patters.

Dana’s head swims. She wants to lay down on the ground, muddy and wet as it is, and go to sleep. She wants to wake up when things make sense. “Why… what happened? I don’t… who attacked who? Why would they turn?”

“Lannisters,” says Daryn. 

“Lannisters were there?” Dana cries out in shock.

“Keep your voice down,” someone snarls in her direction; she makes a rude hand gesture in return.

“No,” says Daryn through his teeth. “But I’ll guarantee you their coin was. Freys were never what I’d call reliable,” he works his jaw like something’s loose, then spits a tooth into his bloody palm and holds it up for everyone to see. Scattered murmurs. “But they wouldn’t have turned unless coin changed hands. Lots of it. Ravens and words and coin and promises. They’ll give Bolton the North, all of it, Freys the Riverlands, and throw women and swords and more money at them until everyone shuts up and does what they’re told.” 

He coughs harshly. “They rode us down from the hills. None of them got any sleep last night, I promise you that. They got them ready in the dead of night, got up in the hills, and waited. Boltons and Freys and Karstarks and some Ryswells, too. Same must have happened at the camps. Walt, you were there,” he jerks his head at one man, a common soldier, who glances up nervously.

“They set the tents alight,” Walt says. “With arrows. An’ the horses were trampling, an’ they just… rode through an’ killed everyone as they came out. We were divided up in the camps based on marching orders, anyways, so, they’d know which troops were where…” he trails off, and a long silence passes. “Some got away, though. Plenty fought back. I know the Freys lost men there. But the horses… Some were on fire. They scream. Didn’t know horses did that, when you set them on fire.”

“Danelle-,” Olyvar says quickly.

“Dana,” she mutters.

“Dana,” he crouches down beside her. “I swear to you, I had no knowledge of what was coming. Perwyn and I were called back on some foolishness- That our good sister Jyanna had need of us, that Benfrey had fallen down the stairs drunk and gotten hurt- and by the time we realized we’d been brought back just to keep us out of the fight, it was too late.”

Dana doesn’t know if she believes him. He could have known, or at least suspected. He could have believed something was about to happen, and only feel guilty about it now. She doesn’t care. “Where’s Perwyn?”

“He went to try to warn Edmure,” Olyvar’s eyes darken. “I don’t… If anything’s happened to him, or Ros-,” he exhales. “I took a horse and got out a side gate. They were more concerned with sending more soldiers out than keeping anyone in, at that point. I was His Grace’s first squire, I- I have a duty to help his people. To try to rally the survivors where I can.”

“And Robb…” she knows, of course. These men would not be sitting here like this, utterly despondent and beaten down and broken, if they knew that Robb Stark, their king, the king they all chose, still drew breath. Olyvar shakes his head tightly.

“But they won’t have harmed Nell.” Dana wants it to be true, so she speaks it aloud. “They… even if Roose turned, they need her. Her and Lysara, don’t they?” Her fingers throb again, and she takes another sip of the water, then grimaces. She can still taste dirt and blood on her lips. And whenever she blinks, she is still lying there, Da on top of her, grinding blood and leaves into her hair, telling her not to move, and the horses get louder and louder-

“No,” Olyvar is saying, somewhat stiffly, because now all the eyes have turned to him, about ten sets of them. “They won’t harm them, or the other ladies. They need hostages if they want any chance of pulling this off. Otherwise there will be nothing to stop the rest of the river lords from rising up against them.”

“We need to get to Riverrun,” Daryn says.

“We’re on the wrong fucking side of the river,” Ben snaps. “And they’ll be combing up and down it- they control the only real bridge for what, a hundred miles?”

“Then we find a ferryman.”

“A ferryman who won’t sell us out for a few silvers? Good luck,” someone else mutters.

“They’ve got the money,” Dana picks a dead leaf from her hair, resisting the urge to scream and cry and throw things. No. She has to keep a cool head. That’s what Nell would do in her position. Well, maybe not, given Nell’s black temper, but- that’s what Dacey would do. That’s what Lyra would do. Her heart feels like it’s being choked in her chest. At least Lyra went with Maege. 

But Dacey… Dacey is gone. And Jory… Jory never would have let them take Nell and the babe, not so long as she drew breath. So she must be gone too. Her eyes burn, but she continues stubbornly, “They have coin enough to put out bounties on everyone’s heads. Everyone with names, anyways,” she looks meaningfully to Daryn, Bennard, even Olyvar. “It doesn’t matter where we’re going if we’re going to be hunted down as soon as some farmer spots strangers moving through his fields.”

Olyvar stands up, brushing off his breeches. “I know somewhere we can go. They’ve got land on the waterfront, and boats.” Scattered mumbling breaks out; several men look up eagerly. He holds up both hands as if to appease them. “Listen. They’re a small house. They don’t have the numbers or supplies to mount any real counter-attack, and they’re close by. My… my family will send men to them sooner or later, to demand their surrender. But they will give us safe haven if we can reach them, I know it. And we’ll never make it far with four horses and the rest of you on foot. If they can get us even partially down-river… It’s better than the Kingsroad, or the woodlands. Everyone on this side of the river who escaped the slaughter knows they need to get to the Trident, to the Crossroads. Most of the houses with any real strength in numbers are that far south.”

“Who holds Harrenhal now that Bolton’s gone?” one man demands.

There’s a long silence. 

“Then we’ll be finding that out, I suppose,” Dana mutters under her breath. “Harry Karstark’s up above the Red Fork, isn’t he? Either he’ll bring his men up north towards Oldstones-,”

“Or he’ll go back down to Riverrun, join up with the Blackfish,” Daryn says, his tone slightly lighter than before. 

“Or he’s turned too, and setting a trap,” Ben points out darkly.

“Or he’s fending off Flement Brax and whatever’s left of the Mountain’s Men,” Dana tries to clamber to her feet, wavers, head swimming, and doesn’t push Oly away when he gallantly steadies her. “Either way, we can’t stay here. We can’t cross here. And we can’t go back towards the Twins.”

“We could make for the coast, try to get a boat across the Bite to Oldcastle,” one boy ventures timidly; a friend clouts him across the back of the head.

“With what coin?” Ben sneers. “Here’s how we’ll do it. Anyone who wants to run, you can run, and take your bloody chances out there alone. The rest of you, if you’ve any fucking self respect, will do what your lords tell you. And seeing how Daryn here’s Lord Hornwood, I reckon that makes him our commander.”

There’s a few jerky nods of acceptance. No one moves. Daryn slowly clambers to his feet, yanks his axe out of the trunk, grips it firmly in one hand. He sighs, a long groan of pain and exhaustion, then rolls back his shoulders, and while he sets his axe on his belt, asks Olyvar without looking up, “You know the nearest motherhouse?”

“There’s one a three day’s ride from here, across the Kingsroad,” Oly says slowly, “but what does that have to-,”

“You take her,” Daryn jerks his head at Dana, “and you bring her there. They’re bound by their gods to give safe haven to any maid in need, aren’t they? She’s not married, she’s sure as hells not getting back home on her own, and she can’t stay with us. You take her there, we go to this holdfast you were speaking of, use their rookery to send word-,”

“Are you mad?” Dana snaps. “I’m not going to a motherhouse, Daryn!”

“I wasn’t asking, Danelle!” Daryn retorts. “Gods be true, think this through! You are injured. You are a woman. You are not a fighter. We have a long journey ahead of us, no matter what happens. This is no place for a lady. You’ll be safe there.” He looks to Ben, who nods his approval.

Dana stiffens. “Bennard’s not my bloody father, Hornwood! He’s a cousin! A _cousin_!”

“He’s a man of your house, he’s responsible for you-,”

“You’re going to the motherhouse,” Ben interjects over Daryn, lip curling, “I don’t care if I have to tie you hand and foot-,”

“I’d like to see you try,” she sneers. “I tanned your hide when were children, I’ll do it again in a heartbeat-,”

“Dana,” Olyvar says sympathetically, and Daryn’s look softens slightly, as he makes ready to try a more persuasive tact, but it’s Ben who settles it, by saying derisively, “Aye? Was that before or after your drunk of a father tanned your hide for fighting boys in the middle of a feast? Don’t have to ask where he is right now, do I? Running hard for the Neck, no doubt-,”

“You fucker,” Dana snarls, makes a fist with her uninjured hand, and hits him as hard in the throat as she can. He reels back, retching and stunned, and she throws her shoulder into his chest and sends them both toppling to the ground before anyone else can react. Ben thrashes underneath her, she claws at his face, and he slaps her, hard, before she boxes his ear on the left side, fist stinging badly- “He’s dead, you stupid shit-for-brains! He’s DEAD! Just like yours!” 

Daryn wraps a lanky arm around her waist and hauls her off Ben, growling in her ear, “Stop screaming or I’ll gag you, Danelle Flint, I swear to the gods, I will-,” and she stops yelling, panting breathlessly, hair hanging lank in her face, as Oly helps Ben off the forest floor. The rest of the boys and men are gaping at them. There’s a distant bird cry, a hawk of some kind.

Daryn lets go of her. Ben is looking at the blood on his fingers. “You nearly got my eye, you bitch.” But his tone is one of begrudging respect.

“Good,” she says. “I’m not going. I’m as Northern as any of you. And you can rot if you think I’m going to run off to live with the septas for the rest of the war. Robb Stark was my King too. And Nell Stark’s my queen. I’m coming.”

Ben shakes his head, and then spits. “Fine. But don’t think we won’t leave you behind in an instant if you can’t-,”

“Flint, enough,” Daryn says irritably. He turns to Dana; not many men can look down at her as well as he can, but then again, not many men as are tall as Daryn Hornwood. He’s grown into his big ears and gangling limbs, but he still resembles an overgrown sapling, or a new foal, in many ways. Good thing she was fighting wiry little Ben, and not him. One of his hands is as big as her face. 

“You think you have a duty to come, fine. We don’t have the time to waste dragging you off screaming like a madwoman. But understand that if we’re captured, they will kill us, and take turns raping you, and leave you for dead in a ditch, or worse. And none of us will be able to protect you then.”

“I understand,” says Dana. She feels half-dead inside already, the way you do when your feet fall asleep, sometimes, only under her skin. It’s probably never going to go away. _Marianne_ , she thinks, and the tears almost come then. _No. Don’t think of her. Don’t consider. She’s lost to you now. You never had her anyways_. “Thank you, Daryn… Lord Hornwood.”

“Don’t push it,” he mutters, but there’s a brief flicker of amusement tugging at the corner of his bloody mouth, before he wipes it away with a hand. “Sun’s on its way down. If we can keep moving through nightfall, how long until we reach those lands?” he turns to Olyvar, who glances around the steadily darkening wood.

“If we keep good pace through the night, and stick to the back trails, we should get there by midday tomorrow. Snake’s Den’s not far, and I know the way well enough I used to play with Robert and Damon in these woods.”

“Snake’s Den? Which family is that?” Walt, one of the commons, speaks up.

“House Paege,” Oly says. “My father sent Alesander there, to play for the wedding.”

“I thought Ser Halmon was already married,” Ben frowns.

“He is,” Olyvar says. “To a Grey. His sisters, the twins, they were wed to Jammos and Whalen, my father’s thirteenth and fourteenth sons.” His tone is oddly distant, Dana assumes, because he’s got so many bloody siblings and most of them are murderous traitors. “And one of my natural sisters was due to wed Robert, Ser Halmon’s brother, this week. Mellara. She’s a good woman.”

“That may be,” Daryn scowls. “But they’re married into the Freys. Halmon’s sisters will be loyal to their husbands-,”

Oly scoffs; it sounds strange coming from someone as earnest as him. “You’ve never met Sallei and Sylwa, then. They’ve minds of their own, you’ll find that out soon enough. They took their children and went home for the wedding. Robert and Mellara’s, that is. And Sallei’s eldest son went to foster at Winterfell. She’s every reason to be true to the Starks.”

“Winterfell’s burned,” Ben says. “Her son’s either dead, or at the Dreadfort. Little boys don’t last long there, I hear.”

“Then she’ll want revenge,” Dana cuts in coldly. “Trust me. Women are just as blood-hungry as men, if you give us the chance.” A few of them are staring at her, and for the first time she takes stock of how she must look; hair a matted, snarled tangle, blood and dirt all over her torn dress and filthy boots, and a fresh cut opened up across one eyebrow. Minutes ago she was brawling in the dirt with a cousin, cursing and throwing fists like a man. 

But anything’s better than feeling so numb and hopeless. Anger’s better, pain’s better, even shame’s better. It should be Nell out here with them, temporarily safe and free, her and the babe. They’d rally around her, protect her with their very lives. Instead they have her. Dana. A poor excuse for a lady, a disobedient daughter, a wayward almost-wife. She should be dead. She should be floating in the river with the rest. But it has to mean something if she’s here, right now. 

Oly clears his throat. “Right. Let’s fan out, and proceed.”

“Slow and steady,” Daryn hefts up his axe again. “Anyone hears or sees anything, put up a fist, we all stop, get down low. Let the horses walk for now.” He nods to Dana. “Someone give her a knife.”

Several knives appear from boots and belts. Dana selects one, clutches it tight in her good hand, and looks around grimly. The woods are still too wet and too green and growing dimmer by the minute. But there are familiar faces around her and the pain isn’t so bad that she just wants to sleep anymore. They’re moving. They’re going somewhere. That has to be worth something. She sucks in a breath, and takes the first step forward, then another, listening to the quiet snuffles of the horses and the birds rustling in the trees, and through it all, the distant, study rush of the river, carrying all those bodies downstream. She wonders if Father is among them. Or Dacey. Or Jory. Or Robb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the plan for the next several chapters is to alternate between Nell and Dana. Not having actually written from Dana's POV before, I expect her first few chapters to be a bit rocky before I can settle into her perspective better, but I am hoping the upside to this will be that while as frustrating as Nell's current situation is, Dana and co. are on the move. For the time being beseeching House Paege for help is looking like the best chance they've got of being able to move down-river quickly. The official map of the Riverlands is convenient (or inconvenient) in that there's not really any houses on the eastern side of the Green Fork, but seeing as there's no canon information as to where House Paege's holdings are... there we go. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. Dana is different from both Nell and Beth in that she is obviously not a child being exposed to the horrors of the world, but she's also not as inclined to brooding as Nell is, and is generally pretty action-focused. She is, however, a very passionate and loyal individual and I hope to be able to delve more into her personality in the future. This chapter was somewhat stilted for me in that I needed to get a lot of info across through her eyes, but hopefully I will improve at distinguishing her 'voice' within the next few chapters. 
> 
> 2\. Daryn! He's back, sans an ear! I'm really fond of Daryn, and happy to finally have the chance to spend some more time with him as a character. There's also Bennard Flint, one of Dana's surviving and disagreeable cousins, and of course, Olyvar, the man of the hour. So far this fic has been very much focused on the women and I've enjoyed that opportunity quite a bit, but some male characters will be taking more of a center-stage as we enter this point of the story, Daryn and Olyvar among them. 
> 
> 3\. We don't hear much at all about motherhouses in canon, but I have to *assume* they would function more or less like convents? There is precedent for noblewomen being sent there for sanctuary/protection during war times, and I would *like* to think that Dana would not be turned away on account of not worshiping the Seven, had she actually gone there. That said, her stay there might certainly be dependent on her be willing to take some vows or oaths to the Seven, something she is not willing to do. 
> 
> 4\. I'm actually a bit excited to introduce House Paege, which includes Sallei, Big Walder's mom, Robert, a friend of Edmure's, and several other people who are all canonical characters, but who little is known about other than their names. The majority of the characters we deal with in canon are either directly related to or in service to the *big* houses, so it's kind of a nice change to be introducing some people who are considered more 'minor' nobility as landed knights, beyond just Beth Cassel.
> 
> 5\. What this chapter should make clear is that House Frey is not quite *united* in this betrayal. People like Perwyn, Olyvar, and Alesander are all identified as actively working against (or having the potential to defy) Lord Walder's orders. We will be seeing some other Freys in the near future as well, on both sides of the fight.
> 
> 6\. This chapter is not implying that *only* about a dozen people made it away safely. This just happens to be the particular group of survivors that Dana finds herself with.


	41. Donella XXXV

299 AC - THE TWINS

Nell bathes early in the morning on the third day; it’s still dark outside, but she can hear the rain still. It’s been raining constantly since she woke here. She pictures all that water, pounding and pummeling the earth, shaping it smooth and new underfoot, wiping away all sorts of tracks- footprints, hoof-prints, wagon-wheels. She pictures that rain washing away all the blood left in the river, sending it surging and fizzing all the way down to the sea. She remembers what the boys the Rickards murdered looked like, corpses washed clean by the rains. She wonders if Robb is as neat in them in death. Did they slit his throat? Put a sword through his eye? Is he riddled with arrows, missing limbs? Is his face a pulpy mass of mangled flesh and broken bone? She wonders if there are river leeches clinging to him, and sinks under the warm water of the tug to wash that thought away. 

Her breasts are still sore and aching; she’s gone from nursing multiple times a day to none at all, and leaking milk because of it. It might feel shameful or repulsive if was capable of feeling such things anymore. Nell reclines in the tub, legs splayed, and examines the scrapes and bruises down her arms and legs, the raw rope-burns round her wrists, the lingering stiffness in her shoulders and neck. The cut on her chin is like to scar, and Roose gave her a cuff of bruises round one forearm, purple slugs throbbing on the skin. Her cheeks feel swollen and her eyes sunken, and the odd feeling of bareness at the back of her scalp is too much to bear; she parts her hair to the left for the first time in her life, braids it tight and slick to cover the shaven spot, and is stepping into a robe when they come in with the moon tea.

“A simple precaution,” says the Frey’s fat, sympathetic maester. “A child formed in grief often fails to thrive, and you are not recovered enough to bear another so soon anyways.”

Nell has not lain with Robb, at least not in any way that could produce a child, since she gave birth to Lysara two moons ago. Even if she had, she is doubts it would have led a child; her moon’s blood hasn’t even returned yet, and the midwife told her that it was not like to anytime soon, were she to keep nursing her babe herself, and herself alone, every day. But she doubts the Freys are much in the way of knowledgeable about women’s bodies, and even if they were, they would not care. The last thing they need is a rumor that she is pregnant with a dead king’s babe, no matter how outlandish it might sound. People have gone to war for unborn heirs before, and surely will again.

And there is another reason, of course. If they intend to marry her off to someone, they will want to be sure that she is not going to try to claim their child as Robb’s in an attempt to entice another rebellion. If they intend to rape her, however discreetly, they will want to be sure that she is not getting with a bastard. Then again, she could be entirely wrong. They could intend to marry her into their own house, as some sort of reward from Tywin, and then it will not really matter whose child it is, surely, so long as it looks Frey enough? Another little Walder or Walda. Perhaps even a Tywin or a Cersei or a Jaime. Nell has never drank moon tea before, but her stomach was roiling before she’d swallowed the first drop.

She’s not afraid of what they might do to her or who they might give her to as the spoils of war or what becomes of her body. It sounds like a foolish attempt at bravery, but it’s true. How can she be afraid for herself, when they have her daughter? How can she care what happens to her, when Lysara is alone, when Roose means to take her back to the Dreadfort? Nell did not understand it before she had a child. She is still not even sure that she what she feels now when she thinks of her daughter is love. If this is what love feels like, than Mother was right when she spoke of that knife against the throat. Because Nell can scarcely breathe to think of her. Time seems to slow. Nothing else matters. 

Someone tells her she’s to get dressed now, for Lord Walder wishes to speak with her. The maester leaves, the tub is carried out, sprinkling water across the floor, and Arwyn shuffles in. Fair Walda was not exaggerating when she said that they had beaten her something fierce. It’s been a few days, and the bruises may have faded slightly, gone from purple to greenish-blue, but the limp remains. Nell imagines she was shoved down a few stone steps, or across flagstones. She walks like she went down hard, flat on her back, and then took a few kicks. Arwyn’s hair is lank and unwashed; one of her eyes is blackened so badly that it’s still swollen slightly shut. 

“I’m to help you dress,” she says, and the voice is so strange and unnatural, clenched off like a fist, that Nell momentarily questions whether she even knows what Arwyn’s voice sounded like in the first place. Quiet, she thinks. Sweet. They were sweet girls. They seemed sweet girls, but so quiet. She pitied them. Took an interest in them, against her better judgement. Spoke for them and their rights. And this is how she was repaid. She shirks off the robe and delights in how Arwyn cringes away, as if her naked form was somehow a blatant reminder of what has just happened. Of what they’ve done.

“They brought in a trunk while I was sleeping,” Nell speaks as though she would to a maid, short and to the point, and nods her head towards the corner. “I doubt I’ll see most of my luggage again.” She doesn’t think the Freys are going to be sending parties to the western banks to search for lost baggage at this point. Prisoners of war are not generally afforded lavish wardrobes. When she first met the Frey girls she’d shared private looks with Dana over their clothes, some of which were obvious hand-me-downs, adjusted to fit a smaller or larger frame, hemmed sloppily or slightly too baggy in the chest or short in the skirt. The Freys have coin a-plenty, but she imagines they are not carefully dividing it so every individual family has enough to purchase new clothing. Likely they scrabble over their toll taxes like dogs at their master’s feet. Perhaps they’ve been spending it all on new armor and sellswords. 

Arwyn obediently goes over to the trunk and rummages through. Nell sits on the bed and finishes drying off her legs. When Arwyn returns with two black or very dark grey gowns, appropriate mourning attire for a new widow, Nell says only, “No. I want the red-and-blue. You know the one. With the piping and the bead-work.” Arwyn stands very still, her trembling arms full of dark fabric, whispering against itself.

“Your Grace,” she says in a very small voice, “they’ll want you in mourning colors.”

“Why?” Nell flicks at her wet braid. When she gets her hair wet it turns jet black. When Robb’s hair was wet it would go very dark brown. She always thought how odd he looked with darker hair, like a different person entirely. In truth, when his hair was wet and therefore dark and lying flat instead of curling, he looked a bit like Jon Snow, at least at first glance, before you took in the thicker neck and squarer jaw and heavy brows. “Do your kin mourn for their king?”

Arwyn does not even attempt to meet her gaze. “If you dress in Tully colors my father won’t be pleased.”

“I don’t want him pleased,” Nell says. “My intention will never be to please your father. Nor any of your blood. I would rather see my tongue plucked out before I ever saw them pleased at the sight of me, do you understand?” She does not raise her voice, but it crackles all the same. Arwyn flinches slightly, and gives a jerky nod. She gets the red-and-blue, although every movement is slow, with either reluctance or pain. Nell doesn’t much care.

The red-and-blue is a gorgeous gown. It was commissioned specially after Robb’s coronation, for the portrait. By the time all was said and down, the portrait was not even completed until after Robb had left for the West, but when Nell left Riverrun it hung in what was once Hoster Tully’s solar all the same. She imagines it still hangs there, will be hanging there a year from now, years from now, until Riverrun is taken or burned or what have you, that painting will still be there, the King of the North and the Trident and his Queen Consort. 

The gown itself is largely rich sapphire blue. The beading and detailing is chipper red, accented with Stark silver grey. The sleeves are supposed to call to mind the ebbing and flowing of the river, all scalloped silk. The skirt has a wealthy swathe of grey satin underneath, peaking out from under the blue. The detailing on the bodice is the vague outline of a weirwood tree, and the beading shimmers best in torch light. The neckline is very becoming, meant to accentuate what the painter called ‘her youthful beauty’. She wore pearls then, a very plain strand across her collarbones, and her hair had been down and glossy, still worn like a maiden’s. 

Robb had worn the inverse; a grey doublet trimmed in red and blue. They’d tried to make him wear one of Edmure’s swords at his hip because it had a far more splendid gold hilt than his own, but he’d refused. He would not wear any rings, either, but he did consent to a higher collar than normal, ermine ruffled around his throat. He’d wanted them to stand together for the portrait, but she’d joined forces with the painter to convince him that it would look better with her seated and him standing behind her. So that is how they’d done it. Sitting still for that long, unable to even have some needlework or a book to read, had been torturous, but she’d had his warm hands clasped on the back of her high chair, and they’d exchanged the occasional amused glance.

The portrait had not captured any of that, of course. It had depicted what it was meant to; a newly crowned king and queen in their prime, the picture of youthful vigor and courtly love. It had rendered her a softly smiling young bride, regarding the viewer with demure grace through long lashes, and him a grimly gallant young groom, staring down an invisible audience of admirers, knuckles clenched round the back of the chair as if to reference some indomitable spirit just out of frame. 

Robb had actually laughed, upon seeing it, and said that it made him look as though he were on the verge of charging the painter and throttling him. Nell had remarked upon the great pains that had been taken to make her look suitably slender; curves, whether well-endowed or not, were appropriate for bosom barmaids in art, not serene young queens. 

Yet it had been recognizably them all the same, some title no doubt attributed to it in an artist’s log: King Robb Stark, First of His Name, and his Queen, Donella Bolton Stark. All Nell had been able to think, after viewing it for a few minutes, was how much better the next portrait would be. Traditionally, a royal family would have one commissioned every five or so years, or after the birth of the first child. 

In the next portrait, she’d thought then, girlishly eager at the thought, there’d be a little dark-haired son sat on her lap, giggling for the painter, and Robb’s beard would have come in full and mature, and she would be wearing new jewels and an even lovelier gown, and that would truly be the painting for their descendants would look thoughtfully over.

But that painting is lost to her and Robb is lost to her and that little boy never existed anyways. And she’s left with a dress and a memory. At least one of them is still some use to her. Nell winds her braid into a bun at the base of her scalp and pins it there. Arwyn fumbles with her stays several times but finally gets them laced. The woman staring back at her from the looking glass is not the rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed girl from the painting. That girl is dead and buried and trod underfoot by thousands. The woman wearing the dead girl’s dress has a gaunt and hungry look to her. The woman has no babe in her arms. The woman is not sitting demurely for anyone. 

Nell orders Arwyn back to the trunk, has her rifle through it until she comes back with a velvet pouch, which is spilled out onto the bed. She slips on the snarling iron Ryswell cuffs on her sore wrists. The cold metal smarts at the irritated skin, but perhaps that’s a good thing, a constant reminder. The amber Dustin ring goes onto her finger. The Bolton garnets are fondled, then ignored. Her mother was the last to wear those before Nell did for her own wedding. No one has worn them since. It may be that no one ever will. 

She does not wait for Arwyn’s say-so; she moves to the door and raps on it sharply, waiting for it to be unbarred. “Wait,” says Arwyn, and Nell glances back at her coldly. 

“I wanted to tell you,” Arwyn says. “You must know I wanted to tell you. I didn’t know how- how it might happen, but I knew something was going to happen, I wanted to tell you, but he took Shirei. He said if Roslin or I breathed a word, or tried to warn anyone, or even looked at you funny, he’d kill her. He wasn’t… he would have done it, too.”

“Who?” asks Nell simply.

Arwyn blanches, as if it ought to be obvious. “Black Walder. He told us he’d lock her in a crow cage, so we’d have to watch her starve. He would have done it. Shirei’s so little. I couldn’t. I had to protect her. I’m the only mother she’s got. You understand. You _must_.” 

The door is being unbarred; Nell listens to the groan of the metal against wood.

“Is Shirei safe here now?” she asks. 

Arwyn gives a tiny nod. 

“How safe, truly?” Nell asks flatly, and then the door opens. 

The last time Nell stood in this hall, it was filled to the brim with Freys; men, women, and children, and the music was playing and people were dancing and drinking, and she was picking at her plate and feeding her scraps to Grey Wind, lying at her feet and snapping his teeth at any passing man. Now it truly feels like a hollow hole in the ground; rationally Nell knows it is the same place, that they are still above the earth, not below it, but with very little light coming in through the windows and half the torches unlit to save coin, it feels like someplace else. One narrow shaft of grey morning light illuminates the high table, where Lord Frey sits his ancient seat, no longer surrounded by all his sons, daughters, and grandchildren, save a few. 

Nell looks them over from her position standing just short of the dais. She’s no chains, and no one man-handled her on her way here, but she was flanked by two guards all the same, and one kept a hand on his sword’s hilt, she presumes as a warning. A warning of what? Even were she some shield-maiden, she’d have a hell of a time managing to disarm or even injure two men without a weapon herself, wearing a heavy ornamental dress and shoes that pinch her toes. She’s hardly a physical threat to anyone. She wants it that way. They will underestimate her. They will slip up, make mistakes around her, feel at ease and say too much, or leave a door unlocked or a dinner knife within her reach.

Lord Walder has not been restored to youthful menace by the slaughter; he is as old and shriveled as ever, but his eyes seem less cloudy, sharper, almost, and the dust motes dance around his bald, age-spotted scalp as is afraid to settle on him, as though he exuded poison. His wrinkled mouth curls into a little scowl at the sight of her, decked out in Tully and Stark finery, not cowering at his feet in mourning blacks and begging to see her daughter. Nell clasps her hands lightly in front of her and raises her chin, which Sara once told her was how a lady could convey disapproval or scrutiny without saying so much. Southern women are not the only ones who know how to wield the barest of courtesies as weapons. Not every Northerner is a Mormont or a wild Flint. Then she thinks of Jory and Dana, and she almost loses her composure. Her friends. They were her friends, like sisters to her, and they took them away from her. 

Lothar Frey and Black Walder are at either side of their lord father and grandfather’s. They share the same hair and eyes, but apart from that, uncle and nephew could not seem more different. Lothar is plump and wears his hair long, his beard in a well-oiled goatee. Black Walder towers over him, hard and lean from years of fighting, and although he cannot be much older than twenty six or twenty seven, seems more aged in many ways than Lothar, grey edging at his own beard and sideburns. Neither of them says a word, although Black Walder seems enraged at the mere sight of her coolly glaring at them. 

“How kind of you to join us, _heh_ ,” Lord Walder finally rasps, his beady eyes not leaving her form. “Although… hardly the picture of a grieving widow, my lady. It’s a callous girl who wears such bright colors in her, _heh_ , mourning.”

“Pray tell what I am mourning,” Nell says tightly. “I’ve heard many foul rumors, and from my own lord father, but precious little proof of them.”

Lothar and Black Walder exchange a look.

“My lady,” says Lothar quietly, “you must excuse my frankness, but your lord husband is dead. You must consider us your most ardent caretakers and protectors in such a perilous time. The North and the Trident may be an independent kingdom no more, but House Frey remembers what a good and gracious queen you were. In time, you may see that leaving behind the burden of ruling was for the best.”

“Yes, you keep telling me Robb is dead,” Nell says, and it is a monumental struggle to not so much as flinch or recoil to even say those words aloud. “Yet I have not seen a body. Nor that of Grey Wind. How am I to claim a widow’s title without a corpse to mourn over? Your own holy book states that a widow is entitled to grieve over her husband’s corpse in a sept or sacred place. Yet my father tells me that his body was pushed into the river, and carried away.”

“If you need a corpse to look at to declare yourself a widow,” Black Walder all but snarls, “I’d be pleased to take you outside so you can have your pick of them-,”

“Shut it, boy,” Lord Walder snaps, and his grandson goes quiet and sullen as a squire of twelve. “Is that any way to speak to a highborn lady? I think not, _heh_. It’s true enough, Stark’s body went into the waters, and we’d not the men to spare to try to fish him back out, _heh_. But Tullys go back to the river anyways,” and now the old man is sneering down at her, “one way or another.”

Black Walder draws his sword, and Lothar reaches a hand out to stop him, glowering, but all the younger man does is slam the steel down on the table, so hard that it rings out, echoing, into the hall. Nell looks down at Robb’s sword, the simple lines of the hilt, the snarling wolf’s head, the sheen of the freshly polished blade. “Were you the one who killed him, then? A trifle more exciting, was it, murdering a man of sixteen, than threatening to lock children in crow cages or beating little girls?”

Black Walder does not even blink. “Shut your mouth,” he says, with such casual ferocity that it is almost impressive, “before someone shuts it for you. You and your ladies went unharmed. You should be at our feet, giving thanks you were spared the worst of it.”

“Walder,” Lothar says warningly under his breath, and Lord Walder shifts in his seat, casts a dismissive glance at his grandson, and then turns back to Nell.

“I’m an old man. I tire easily. The boy’s dead. Had I known you’d be so _heh_ , insistent, I’d have sent one of my sons swimming after him, bring back his head for you. Or his skin, heh, you Boltons like that, don’t you?”

“I have not been a Bolton since I wed a Stark of Winterfell,” Nell lies easily.

Lord Walder smiles, toothless gums and all. “You’re a Bolton again now, girl.” He coughs, long and haggard. “But not for so long, don’t you fret, _heh_. Lord Tywin’s arranged a fine match for you, all the way from King’s Landing.” He licks spittle off his mottled lips. “Humility and contrition, the best gifts a bride can give her groom, they always say. You can have your Tully colors and your little fits of prissiness here, my lady. I’ve many daughters, I’m used to a girl’s willfulness, _heh_. But before the new year grows long, there’ll be no Tullys and no Starks south of the Neck.” He waves a wrinkled hand at Lothar as he starts to cough again.

Lothar steps forward haltingly; Nell no longer has to hide her derision at his limp. He notices, and his eyes darken, but his mouth remains as softly smiling as ever. “As a reward for our renewed loyalty to the Iron Throne, King Joffrey has agreed to name my brother Ser Emmon Frey as the new lord of Riverrun, with all its lands and incomes. House Frey of Riverrun will support Lord Petyr Baelish as the new Lord Paramount of the Trident. House Lannister of Darry will begin with the marriage of Lady Amerei Frey and Lord Lancel Lannister, the king’s dear cousin. House Lannister and House Frey will be further tied together with the betrothal of our own Lady Arwyn to Ser Daven Lannister, son of the late Ser Stafford, who your husband slaughtered along with his men at Oxcross.”

“My lord father’s youngest natural son, Ronel Rivers, will be betrothed to Joy Hill, the natural daughter of the late Lord Gerion Lannister. As the terms of their surrender, the remaining rebel houses will send wards both to the Twins and King’s Landing. My nephew Walder has agreed to wed Lady Barbara Bracken. In exchange, Lady Jayne Bracken will be restored to her father, so long as he releases his prisoners, Lord Quenten Banefort among them. Once official terms of surrender have been negotiated from Riverrun and the other lords, Lord Banefort will take Lady Catelyn to wife, and you, my lady, will wed Ser Addam Marbrand.”

Nell looks at him evenly. “How generous an offer.”

“It’s not an offer,” Black Walder snarls. “Lord Tywin means to reward Marbrand for his heroics at the Blackwater. And you’re fertile enough, aren’t you?” His gaze flicks over her breasts. “Marbrand’s got no brothers, he needs a wife he can be sure is up to the task-”

“What my nephew means to say,” Lothar cuts in sharply, “is that this is indeed a very generous offer, my lady. The Crown has been far less forgiving to traitors in the past, but winter is coming, and Lord Tywin and his Small Council tire of such needless bloodshed.”

“Certainly,” Nell says. “That’s why they ordered a thousand and more men massacred in their sleep, under the guest right of House Frey.”

Black Walder actually reddens with fury, takes a step towards her. Nell does not so much as rock back on her heels. Compared to Roose, he might as well be a yapping little dog. “We broke no guest right. You were well away from our walls-,”

“And what of Edmure? Was he kindly asked to step out of the bridal suite and into some shackles?”

Lord Walder guffaws, and Black Walder stops. “You are a waspish one, aren’t you, my lady? Were I a young man again, _heh_ \- well, no matter. You’ll learn to guard that tongue a little better in time, if you want to lay eyes on your good mother or your babe again. I’m getting sore just sitting here,” he complains, “Lothar, have her sign the papers, and be on her way. Walder, boy, go get yourself a drink or a whore. You look fit to burst, and we can’t have that, can we, _heh_.”

Parchment is shoved in front of her. Nell skims the scrawled writing. It is about what she expected, a renouncing of Robb and his titles, as well as her own, a promise of renewed fealty and loyalty to the Iron Throne and House Baratheon of King’s Landing and House Lannister of Casterly Rock, a vow to enter into her new marriage without any claims to her old lands or titles, obedience, humility, penitence, and so on. She looks up. “Am to assume that if I refuse to sign, my signature will be forged anyways?”

“If you don’t sign, your lord father will be happy to persuade you, my lady,” Lothar says calmly. “But my father wishes to keep things peaceable. You may be our prisoner, but we need not be enemies. You may go on to live a long and prosperous life in your new marriage and home.”

Lord Walder leans forward in his seat, breath whistling in and out of his gummy mouth, as if hoping she’ll throw a fit and refuse. Nell picks up the quill with her left hand, not her right, for the first time in her life, and signs in one fluid slurring of ink, a barely legible signature in her non-dominant hand. They are fools. They should have had more witnesses present to it than just the three of them. This will be easy enough to deny up and down, should the need arise, and if she is not believed then, she can claim she signed it with steel to her throat. 

The matter of Marbrand is the real trouble. Once word of it gets out, rumors will abound that she was privy to the plots, or at least had some knowledge of them beforehand. That is likely what they want. They do not want her as the tragically noble widow that the river lords will rally around. They want Lysara tucked away back at the Dreadfort, and her wed to one of the Lannister’s many loyal dogs.

“I want to see Lady Catelyn and my daughter,” she says, as she sets the quill down. “I’ve given you no trouble, and I have done as you asked. If you do not permit me to see either of them, there will be trouble. Beat me all you like. Put me in a crow cage. It will not convince Brynden Blackfish to surrender Riverrun, nor Lord Mallister to give up Seagard. As you said, we need not be enemies in this. So do not make me any more of your enemy.”

The old man laughs until he is coughing again at that, and Lothar smiles seamlessly and Black Walder glowers, but she is escorted to an unfamiliar corridor all the same, outside a door that is a stranger to her, and when it is unbarred she is herded into a spacious but barren room, nearly empty save for a bed, wardrobe, and chair by the hearth, where Catelyn Tully Stark sits, a bundle of blankets in her arms. The firelight does cruel things to her face, emphasizes the sharpness of her cheekbones and the point of her chin. The Crone, Nell thinks, upon seeing her, and then her good mother looks up, and it’s the Mother staring back, but the true gods, the old gods, are hissing and spitting in the fire, crackling logs and throwing up embers. 

The door slams shut behind her. Catelyn starts to rise, then seems to think better of it and sinks back into her seat. Nell is at her side in a flash, nearly losing a shoe in her hurry, and drops to her knees on the dusty floor, the dress forgotten, her coldly regal demeanor forgotten, and Lysara in her arms, awake and staring up at her with a babe’s deep blue-grey eyes, and Nell does not register that she is crying until one of her tears lands on her daughter’s cheek. “You’re here,” she says, all but crushing the infant to her chest, “my girl, you’re here, you’re alright, I’m here, Sara, I’ve got you.”

A hand is in her hair again, but not tearing or wrenching, and she feels Catelyn’s breath on her scalp as she leans into her. “Did they hurt you, Nell? Have you been harmed? I did not know where they were keeping you-,”

“No,” says Nell, “no, I’m alright.” She’s not, of course, she will never be alright again, but she feels like she could be for a little while, however long she can hold her babe in her arms again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter had to be split in half because I consistently overestimate how much I can fit into 5000 words. Next chapter we will jump back to Dana, then we will be back to Nell, and I promise we will see a lot of the Frey women in it, and some Edmure and Roslin, as well as the year's end. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. Is Nell pregnant again so soon? No, obviously not, but the Freys are not keen on taking any chances in that regard, somewhat similar to how there is anxiety that Jeyne may be found to be with child after Robb's death, and then set off another rebellion for his heir's sake. 
> 
> 2\. For some clarification about ages; Arwyn is 14/15, and Shirei is 7/8. Black Walder is commonly speculated to potentially be Shirei's real father, not Lord Walder. 
> 
> 3\. The Freys are very defensive about not 'technically' breaking guest right. Black Walder's really angry about something, which could be just the fact that he's a notoriously angry person, or have something to do with the fact that this was far from a perfect victory for the Freys, which will be covered more in future chapters. Lothar and company are clearly not keen on coming right out and going 'you know, Nell, we kind of fucked up a bit here, and things are a little tense right now'. 
> 
> 4\. Nell signs papers, but as we all know, words are wind and she herself points out that if people don't want to believe it, they won't believe it. On the other hand, if people want to believe she was in cahoots with Roose to get a new, safer marriage to a Lannister loyalist...
> 
> 5\. There are 100% family portraits being done in Westeros, and I refuse to believe that the portrait of Daenerys hanging in Sunspear is the only one that exists of any noblewoman, ever. The dress Nell wears for her chat with the Freys is 100% a pointed 'fuck you' and a means of exerting what little political power she currently holds by repping Tully and Stark colors/motifs. Much like how Jeyne Westerling tears up her mourning clothes to give an 'eff you' to her mom and the Lannisters for pretending that Robb's death had little to do with their actions.
> 
> 6\. "I feel bad for Addam Marbrand." Me too, but only a little.


	42. Dana III

299 AC - SNAKE’S DEN

Dana sees the marker first, gouged into the pale bark of a birch tree and stained red with dye, likely slathered on with a rag or fingers. On the Finger, her family’s lands were denoted with stone markers, often hammered into a tree, the hand of the Fingerflints etched carefully into the stone, as if to raise a warning to any interlopers to turn back now. House Paege’s sigil are twin serpents intertwined in a permanent embrace. 

She wonders how they came to choose a snake. It hardly seems the sort of noble beast most families would choose. Then again, the Boltons chose human skin, the most gruesome and ignoble thing anyone could think of. The Ironsmiths, a small Northern house sworn directly to the Ryswells, chose horseshoes to hearken back to their early days as acclaimed blacksmiths. The Liddles chose bloody pinecones, of all things, and the Lightfoots chose footprints. So perhaps the Paeges are not so strange in comparison. 

She nudges Oly with an elbow, in lieu of speaking, once she spots it, and watches his mouth turn up in relief, point it out to Daryn. A few quiet murmurs of thanksgiving spread among the men, all dead on their feet after little to no sleep and hours of trudging through the woods on empty stomachs, but other than that everyone remains near silent. But their pace quickens with a burst of energy, Olyvar takes the lead, being the most familiar with the area, and Dana tries not to panic as the trees around them thin and grow sparser, their dense autumnal cover giving way to open land. They break out of the woods and onto grazing grounds, clambering over a rundown wooden fence, and a few of the men hungrily eye the sheep feeding nearby, hands on their weapons. 

When you’re hungry enough, just about anything looks appetizing, Dana thinks, even if it’s covered in wool and liable to give you a few good kicks. She could eat a sheep’s heart raw right about now. She could eat anything, so long as it had flesh to tear into. Some handfuls of scattered berries and mint leaves have done little to quell her ravenous hunger; she keeps feeling dizzy and light-headed, even if they’ve had no trouble getting water, what with all the rain. She’s shaky on her feet even now, as they move quickly across the field, slogging through puddles and stretches of slick mud. “The Freys could already be here,” Ben is saying in a low voice to Daryn, who shakes off his concern grimly.

“If they’re here, we’re in no shape to run anymore. We make a stand and take our chances that the Paeges and their people will come to our defense, not theirs.”

But Dana does not see any waiting troops or enemies hidden in the brush. What she does she is a shepherd boy, gaping at them from some yards away. Taking in their ragged appearance and weapons, he throws down his staff, whistles for his dog, and starts running. She can’t blame him. It’s what she would be doing, after everything the Riverlands has been through these past months. No one tries to stop him, and they’re all too tired to sprint after him. If he leads Freys directly to them, their only choice will be to face what comes, like Daryn said. 

The boy disappears behind a grove of trees, and Dana gets a glimpse of cottages in the distance. “Is it just the one village?” she asks Oly, who continues stubbornly walking forward, refusing to admit exhaustion or defeat. “Are we close to their keep?”

“Yes,” he says, “their lands were small, even when they were lords.”

“They used to be lords?” Dana has admittedly far more knowledge of the history of the North, not the Riverlands, but she had to learn a brief history of most of the houses upon her arrival to Riverrun. She’d felt like a girl again, taking lessons with Nell in the library, for what good was a queen of the Trident if she didn’t know her own people? Nell had been so serious about it, too, bent over her books with far more vigor than she’d ever displayed when they were fourteen and passing notes to each other while Sara lectured. 

Dana’s heart twists in her chest. Sara has been dead for over a year now, and Nell is likely a prisoner. She will never see the former again, and the latter… No. She can’t think that way. If she starts feeling sorry for herself and dwelling on everything she’s lost, on Nell and Da and Lysara and Bran and Rickon, she will go to pieces, and there’s still work to be done. 

“For a time,” Olyvar acknowledges. “They were reduced back to landed knights after the Dance. They’d turned traitor for the greens before trying to come back to the blacks after the Butcher’s Ball. Aegon III didn’t take kindly to that, once he was crowned. Nor did the Tullys.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Ben says under his breath. “We’re about to entreat two-time traitors for their help after yet another betrayal.”

“No man of House Paege participated in the ambush,” Oly says through his teeth. “If we were to go around taking headcounts-,”

Having finally crossed the village green, everyone stops walking at once at the sound of hoofbeats. “Swords and shields, now,” Daryn barks, and the dozen men form a more-or-less organized clump, Dana wedged somewhere in the middle. There’s no real cover nearby, and she doesn’t like they’re chances if some knights try to ride them down on the side of the road like this, but just one rider comes down through the ramshackle little village towards them, his shield bearing red-and-white snakes on black. 

Olyvar steps forward, either very bravely or very stupidly, ignoring Daryn’s bark for him to get back, and hails the knight. “Shed Quickly Underfoot!” he calls out, what Dana assumes must be their words, although she hasn’t the slightest notion what that’s supposed to mean. The horse slows from a gallop to a canter to a trot, sending up a grey cloud of dust, but the knight unsheathes his sword. The men around Dana tense and curse. 

“And who are you yet sworn to, Frey?” the rider barks from under his helm. 

“The King in the North,” Olyvar replies tersely. “His men stand with me.”

The Paege knight tilts his head at them. “And what say you?”

“I say, come kill us or give us bread and salt, if guest right is still worth a damn in the Riverlands,” Daryn Hornwood retorts coldly, axe in hand. “His Grace’s squire, Olyvar Frey, conducted us here, saved us from the slaughter. House Paege swore fealty to the King of the North and the Trident when King Robb was crowned at Riverrun. Will you honor that pledge, or spit on it as the Freys have? We’ll claim sanctuary or die free, Ser.”

The knight reins up his horse, regards them all, then sheathes his sword and takes off his helm. A young, wary face stares down at them, just barely stoking familiarity. Dana has seen him before, she’s sure of it, although not often enough to put a name to the face. “Robert,” Olyvar says in relief. “I thought it was you.”

“And if it wasn’t? You fools meant to make your last stand with a herd of sheep and some frightened farmers as witnesses?” he scoffs, but there is no real malice to his voice. Robert Paege is a stocky man with shaggy brown hair, and can be no older than twenty three or twenty four. “Come on, then. Knew you couldn’t have kept away from wishing me well on my marriage, Oly. Quickly, now! Hal’s posted sentries on our borders, but they’ll do little good if the Freys decide to pay a visit.” His brown eyes rove the sea of filthy faces looking up at him gratefully, then settle on her. “The lady can ride with me. Gods know she’ll be grateful for a reprieve from you lot. You smell like you’ve been fighting pigs.”

“Funny you should say that. Merrett Frey’s a squealing hog in armor, and he owes me an ear,” Daryn says flatly, indicating the side of his head, and Robert barks a laugh as Dana is shoved forward. She doesn’t have much say in the matter; Robert extends a beefy arm down, and she’s barely got a hold of it before he’s hauled her up in the saddle before him, and she’s not a small woman. Fortunately, he doesn’t appear much interested in making conversation, or worse, feeling her up, and keeps up a good trot as he leads their group through the village, where faces stare openly from doorways and unshuttered windows, and up to the castle on the riverbanks, a damp stretch of land that was likely almost too boggy to build on.

“It’s sinking,” he acknowledges, as his horse picks its way over a walkway of logs and wooden pallets across the wet ground. “Rains have made it even worse. This land was good enough when they first started laying stones. Now the river’s bursting at the seams, has been since the summer started, and come winter, all that snow…” He shakes his head behind her, as Dana looks around curiously. “We’ll have to tear it down, salvage what we can, start anew further inland.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, not sure what else to say. The Paeges’ woes about their swampy land seems the least of anyone’s concerns at the moment.

Robert grunts in response, then bellows for the bridge to be lowered as they near the moat, which seems twice as wide as it should. Snake’s Den makes Riverrun look like a desert dune in comparison. Moss and lichen cling to the walls, and the wood of the gate is stained blackish green with river water. She’s not sure it’s water from the gate or more rain as they ride through. Robert dismounts easily and hands her down from the horse by the waist; Dana is too weak to even protest that she could get down herself; she couldn’t. She fights the overwhelming urge to crumple to the ground as Daryn and Olyvar hurry the rest of the men through the gate; it slams shut with a wet, squelching thud behind them.

“Your villagers,” Daryn starts, “if they’re questioned, will they tell that they saw you bringing northmen back to the keep?”

“No,” says Robert, “their sons and brothers were at the Twins. They’re like to hang the first Frey they see,” he glances at Olyvar with a wry smile. “I’ve half a mind to lock you and Mel in a room together until this is over. Give me some peace of mind, at least.”

But Olyvar smiles faintly; these two must be friends from boyhood, Dana thinks, for they’re obviously fond of each other, beyond just passing acquaintances. “And what would my sister say to that?”

“Bloody my nose, most likely,” Robert says. “You should have seen her at the bedding. By the gods, Hos grabbed her veil, and she kicked him in the gut, he nearly coughed up his supper-,” he cuts off as two women come rushing into the small courtyard, skirts dragging over the loose stones. “Sisters,” he greets them, and Olyvar raises a hand, but neither look terribly pleased at the sight of either man.

The swifter of the two women- and they must be twins, Dana realizes as they get closer, for they have near identical looks, down to the same height and build; light brown hair, ovaline faces, flat noses and heavily hooded eyes- greets Robert with a stinging slap. 

“Mother’s bones!” he curses, reeling back from the force of the blow, “Sallei, what-,”

“What in the name of the Seven were you thinking- could have been killed- what if it were a trap-,”

The one not shrieking herself hoarse looks them over with a critical eye. “Who’s your serjeant?”

“Lord Daryn of Hornwood,” Ben jerks his head at Daryn. “I’m Bennard Flint of the Finger. The rest are commons, sworn to Flint, Hornwood, Cerwyn, Liddle, Wull-,”

“And you?” she lifts her chin at Dana, who belatedly tears her gaze away from the shouting fit going on between brother and sister. “Camp follower, are you?”

There’s a few snickers; Ben rounds on the sources of the muffled laughter, glaring. Dana is too tired and hungry and cold to even summon up any outrage or haughtiness. “Danelle Flint,” she says thickly. “I was- I am a lady in waiting to Her Grace the Queen, Donella Stark of Winterfell.”

The woman raises an eyebrow, then extends her hand as if offering it to a lost child. “You must have quite the tale then. Come inside before it starts sleeting again, all of you. You’ll catch you death in wet clothes.”

The castle itself is quite small, perhaps the size of Barrow Hall, but whereas Barrow Hall was rectangular and boxy, more like a lodge than anything else, Snake’s Den is near a perfect circle, buildings rung around one another like a coiled up serpent, waiting to strike. The draft is terrible; no heated walls here, not like Winterfell. Dana is constantly struck by how much she misses Winterfell. She’d always felt out of place at the Finger, and at Barrow Hall she’d often felt as though she were one mishap away from being sent back home to be married off, for all that her and Nell were fast friends. 

But Winterfell was nice. Pleasant, even. Dana had felt at ease there instantly, far sooner than she suspects Nell had. She’d loved the warmth of the walls and the hot springs, loved the great hall and the library and the kitchens, felt kinship with the people, too, from the stable boys to the maids to the guards. She could have happily lived out the rest of her days there. But Winterfell was taken and burned. Part of her never wants to see it again, if only so she can preserve the happy memories. The people there were kind. They loved and protected each other. She’d never felt that from a place before. Nell would tell her she is exaggerating, that the Starks had their problems as any other family does, but… Dana would have killed for a father like Ned Stark, as a little girl.

And then the guilt forms a hard lump in her throat once more. She got the father she was given, drunkard and coward that he might have been, killed. He did love her, in his way, for all the grief he gave her and she him. He wanted to protect her. Mother will never forgive her, nor Aly and Jenny. Dana has not thought of her sisters in some time, for they were never in any danger, tucked away with their respective young children while their husbands marched to war, but now she thinks of them. Are they widows? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know anything.

Sylwa Paege, for that is her name, the quieter of the twins, tells her to she’ll have share a bedchamber with her own daughter, Merianne. At the name being spoken aloud, Dana starts and stares, although of course she knows it is not her Marianne. This is little Merry Frey, just shy of twelve, deemed too young to be of any use as a lady in waiting, and who looks a good deal like her mother, and very little like her father, whichever Frey that is. Merry watches her with wide eyes as Sylwa orders a bath drawn and clean clothes brought in, and Dana wrenches off her sodden boots and tugs out the laces of her stays, wincing. 

She promptly passes out in while the maid is washing her hair, and when she wakes she’s bundled in a robe, slumped across a veritable wall of pillows in bed, a tray with a bowl of steaming soup balanced perilously close to her bare legs. Her fingers have been neatly rewrapped together, and they’ve left willow bark out for her to chew on, she supposes to try to quell some of the pain. 

But Dana is too hungry to think of much else but the food in front of her; she slurps and chokes down the soup, table manners and burning tongue forgotten, stuffs her mouth with hard bread, and nibbles tentatively on the willow bark before deciding that sleep is a better cure. She rolls over in bed, knowing her wet hair will be a matted, gnarled mess when she wakes, and falls back asleep.

She dreams she is a girl again. They are visiting the Rills with Lady Barbrey, her and Nell, and she is fourteen years old and staying in an inn for the very first time. Nell makes fun of her excitement, then complains about the pillows being lumpy. Dana, frenetic with energy and still desperately trying to strike up a friendship with this prissy Bolton girl with the strange pale eyes, smacks her with said lumpy pillow. She thinks she’s made a terrible mistake, but then Nell’s mouth, so often scowling or vicious, puckers into a childish grin, and they go bounding from bed to bed, hurling pillows and blankets at one another, shouting and squealing like little children, not maidens flowered. 

Barbrey bursts in at some point, and then gives them the tongue-lashing of their lives, and makes them spend the next hour tidying everything up. Dana dreams this memory, savory-sweet and brimming with shades of people, and it is so real that she can almost reach out and touch one of the loose goose feathers with an exploded pillow, floating in the dusty air, and watch Nell tuck a quilt under her round chin to fold it up, brows knit in concentration. It is so real that when she wakes in a strange bed in a strange place with a strange Frey sleeping beside her, she starts to cry, because she can’t go back. She may someday see Barrowton again, see the Rills, see Flint’s Finger, but she will never be fourteen again, and she will never have a pillow fight in an inn with a girl who was not yet a queen, when there was not yet war.

When she really wakes up, that is, when her eyelids no longer feel weighted down into her skull, and everything seems to hurt a little less, she finds that she is not alone, and it is not just Merry Frey staring at her from her dressing chair, but a whole host of children. Dana has always liked children, always gotten along well with them, always wanted children of her own, someday, as much as she despised and feared the notion of being permanently bound to some man in marriage. She has to assume they are all here, gawking at her, because she is the least-intimidating of their guests, being a woman and beardless and not covered in battle scars. 

Besides Merianne Frey there is another little girl perched on the foot of the bed, of perhaps three or four years old, and two small boys who must be twins sitting in the window seat, maybe five or six, and another boy a bit older of perhaps seven or eight. Dana stares at them blearily, they stare at her, and not knowing what else to do, she pulls a funny face. The little boys in the window seat burst into giggles, and the little girl on the bed smiles shyly. The older two, Merry and the other boy, look less convinced. “Are you really one of the queen’s ladies?” the elder boy demands, taking a small step forward. Dana adjusts the covers so she is not accidentally exposing anything through the flimsy shift to this crowd of innocent youths. 

“Yes,” she says carefully, unsure of how much she ought to be minding her tongue around these children. Gods know what they might go around repeating in the wrong company. “Who’re you? Don’t you know it’s rude to speak to a lady before being introduced?”

Merry looks scandalized, and the boy flushes red. “I’m Malcolm Paege,” he says, then adds doubtfully, “pleased to meet you, my lady?”

“I’m Janna!” the little girl chirps. “I’m his sister!”

Merry stands up and curtsies awkwardly. “These are my cousins, begging your pardons, Lady Danelle.” 

“Are you Ser Halmon’s son, then?” Dana asks Malcolm, who flushes again.

“No,” says Merry quickly, “that’s Garrett. He’s with my brother Hos- Hoster- and the other men, meeting with Uncle Hal. They said it was important and we absolutely should not interrupt,” she recites stiffly, as if proud of herself for memorizing all of that. “But there’s nothing to do and Mother and Aunt Sallei won’t let any of us go outside in case the Freys come-,”

Dana can feel a fresh headache coming on. “Aren’t half of you Freys?”

“Yes, but we’re good, not bad,” one of the twin boys is quick to assure her. “Promise.”

“We’re loyal to the true king, and we’re gonna kill all the traitors and give him their heads!” his brother says eagerly.

Merry blanches. “Dickon! One never discusses- taking heads- in front of a lady! Don’t you know anything?”

“Sorry, m’lady-,”

“I thought the king was dead,” Janna starts up again, confusion writ all over her little face. “Is he really dead, or only a little bit? Papa was a little dead when they brought him back-,”

Dana sits up straight, and since clapping her hands together might prove a bit painful at the moment, whistles sharply instead. They all stop chattering. “Right,” she says, “I’m really very pleased to meet you all, truly, but it’s very important that I know what’s going on, so I can help save the Queen and the Princess. So if you could just begin with names, and tell me who your parents are, and what news there’s been…”

“I’ll tell you,” Merry says proudly, coming over to sit on the side of the bed and smoothing out her skirt. “Uncle Hal’s the knight master of the household, you know, Ser Halmon, and Garrett’s his heir. Uncle Hal’s wed to Aunt Muriel, she’s a Grey of Grey Hill, from between the Green and Blue Fork- anyways, she gave him Garrett, and Malcolm,” she nods to Malcolm, who straightens formally, “and Janna-,” Janne dimples, “and now the baby, Pippa, but she’s in the nursery.”

“My mother and Aunt Sallei are Uncle Hal’s older sisters,” Merry continues briskly, “and they both wed Freys. Aunt Sallei wed Jammos and they had Big Walder- he went to Winterfell but now the Boltons have him, and Aunt Sallei says they’ll all burn in the seven hells- and then the twins, Dickon and Mathis.”

“I’m older,” Dickon adds helpfully. “By three minutes.”

“No,” Mathis frowns. “I’m older, Mummy said so-,”

“And my mother, Sylwa Paege,” Merry speaks over them as if she’s used to doing this, which Dana imagines she must be, “she wed Jammos’ twin, Whalen, and had Hos and me. Hos is a squire for Uncle Damon, but Mother made him come back with us for Uncle Robert’s wedding, and Uncle Damon stayed at the Twins for the wedding.” Her smile vanishes. “He… um…” 

Seeing her lower lip begin to tremble, Dana says swiftly, “So Ser Robert and Ser Damon are your uncles?”

“Yes,” Merry nods, regaining her composure. “They’re Mother and Uncle Hal’s younger brothers. From the second marriage. Grandfather was wed twice. The first time to a-,”

“Right,” now it’s Dana’s turn to interrupt, because if this keeps up they’ll be here until noon learning the family tree, “and your fathers, the Frey brothers, I mean… they’re at the Twins?”

Merry shifts uncomfortably. “Father said he couldn’t miss cousin Roslin’s wedding. Well, really she’s an aunt, but we all call her cousin-,”

“But your fathers, the Freys, they’re not here.” Dana relaxes minutely. “Are we the only ones here? Your family and us, the northerners, I mean?”

Merry shrugs. “You and cousin Sander. He came to play for the wedding. Oh, and Mellara, of course, she’s the bride. She had real Myrish lace in her veil,” she adds importantly. 

Dana looks around at the young, hopeful faces, and realizes that to them, this is just part of the excitement of war. Only Merry is really old enough to understand that their uncle is either dead or a captive and that their fathers are traitors. For the rest, this is just a brief glimpse into the intriguing games grown-ups play with one another, war being one of them. They are looking at her as if she were a character from a story come to life, expecting some grand tale of adventure and danger. What she ought to do is order them from the room, send for a maid, get dressed, and find a way into that meeting. She hasn’t the time nor the energy to play nursemaid and these children are no kin of hers, just the youngest generation of an insignificant family with meager lands that are quite literally sinking into the river and judging from the furnishings, very little coin. 

Instead she watches Merry clasp and unclasp her hands in front of her- Sansa used to do that when she was nervous- and Janna pick at her nose and Dickon and Mathis squabble with each other, and Malcolm stand rigidly at attention as if awaiting marching orders, and she thinks of Robb’s dead siblings and her own nieces and nephews, who she may never see again, and little Lysara Stark, who may never get the chance to grow old enough to pick her nose or listen to a story, and she says, “The King is dead but the Queen is still alive out there, and the Princess. D’you want to hear about them?”

“I heard the king turns into a wolf at night and eats Lannisters,” Mathis says.

“Is the princess going to be King now?” Janna wants to know.

“Girls are queens, not kings,” Merry reminds her sharply. 

“Then she has to get married,” Malcolm says. “You can’t have a queen without a king.”

“She’s a baby, stupid, she can’t get married!”

Dana pulls on the dressing gown left for her on the bed. “Are you going to listen to me, or are you going to bicker with each other?” They all stop talking at once. 

Once upon a time, it goes, there was a girl called Dana who was named after a very sad song. Why did her parents name her after a sad song? Because her father was a drunk and sad songs were the only ones he knew, but this is supposed to be a nice story, so we’ll leave that part out. Anyways, the girl called Dana was a lady, but not a very important one, because like the Freys, her House had too many grandchildren, and she was the youngest daughter of a third son. Her sisters were older and they were both married off by the time she was ten, and she was mostly all alone.. 

Dana wanted to go on an adventure, but she lived on a peninsula called the Finger- the one in the North, not the Vale- and she was a girl, so adventures were hard to come by unless you were carried off by wildlings or raided by Ironborn. And then those weren’t really adventures at all. But one day her family had word that Lady Dustin, who ruled from a wooden castle in a wooden town in the Barrowlands, needed a companion for her niece, who was Lord Bolton’s only daughter, only trueborn child, and who was supposed to someday wed Lord Stark’s heir, the Young Wolf…

By the time she is done it’s near noon and she has condensed several years of political history into a very entertaining story packed to the brim with romance- the Young Wolf and his Bolton Bride!- action- wildlings in the wood and Ironborn on the shores!- and no shortage of exaggeration and outright lies- no, the King never turned into a wolf, but he could speak with them, and Grey Wind was the king of all the wolves in the North and South! 

She has also learned several interesting tidbits herself, because children listen more than most grownups realize. There are some ‘lost travelers’ staying in one of the family’s barns. There are Freys with dogs guarding the Crossing. There’s been a letter from Seagard stating that the Blackfish of Riverrun wrote to say that a big tomcat is coming to help the rats. And cousin Sander, Alesander Frey, he’s working on a new song, and he means to take the Kingsroad south and play it at every inn and alehouse that will have him. 

So when she is finally dressed and her hair at least somewhat combed and braided, she makes her way to the lady’s solar with young Merry, and plays cards and waits until the Paege sisters and a fiery-eyed girl of seventeen or eighteen who must be Mellara Rivers, now Mellara Paege, come bustling into the room. Dana has just run their round; she slaps her cards down with a triumphant exclamation, looks up, and meet Sallei Paege’s scrutinizing look.

“This is one of Her Grace’s ladies,” Sylwa begins, but her daughter beats to her to the punch.

“This is Dana Flint and she knows the King and the Queen and you have to help her cross the river because it’s very important that we save Queen Nell before winter comes and the Freys lock her in a dungeon or make her marry a Lannister,” Merry says all in one frantic burst. “And the princess, too. So can’t she have an audience with Ser Uncle Hal, please, Mother, Auntie?”

Sylwa stares. Mellara scoffs. Sallei smiles slightly and furtively. “Her northmen have just had an audience with him, sweetling. Of course we’re going to help them cross, just not here. Alesander has a good friend out of Sevenstreams.”

Dana stands up, brushing off her hand-me-down dress with her un-bandaged hand. “Please tell me this friend has swords a-plenty.”

“Swords and strings and songs,” Mellara says slyly. “We wanted him for our wedding, Robert and me, but he had other business to attend to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Riverlands Musical Theater Company, rise up!
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. The history of House Paege presented here is mostly made-up. They are stated to be landed knights in current canon, but Fire and Blood makes mention of a 'Lord Paege' so I am working under the assumption that at one point they were lords and lost that title for whatever reason. Ser Robert Paege was not named after the late Robert Baratheon, he was born before Robert's Rebellion. I consolidated pretty much every Paege mentioned in canon into one family to make things a little easier. Ser Halmon Paege is the head of house, he has two twin older sisters, Sallei and Sylwa, who both married into the Freys and who for obvious reasons, currently not big fans of their absent husbands. He has two younger brothers, Robert, who just got married to a bastard Frey, Mellara, and Damon, who was at Edmure and Roslin's wedding and who is now missing. Sallei is the mother of Big Walder, Dickon and Mathis are his little brothers. Sallei was not pleased when Big Walder was sent to Winterfell without much say-so from her, less pleased when Winterfell was promptly captured, even less pleased to hear her son is now squiring for Ramsay Snow. Safe to say, don't fuck with Sallei's kids. 
> 
> 2\. Merrett Frey owes Daryn Hornwood an ear. Daryn means to collect on that debt.
> 
> 3\. Alesander is a son of Lord Walder, an accomplished singer, and as it turns out in this story, good buddies with another (in)famous Riverlands singer, Tom of Sevenstreams! How convenient!
> 
> 4\. The Freys are not dumb enough to think they can hold off the rest of the Riverlands all at once, so they have backup on the way from the West (and likely the South as well). This will be expanded on in greater detail soon. 
> 
> 5\. Dana is a people person. Nell has a certain level of charisma as a leader, but Dana genuinely enjoys spending time with other people, be they highborn or lowborn, she's very fond of kids, and she's good at getting others to open up and confide in her. This will come in handy in the future. She's also a passable story teller.
> 
> 6\. Next chapter will be Nell again, and the last chapter of 299 AC. Then we're kicking into early 300 AC, which I'm really excited for.


	43. Donella XXXVI

299 AC - THE TWINS

Nell does not realize that Lysara is two moons old until the date has come and gone. She has a captive here a week. It does not feel like a week. It feels like a year. She is no longer confined to her one bedchamber, at least not while the sun is up, and no one is actively trying to disorient her, but the days and nights blur together into one muddy jumble all the same. She’s used to waiting. She’s been waiting all her life. But this isn’t waiting, this is being stuck in place. She’s fallen down a well and can only see a brief glimpse of sunlight overhead. 

When she was waiting for Bran to wake or die, at least there was some certainty to that. Either he would recover and they would rejoice, or he would pass and they would mourn. When she was waiting for Catelyn to return, there was certainty to that as well. And all of Robb’s battles that she was waited through. And the long months tucked away at Riverrun. And the pregnancy. There were outcomes. Some of those outcomes might have been horrifying to consider, but at least she was aware of them. She still felt in control. People answered to her; they had pledged to follow her orders, to accept her decisions as rule of law. When she wanted answers, she got them, one way or another. 

She supposes there are possible outcomes here, too, but the problem is that there are far too many, and yet far too few at the same time. She may have settled into some banal sort of routine as a prisoner, but that doesn’t mean she can ever let go of the fear and the rage and the pain. Every time she holds her daughter, she does so knowing that someone is coming before long to take her away. The same goes for when she speaks to Catelyn, or Edmure…

While Nell is generally permitted to spend time with Catelyn and Lysara during the day, she cannot convince anyone to let her see Edmure until at least a week has gone by. Then, finally, Lord Walder or Ryman or Lame Lothar or whoever is in charge- the Freys themselves don’t always seem clear on whose orders ought to be followed first and foremost- concedes. Nell suspects she’s only gotten this much leeway with them because she has been, for all intents and purposes, a very good prisoner. 

She has not had any screaming, crying, or wailing fits. She hasn’t attacked anyone, tried to steal anything, or been caught attempting to pick a lock or clamber out a window. She’s cold with the servants and objectively cruel to most of the Freys who attempt to speak with her, but she hasn’t actively rebelled in any way, aside from refusing to wear mourning colors and insisting she can still nurse her child.

She has not seen Roose, but she recognizes certain voices in the halls, and knows the Bolton men remain. Not for long, though. She doesn’t need to be told that to know it. Should things take a sudden turn for the worse, should the Freys’ tentative luck not hold, he will not want to be hear for the aftermath. The North may be overwhelmingly hostile in turn, but it is sparse, spread out, and weak after the Ironborn raids. He must know any real resistance towards Bolton rule will take time to ferment and brew, particularly when the Freys hold the likes of Wendel Manderly, Rodwell Flint, and the Smalljon hostage. She has not seen any of them in person, but she’s seen the cost of keeping a man like the Smalljon caged; more than one guard returns from the dungeons limping and cursing, or cradling a bruised face. They might want to kill him, but they can’t afford to. Just as they can’t afford to directly harm her. There are many other ways of enforcing obedience beyond a beating, though, so as much as Nell might want to spit and claw and hiss whenever she catches a glimpse of Black Walder or Ser Ryman or Lothar, she holds her tongue and keeps the rage at a simmer inside her gut instead. 

So the story goes, from the mouth of Fair Walda, who still can’t resist some pointed chatter whenever she drops in on Nell, that Roslin let the bedding go on as planned, then woke Edmure up with a smuggled dagger she’d talked some maid into hiding beneath the mattress, and tried to help him escape their bridal suite. This would have ended very badly for Roslin, for the Freys are no fools and they were caught almost immediately, had Edmure not claimed the dagger was his own and that he’d suspected their treachery all along. A middling lie, but he took the brunt of the beating and not his wife, and if that doesn’t say something for true love, what does? Nell doesn’t know whether to be hysterically bemused or even more despairing. 

Nell and Catelyn are both allowed relative freedom of the Twins, albeit under guard. Edmure has been confined to the same rooms since the evening of his wedding, and Roslin has apparently by her own choice, resolved to stay there with him. “Otherwise,” Arwyn told Nell at one point, “they’d just bring her by every night to… you know.” The Freys want a child, apparently. A Tully son so they can have some leverage to bargain with Emmon Frey and his Lannister wife, negotiate better terms to Riverrun, Nell assumes. If it’s a daughter, they’ll keep trying. 

She has considered what would be worse; Robb being dead, or Robb being held here with her in some attempt to produce a Stark son for them to use. She would rather they both be dead than that. It may be selfish but it is true. She would rather he be dead than see him, see both of them, reduced to breeding stock.

The first person she sees upon entering the room is not Edmure or Roslin but Perwyn Frey, who greets her with a tight nod. Nell thinks back on the first time she had met Perwyn, while Catelyn treated with Lord Walder. She had thought him one of the better Freys. At least he does not smile at her, as some of them do, mockingly or smugly or sadly. He is speaking with Roslin in hushed tones by the window, and upon noticing her entrance, kisses his sister briefly on the forehead, and leaves, avoiding Nell’s piercing gaze. The door shuts quietly behind him. The two adjoining rooms are well-lit and well-furnished, although one of the rugs is torn, as if in a scuffle, and Nell notes the conspicuous absence of anything that could be used as a weapon, such as pokers for the hearth. 

Roslin greets her with a sudden embrace; Nell is too caught off guard to do much but accept it, before Roslin wrenches away, face falling as rapidly as it rose. “I- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean- oh-,” she’s still clutching one of Nell’s limp hands, which she immediately drops. Then she curtsies, quickly. “I… Your Grace-,”

“They tell me it is just Lady Donella, now,” Nell says. She doesn’t know how to feel towards Roslin. By all rights, if she is going to be angry with Arwyn and the Waldas and the rest, should she not also be furious with Roslin, however unfair it might be? But Roslin was perhaps the worst off of them all in this, being forced to wed the man she loves with the equivalent of a knife to her back. Before she can say anything, there is an exclamation, and she turns suddenly to see Edmure moving quickly towards her, albeit with a slight limp.

“Nell,” he chokes out, before embracing her, far more tightly than his wife, She can scarcely breathe for a moment; the last time Edmure embraced her like this was when he came in to see her and Lysara, after the birth. He looks for his niece even now, his gaze darting around Nell and the room before settling on her once more. “Are you alright? Have you been hurt?” He sounds and looks so much like Catelyn in that moment, brow creased, blue eyes clouded in concern, that it is almost startling. 

“I’m as well as can be expected,” she says, surprised once more by the knot of affection for him in her throat. If only she could have had a brother like Edmure as a girl, be it older or younger. So much might be different. “Are you alright?” She scans his appearance; he needs to shave and there’s the faint shadows of bruises on his face, but aside from that he doesn’t seem seriously injured. She glances to Roslin as if questioning, and then Edmure surprises her once again by reaching over and taking his wife’s hand in his own. She would have expected at least a little bitterness or even contempt there, but Roslin squeezes his fingers back, eyes wet, as Edmure looks back at her. 

“As well as can be expected,” he echoes her grimly, before releasing Roslin’s hand. “I’d be worse off it not for Ros; she’s the only thing keeping me from going mad. They won’t let me see Cat- is she alright? Have you seen her? And the babe?” His tone quiets at the last question, as if he’s almost afraid to ask. Nell glances around the room. They’re alone; there are guards outside, of course, but if they go into the bedchamber and keep their voices low, it should be difficult to make out much. And they don’t have much time as it is. They move into the other room without speaking, close the door. The Freys have rendered it unable to be barred, and there’s nothing in the bedchamber that could blockade it beyond the bed itself.

Edmure sits at the foot of it, and Roslin joins him, curled up as close to his weary frame as possible without clambering into his lap. Nell is struck by the easy intimacy between the two; she and Robb are- were- never so close when in the company of others, even after they confessed what they felt to each other. Not that they had much time. But these two have had even less, and show no hesitance at all. Maybe it’s because it’s not worth putting up a front of feigned formality. Edmure’s arm slots easily around his wife, and Roslin all but rests her chin on his shoulder, bowed with guilt and worry, and Nell feels a sharp, pinching pain in her chest.

“Catelyn is fine,” she says. “She… they let her spend more time with Lysara than I. Lysara’s well enough too, only... “ She can barely bring herself to say it, and when she does, the words drip with loathing. “My father is taking her back to the North with him. Soon.”

Edmure curses, savagely, and Roslin only says, “I’m so sorry, Donella.”

Nell does not reply, studying her hands instead, because if she tries to speak, she will scream.

“Walda will protect her as best she can,” Roslin says after a moment. “She- I know you have cause to hate her, to hate us all, but she does not hate you. And she likes children. She would never let any harm come to Lysara.”

“It’s not Walda I worry about,” Nell mutters, small comfort that it is. She doesn’t believe Fat Walda cruel or callous, but that means nothing compared to the reality of the Dreadfort. And should it come down to her own child or Nell’s, well, Nell knows what she would pick.

“This is-,” Edmure swears again and shakes his head. “Gods! I swear to you, Nell, on my honor as a Tully- we will avenge her. And Robb,” his voice cracks slightly. “I’m sorry I- that I could not do more, I should have been there, I should have been with him-,”

“No,” Nell closes her eyes for a moment, inhales a breath of musty air. “No. Enough, Edmure. It’s… there is no changing any of it now. It doesn’t bear thinking about. I can’t. We just have to be ready.” She does not have to say ‘for what’. Edmure gives a slight nod.

Roslin hesitates, then says. “Lord Bolton is waiting for the Lannister reinforcements to cross into the Riverlands from the West and the capitol. Tarly holds the Kingsroad now; he took Maidenpool.”

“The Mootons are useless to us, then,” Nell says automatically, before calculating- “Who told you this?”

“Perwyn. My brother.” It is barely more than a whisper.

“Perwyn’s loyalties are-”

“Were they should be,” Edmure says gruffly, and so quietly she can hardly hear it.His blue eyes meet her grey, unflinching. 

Nell sits back for a moment, digests that. There is some hope, then. Perwyn cannot be the only one feigning commitment to House Frey, while plotting otherwise. “And Olyvar? Benfrey?”

“Olyvar’s missing,” Roslin says in a small, wounded voice. “We don’t… no one knows where he went. And Benfrey is… He doesn’t want to cause any stirs.”

There’s a distant pounding on the door. Nell stands up quickly. “Thank you, Edmure… Roslin.” She holds Roslin’s gaze for a moment longer, with something like acceptance, inclining her head. Roslin gives her a pained smile in return. “I’ll try to come back soon. With Catelyn.”

When she returns to Catelyn, her good mother is holding Lysara, as always. Catelyn was freely affectionate with the babe from the moment she first laid eyes on her; Nell has never doubted that Robb’s mother loves her grandchild as much as she loves… loved any of her children. But of course it is different now. Nell does not enjoy thinking about it, but she thinks, sometimes, were it not for Lysara, if Catelyn did not have this one remaining piece of her children, this tiny infant, she would… she would not be here. Physically, yes, she would still be a prisoner of the Freys, even had Nell remained childless, but… She would be a shell, Nell thinks. Just a hollow husk of a woman. And she is a shell, when Lysara is not there. So is Nell. She does not want to think of what will happen to her good mother once they are all separated. If. She can’t be like this. If. It hasn’t happened yet-

“Look who’s here,” Catelyn tells Lysara softly when Nell enters, but makes no moves to approach or hand the infant back to her. Nell sits down first, waits for the door to fully shut, and asks, “Was anyone in to see you while I was gone?”

“Walda,” Catelyn says, before clarifying, “Walda Bolton.” Her tongue cuts like a knife on ‘Bolton’, and Nell fights the urge to cringe, almost. For all her internal debate over how much blame she should assign to the Frey women, Catelyn could have easily turned and blamed her for what has happened here. Had Robb never married her, he might still be alive, might be fighting the Ironborn in the Neck at this very instant.

But she has not said a word about it, and Nell is grateful for that. If any part of Catelyn blames her, she seems intent on not voicing it.

“Did she have anything useful to say? Or just more apologies?” Nell finally holds out her arms for her daughter, and Catelyn reluctantly hands the infant over. Lysara is putting on weight more quickly than she was before the Twins, and Nell does not want to consider that it is likely because she is getting more milk, from both Nell and the wet nurse. She makes more noises now too, cooing and gurgling when she sees Nell’s face, and sometimes even smiling. That hurts the most. Robb never got to see their daughter smile at him. He will never hear her speak her first words, never see her crawl or walk or run. He will never get to take her out for a ride or play with her in the snow. 

“Some apologies,” Catelyn acknowledges, pulling a chair over to sit beside them; she doesn’t like to be far, she always keeps so close, as if worried Nell and Lysara will vanish into thin air before her very eyes. When they first reunited, she embraced Nell like a daughter, weeping, but all Nell could do was stand, stiff and frozen, and wish desperately for Barbrey or Sara. But Catelyn has tried to be good to her, and she to Catelyn, and if the only positive of all this is that in the wake of their imprisonment, all prior disagreements and feuds have been put aside, then there is that. They mean to wed her to Quenten Banefort. Nell does not have to ask to know. Once Nell is gone to Ashemark and Lysara is taken back North, what does Catelyn Stark have to live for? Her children are dead or forever lost to her. Would she keep herself alive for the slim hope of someday seeing Sansa again, Sansa who will likely be dead as soon as the Lannisters get a child out of her? Nell doesn’t think so. She thinks any second marriage of Robb’s mother’s will not last very long at all, culminating in either a widow, a widower, or both dead. 

As for any second marriage of Nell’s, well… She has her own thoughts about that, best saved for the dark of the night, when it is just her alone in the Water Tower, thinking. And she has thought quite a bit about it. Wondered how long it takes to saw through a man’s neck with a piece of broken glass that she could hide up a sleeve or in her skirts. She’d have to get him very drunk first, and muffle his cries with a pillow, but she could do it. It would not really matter what happened afterwards. She had a husband, and they took him from her. She did not even get to see his corpse. But she will see another husband’s corpse laid out before her before she dies, if they mean to sell her once more.

“Walda tells me Daven Lannister is bringing six thousand from the West,” Catelyn continues. “And Addam Marbrand at least two thousand from King’s Landing. Men do not guard their tongues around her. She says because they think her stupid.”

“She’s not stupid,” Nell says. “I almost wish she were. A stupid girl might have an easier time being wed into the Dreadfort.” In her mind, she tries to conjure up a map of the Riverlands. It should be easy enough, she’s spent so much time looking at them at Riverrun, but it takes her a few moments all the same. Her head aches, and Lysara is fussing, but not from hunger. Nell adjusts her daughter’s position, then firmly pats her back. “I hear Tarly holds the Kingsroad, so Marbrand shouldn’t have much trouble coming up, at least until he passes Raventree on the River Road. Lannister will have a time getting through Wayfarer’s Rest-,”

“House Vance has surrendered,” Catelyn shakes her head tightly. “Both branches. As has House Goodbrook.”

That is not all that surprising. House Vance of Wayfarer’s Rest lost their lord at the Fords. That leaves Karyl Vance’s widow and his heir, a little girl of seven or eight. And House Vance of Atranta, well, she overheard one of the maids talking about Ronald Vance ‘and his brother’. The Freys hold Marq Piper as well, which means Pinkmaiden will be reluctant to lash out either, and even if they did, with six thousand men marching on them, and Riverrun likely bracing for a siege from all sides-

“Who told you that?” she asks suddenly.

“Zia Frey,” says Catelyn. “A few soft words goes a long way with these girls.”

“They feel guilty,” Nell says. “So they let things slip, either inadvertently or on purpose. Too many leaks for the Freys to patch up.”

“When a boat takes on too many holes in the hull, you tear it apart for scraps and start over,” Catelyn gives her a strange, almost smiling look, but there is nothing but grief and fury in her eyes. Mourning has made them a brighter blue than usual, it seems to Nell. Robb had his mother’s eyes, even when he took on some of his father’s somber expressions. One small solace is that she can look at Catelyn or Edmure and however briefly see Robb staring back at her. But not for long. She reaches over and takes her good mother’s hand. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Brynden must have a plan,” Catelyn sucks in a long breath, then releases it. “He will not give in meekly, even should ten thousand men come to his gates. And my sister, Lysa, when she hears…” Her tone hardens. “Perhaps this will finally spur her to act, after all else has failed.”

If the Vale was going to come save them from Lannisters, they already would have. Nell thinks briefly of the Redforts; her paternal grandmother was one. But that is far too distant a relation to feel duty bound to give aid to her, and to stand against the Iron Throne, no less. They are alone, like it or not. She holds out some vague hope of a force of crannogmen coming down from the Neck, but that is not their way, and they would be reluctant to take any fight out of their own lands, which they know best. Then there is Harry Karstark, but she’s heard absolutely nothing on that front. Either the Freys are very adamant that she not get any word of his movements… or there have been none. 

The end of the year comes on very quickly. It may be easy to lose track of time at the Twins, but Nell senses it all the same. When she looks out her window, most of the trees are barren. The air is cold and frigid at night, even for the Riverlands. There’s a sting to it that was not there before. This would be a time of great celebration, usually, for any noble house- the end of a century. She suspects that is not the case for the Freys. They cannot afford to relax now and lose everything in one fell stroke. As she has. As Robb did. Still, there will be drinking and dancing and likely some whores brought in. She doubts they trust any mummers, whose loyalties tend to lie with the people. 

The occasional drip-drip-drip of brief visits and whispered apologies and tidbits of information from the girls who were once her ladies becomes much louder and steadier as the days count down to the new year. And on the eve of the new year, the flood gates open, and Nell and Catelyn finds themselves surrounded. First it is the Bracken sisters, who Nell has not seen since the wedding; Jayne is mute once more, not that Nell can blame her, and Barbara is all hard-edged smiles and steady hands as they pick at needlework.

Barbrey was right. Even in a room with a guard posted at the door, the rustle of fabric and dull sounds of thread and needle muffles quite a bit. It bores men, all of it, so they don’t bother to listen at all. Nell thinks she may ask for a loom to pass the time. That would be even louder ad even more dull to listen to.

“Black Walder refuses to take me to wife until my father has dealt with the Blackwoods,” she tells Nell, “so we have that to be grateful for.”

“House Bracken has already surrendered?” Nell knows it sounds more accusing than perhaps is fair.

Barbara does not blink. “My father meant his oath when he swore fealty to King Robb, Your Grace. But Robb is dead, and my father loves his daughters and hates the Blackwoods more than he cares for House Tully or House Stark. He will have leap at the chance to put Raventree under siege.”

“Blackwood will not surrender,” Catelyn says curtly. “I know the man. As the saying goes, the Blackwoods are northern still, and oft have more honor than sense. And even more hatred for the Brackens.”

“The Freys have Lucas,” Nell points out.

“Tytos Blackwood has many more sons,” Barbara shrugs. “Is that not the point of them?”

After they have left, come Arwyn and Shirei. Shirei is still a bright and happy child, oblivious to the threats Black Walder made against her, although she conducts herself as one might at a funeral, and waits longer than usual before asking if she can hold Lysara. Nell lets her, and Arwyn’s tense shoulders relax slightly. She tells a very long-winded story about the large pack of wolves that are plaguing the west banks of the Green Fork and how reluctant the men of House Frey are to confront them, even with a mounting human death toll. Apparently some small crofter lost half a flock overnight, and his shepherd boy, a hand. 

Nell recalls the story of how Arya lost a wolf on the journey to King’s Landing. Maybe Nymeria is with them. Maybe Grey Wind is with them. At least then two of the Stark siblings might in some sense be together again.

Then, as the evening draws near, come Marianne and Marissa. Marianne is very much still in mourning black, so Nell supposes the story about her dead father wasn’t all a lie. But Marissa seems much recovered from the supposed sickness. As did Zia, when Nell last saw her a few days past. To her relief, both spare the contrite act in exchange of more matter of fact conversation. 

“We’re to go North with your lord father and Walda,” Marianne says, and despite her dour black clothing and the pain in her eyes there remains a certain snappish quality to her tone, a barely restrained temper, and Nell sees now why Dana came to be so very fond of her. Dana, who is likely dead on the forest floor somewhere. She deserved far better than that. Nell should never have called her back from Seagard. She should have sent her straight back to Flint’s Finger after the wedding. Better married and alive and safe than here and dead and rotting. 

Marissa in the past was always so eager to tell Nell everything about everyone, but now she keeps her gaze on her sewing frame.

“I see,” says Nell. “Do they hope to find some northern husbands for you?”

“To spy on Lord Bolton,” Marianne says frankly, as angry as she obviously is. “They don’t trust Walda to be much good for it- she’s passing fond of him.”

Passing fond of Roose. Nell doesn’t want to know what that means. Has the third wife really been the charm? Is her father ‘passing fond’ of Fat Walda? Would that be better or worse than the alternative, and for who?

“And do you intend to spy on him?” she asks quietly.

“No,” says Marissa in a tiny voice, before Marianne elbows her.

“I intend to get the hells out at the first opportunity,” she leans close to Nell as if helping her with some errant stitch, their hair mingling. “And if I can, I swear I’ll take your babe with us. On my honor as a Vance.” If it were possible to smell rage on someone’s breath, Nell thinks she would on Marianne’s. She lost Dana too. And they both know who is responsible for that.

“The Dreadfort’s a cruel place to run from,” Nell says, although her heart leaps slightly at the thought all the same, of any chance for Lysara. “What you need to do, if you can, is reach out to my aunt. She will be close, you can be sure of that, for my babe is all she has left. Get to her, get Lysara to her, and do what you can, if you mean this. Prove you care for Lysara and she will grant you sanctuary.” 

Of course, Barbrey could never act alone. She has not the men for it, and Barrowton has no natural defenses, and is easy picking for any army, with its wooden walls and location out in the middle of the rolling hills and fields. But if there is any chance at all… 

As the sun sets she is brought back to the Water Tower, Lysara carried off by a dutiful maid. They never let Nell go to bed with her daughter. She assumes it is because if there is any attempt at rescue or escape, they know she will not leave without her child. But when Lysara is gone… She knows someone is in her room, standing behind the dressing screen, as soon as the door has shut behind her. A woman, not a man, or she’d be able to see them over the top of it. “Come out,” she says, while plucking a pin from her hair and holding it ready.

But it is just Fair Walda. Nell stares at her. Fair Walda settles onto the bench at the end of the bed as if this should all be expected; she sits very daintily and demurely. 

“What are you doing?” Nell asks in a low voice. “Who- did Black Walder send you?”

Walda’s pale blue eyes flash when she looks at her. “No,” she says venomously. “No one sent me. Least of all _him_.” 

“Had a lover’s quarrel, have we?” Nell asks spitefully.

“Do you remember what I told you?” Fair Walda presses. “About the Twins being a kingdom unto itself. Black Walder may not be the heir, but he’s always been apparent. Do you understand? And he promised-,” she catches herself, then continues, “I was promised certain things. And now I find those promises were nothing but dust. He means to wed Barbara Bracken. Oh, he may not like it, but he will. And me- where does that leave me?” She straightens indignantly. 

“Up the river,” Nell scoffs. 

“You mistrust me, and I am no leal handmaid to you,” Walda says. “But I want what I am owed. What I deserve. I’ll not be whored out to some captive riverman or left to wither here like all the rest. My sisters, my aunts, my cousins, call them what you like. Many of them are loyal to you, but I am the one you should be courting favor from. I know how they think. My father. My uncles. My grandfather. Do you understand me now?”

“I don’t court favors from traitors,” Nell says, curling her braid round her clenched knuckles. “So you had best make this sound very appealing, Frey.”

Walda smiles, long lashes and dimples and all, and Nell sees once more why they call her Fair. But the look in her eyes is very foul indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be a Dana POV, and the first chapter of 300 AC! We made it guys! 300 AC! We're getting close(r) to current canonical timelines! That said I apologize for it taking 40+ chapters to cover 2 years, I know this fic can move at a rough crawl at times. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. Lysara is now over two months old, which seems crazy given how much has happened since her birth in this fic. By the end of this chapter (Westerosi New Year's Eve) Nell has been a captive at the Twins for about two weeks. I've read a lot of fics, particularly in ASOIAF, which involve plots with people being held prisoner. Trust me, I do not want to drag this out any more than necessary, which is why I tried to make this chapter as *active* as possible for one from the perspective of someone being held prisoner and not just 'Nell sits in a room mourning Robb and feeling hopeless for 5000 words'.
> 
> 2\. "What's with the model prisoner act?" Nell is operating under the (so far accurate) assumption that if she keeps her mouth shut, doesn't make any trouble, and generally does as she's told without complaint or trying to escape (or kill anyone), the Freys will be more lenient and allow her to visit Catelyn and Edmure and generally let her have some freedom within the Twins complex itself. While it would probably be more satisfying for her to be spitting in people's faces and vowing revenge left and right, for the purposes of the plot I need her to have some access to the flow of information, and that means she can't be in solitary confinement. 
> 
> 3\. All is not well with the Freys! Nell has a very limited POV because she is a prisoner, but it's clear most of her former ladies are still very sympathetic to her and the Stark/Tully cause. They may not be actively rebelling against their family, but they are trying to share information with her, often under the guise of sewing/knitting circles (something Nell mentions much earlier in the fic as being a good cover for sharing stuff, since men don't really bother with them).
> 
> 4\. The following is shared with Nell in this chapter: 1. The Freys have some noblemen hostages as well, including (but not limited to) Wendel Manderly, Smalljon Umber, Lucas Blackwood, at least one of the Vance brothers, and Marq Piper. 2. Randyll Tarly holds Maidenpool and is keeping the Kingsroad open for the Lannisters. Daven Lannister is bringing in 6000 men from the West, likely the remnants of Stafford's former host and other new recruits or mercenaries. 3. Addam Marbrand is bringing up 2000 from King's Landing, as the Lannisters are keen on maintaining a perilous grip on the Riverlands. 4. Both branches of House Vance have quickly surrendered, as have the Brackens, Mootons, and Goodbrooks. The Brackens are being tasked to siege the Blackwoods, which they are all too happy to do. 5. Black Walder is supposed to be marrying Barbara but is refusing to do so until the Brackens deal with the Blackwoods. This is obviously a relief to Barbara. 6. Marianne Vance and Marissa Frey are being sent north with Roose, Fat Walda, Lysara, and the Bolton men, mostly to spy on Roose and/or potentially marry Northern, although we all know the chances of that going over well.
> 
> 5\. Roose on the Loose: Where is he? Roose is still at the Twins. It's a big place and Nell is obviously not seeking out Dad to have another chat. The Freys don't want Roose and his men to leave until the Lannisters arrive on the scene. Roose is eager to GTFO because there are still armed northmen out there presumably calling for his head. Plus you know, a ravenous pack of wolves. Nell believes Barbrey will flock to Roose's side once he's back in the North out of concern for Lysara, and wants Marianne to try to get her daughter in her aunt's hands, because the instant Roose doesn't hold Lysara as insurance, it's gonna get ugly (if not before that).
> 
> 6\. Fair Walda's not happy with how things have worked out. To quote Roslin all the way back in Chapter 23: “She thinks that one day, if- if he could inherit the Twins, he might wed her for true,” Roslin says carefully. “That is what I’ve heard her telling Zia, at least. She- that is why she has been most loathe to be here. She does love him, even if…”  
> Fair Walda (and many others) believe that as soon as Old Walder kicks off, Black Walder is gonna kill, threaten, or maim whoever he needs to get the inheritance, and she's been fed the line from him for years that he'd then marry her and make her Lady Frey. Now all that's gone out the window, and Walda, who has been routinely molested and abused by Black Walder since the age of 12/13 has had this one thing to look forward to- the hope that someday, it would all be worth it because she would be 'queen' of the mini-'kingdom' which is the Twins itself. What happens when that hope is snuffed out? If you're Fair Walda... things get pretty foul.


	44. Dana IV

300 AC - SNAKE’S DEN

Dana spent the first day of the last year crossing at the Twins on the way to the Whispering Wood. She spends the first day of this year listening to Alesander Frey attempt to tune his lute. Making the crossing last year was no triumphant march, not like in the songs. It was damp, dreary, and uncomfortable. The Northmen and the Freys were eying each other like wild dogs, the bridge seemed to stretch on forever, and the river was shrouded in cloying fog. Nell, Robb, and Lady Catelyn had led the march.

Dana had found herself surrounded by the battle guard. She remembers the wide-eyed stare of Jory, who’d never been further south than the Neck before, but then again, none of them had. Dana had spent fourteen years having never been further north than the Saltspear, nor further south than the Flint Cliffs. She had not had the regular trips to White Harbor and Torrhen’s Square that Nell had had. 

So as nerve wracking as traveling into what was in some sense enemy territory, preparing to face the legendary Kingslayer in battle had been, Dana would be lying now if she claimed she’d hadn’t been excited, or eager, or at all intrigued at prospect of seeing the South for the first time, even if it was not the fabled Reach or King’s Landing or the fabled Vale. Like as not, she will never see any of those places. But at least she’s seen more than her sisters, or her mother, or most of her female kin. Women don’t have the ease of travel that men do. Unless one’s husband is at least somewhat wealthy or travels often for his trade, such as a stonemason, one might never go any further than to the next village over, or in many cases, a little ways down the lane. 

Had they succeeded in wedding her to Black Donnel, she’d be up in the mountains now, likely with at least two children and another on the way. She does want to see where the mountain Flints make their home, someday. Just not as one of their wives. But she’s traveled this far as a lady in waiting, and she imagines she’ll be traveling a bit further before her days are done, whether they triumph or fail. 

At least it’s better than giving up and waiting to be caught, or just lying down to die. But at night, some part of her is still lying in the dirt, doing exactly that. Face down on the forest floor, waiting around to die. She could have stayed there forever, she thinks, until her bones were bleached by the sun, and the crows pecked for worms in the sockets of her skull. It might have even been more peaceful than this. 

“Fuck,” Alesander says under his breath as a string unwinds with a low wail. Dana looks up from her seat at the table. The ‘great hall’ of Snake’s Den is not so great at all; it could seat perhaps sixty men at most. Even Riverrun could host some hundred lords and ladies in its feasting hall. But she supposes they are not having many guests, House Paege, both before and after the wars. The singer looks up, sensing her gaze on him, meets her eyes, and grins. Alesander is handsome enough for a Frey, although he has the sharp, narrow face and small chin they all share. He wears his dark hair long, framing his olive face and black eyes, and he looks very much like his sister Alyx, to the point where Dana questioned if they were twins. They are not; Alesander is four-and-twenty, but could truthfully pass for far younger. 

He also seems to have taken an interest in her, and while Dana is fond of singers, she generally means fond of their voices and their skill with the lute or harp. Not their cocks or their skill with their tongues. She’s not very offended by his blatant flirting thus far; he’s a singer, it’s in his nature. Her mother once said they made half their coin from their music, and the other half from learning to please bored and neglected wives and daughters in bed. “A different sort of music,” her sister Jenny had japed, unusual for her, and Dana had laughed and laughed at that. 

She smiles briefly at him, then turns back to shoveling food in her mouth. They’ve been here ten days now, resting and recuperating. The men wanted to leave after just two, but Ser Halmon put a swift end to that. They might cross the river successfully, but they’re not going to be much used to anyone dressed in rags, starving, with injuries still weeping blood or pus and broken swords and battered shields. Besides, between the group Dana arrived with and the northmen the Paeges are hiding in one of their barns, they’re never going to get them all down-river and across at Hag’s Mire all at once. Better to do it in portions, night by night, so long as the weather holds. It still rains, but it mostly turns into cold mist by evening. 

Dana is due to cross with the last of them, two nights from now. Guilty as it makes her feel, part of her is dreading it. They’ve been safe and secluded here; the Freys have not arrived to make any trouble thus far, the food is better than she’s eaten in weeks, and that is certainly including their meals at the Twins, and she’s not going to pretend that after days of sleeping in a feather bed, the idea of once again making camp on wet ground surrounded by snoring and grunting men is an appetizing one. And she could stay here, if she liked. The matter has been raised by the Paege sisters. But she pledged to go with these men, fought Ben Flint for the right to remain with them, and what sort would she be to give all that up now and to chase comfort and safety instead? She’s not a glass house flower, she’s a Flint of the Finger, and Nell needs her. Lysara needs her. 

If it were her held captive, her in danger, she knows Nell would fight tooth and nail to find her, save her. Once when they were fifteen, after Nell had been betrothed to Robb but before they’d come to Winterfell, a summer snow had frozen solid part of the Short Spear of the Saltspear that led up to Barrowton. It was more creek or stream than river, but Dana had gamely coaxed Nell out onto the ice all the same, and they’d raced down stream, sliding and shouting and laughing, confident that it would hold them, for they’d seen deer crossing it the day before, and confident that even were it to crack- well, the water was only five feet deep!

But at some point they’d collided and Dana had gone toppling over, breathless and snickering, and Nell had glided past her, slapped a gloved hand up against the wooden bridge, and declared herself the victor. And Dana, gawky, long-limbed Dana, had still been struggling to clamber back to her feet when there’d been a sharp crack, and the ice beneath her feet had split open, and down she’d gone. The cold had been brutal, but that was not the problem. The problem was that the water immediately weighed down her thick wool dress and heavy cloak, and dragged her to the bottom, where it was dark and silent, and the sunny summer afternoon seemed a world away. Dana had struggled to breach the surface once, twice, and then the panic had spread, a pounding pain in her head and chest, until the ice above her splintered and fragmented, and two arms strong from years of slinging saddles and nocking arrows had dragged her up and out. 

Sara had found them lying in a snowbank, side by side, and would have thrashed them like little girls had she not been terrified they’d catch their death from the wet cold. Truthfully, Dana had gotten a brutal cough and dripping nose for a week after that, and Nell had come to sit with her all day, every day, reading to her, although she hated the way her voice sounded, and playing cards with her, and even bringing her a fine new pelt to spread across the blankets. 

So if it were Dana locked in some tower, Nell would come, even if she had to slaughter a thousand Freys in cold blood, she would still come. She would make Robb go to war for her, and Dana has always known that, always been quietly assured of it, even when she and Nell fought or disagreed or didn’t have time to speak privately for days on end. They are sisters, although they share neither mother nor father. 

Dana always wanted that with her own sisters, but they were too old and too busy and they have children of their own who will always come first. She remembers laughing at Sansa and Arya at Winterfell, just laughing, because Dana would have killed for an older sister like Sansa, even if she called her Horseface, or for a younger sister like Arya, even if she tended to hit and kick. But those sisters are gone, of course, and it’s better to think of something else while she eats than missing children.

Alesander has finally gotten his lute in working order. He calls out to her, “Tell me what you think of this, my lady!” and launches into an unknown melody. Dana pauses, spoon to her lips, to listen, and cannot help the small grin when he sings about a cold northern wind sweeping the riverbanks with ice and snow. “They call it the fall of the lion,” he finishes smoothly, “but in winter the cold winds still blow.” 

“You truly mean to sing that down the Kingsroad?” she questions when he looks at her brightly, eyes gleaming in the sputtering torch light. “The letter from Raventree said the Tarlys hold Maidenpool, and Darry for the Freys. If they hear about some singer going on about winter coming for the Lannisters-,”

“Mind your tongue,” he scoffs. “It’s clearly about how even lions can still get cold. A silly mummer’s jape, no more, no less. I don’t so much as mention wolves, or kings, or Freys in the lyrics. But if some men were to approach me afterwards and ask where they might follow a northern wind to,” he shrugs, “Well, I’d tell them to get to the River Road before it’s clogged up with westermen.”

Dana sets down her spoon. “Do you think you’ll hear any word of the Greatjon? Or Harry Karstark? You could ask after some Flints for me-,” She’s interrupted by the entrance of Mellara, who comes striding into the room, trailed by Merry, who immediately dashes over to hug Alesander. 

“Will you sing Autumn of My Day after dinner tonight?” she asks eagerly, as Alesander sets down his lute and pulls her into a proper embrace. “Please, Sander, you haven’t sang that in ages-,”

“I sang it at Mel’s wedding,” he laughs, ruffling her hair. “But if you insist-,”

Mellara has made a direct line for Dana, who stands up uncertainly at her decisive approach. If there’s one thing Mellara Rivers doesn’t lack, it’s certainly confidence. She is not the prettiest, nor the tallest, nor the loudest, but she has a certain set to her jaw and angle to her chin that makes it difficult to dismiss her. Dana sees relatively little of Old Walder in this bastard daughter; whoever Mellara’s mother was, she must take after her. She is short, heavyset, and wears her chestnut brown hair in a thick braid down her back; her cheeks and nose are spattered with brown freckles and her eyes are green, surprisingly. When she smiles at Dana, her teeth are crooked, but there is something charming about the one dimple that appears on her left cheek.

“I’d ask you to walk with me,” she says, “but there’s nowhere really to walk to, so I’ll just tell you to follow me instead. Muriel wants to speak with you. Lady’s business,” she adds pointedly, when Alesander opens his mouth. “Sander, stay here. Merry’s been dying to show you how good she’s gotten on the pipes, haven’t you, Mer?”

“I can play nearly of all of The Night’s End now,” Merry is telling him eagerly as they leave.

“I hope he hasn’t spent the past hour chasing skirt,” Mellara says casually as they step out into the narrow corridor. “He’s a good man, Sander, but he’s a fool around women to be sure.”

“Not successfully, no,” Dana smiles wryly. “But you know him far better than me. He said you grew up at the Twins together?”

“Everyone grows up together at the Twins,” Mellara keeps her gaze firmly on the stone steps before they as they go up a flight of stairs, “whether they like it or not. My mother’s husband left me off there when I was a few days old. They didn’t need another mouth to feed. They already had nine. Alesander, Alyx, Olyvar, Roslin, Perwyn, Willamen and Benfrey… they were my playmates. The other Rivers my age as well. Martyn, Ryger, and Ronel. It could have been far worse, I’ll admit. Lord Walder recognized me as his seed, gave me a place in his household. I never went hungry, and I always had someplace warm to sleep.” 

She shrugs. “It was never happy, though. But I’d wager I have that in common with his trueborn children and grandchildren. No one would have bothered to teach me to read or write or do my sums if not for Alyx and Roslin helping me along. They meant to wed me to Sweet Steffon- and they don’t call him Sweet for his kindly heart, mind you, he’s Walton’s seed, like that bitch they call Fair Walda- but Robert was visiting Oly and Perwyn and liked the look of me, and I him. When he heard I’d be betrothed soon, he asked Old Walder for my hand first, bold as you please. My dowry was nothing splendid, I’ll tell you that. But Robert came to me and said he’d figured I’d prefer a second son to a third son’s firstborn, and he wasn’t wrong.”

“When was this?” Dana asks, frowning, as they reach the second floor. 

Mellara laughs. “Oh, last year? Just before you folk came south. Wedding kept getting put off, of course, with the war, but Robert pulled through, didn’t he? Swore he wouldn’t die before he could take me to wife, and he’s kept that promise, hasn’t he? Took back Riverrun from the Kingslayer with King Robb, marched west for Oxcross, came back in one piece and come here to wed me! There’s a man who keeps his word, don’t you think? We get along just fine.”

“He sounds true and loyal,” Dana says. “I’m glad you found one another.”

“He’ll be leaving with you lot,” Mellara says, as she pushes open a door, “but I’ve no fears. Like as not I’m already with child- my mother was plenty fertile. Might be we name it Robb, if it’s a boy first. Or Nella, for your good queen,” she adds warmly. 

Dana’s eyes burn suddenly, and she swipes as them as they enter the room. 

Muriel Paege nervously stands to greet them, her hands clasped before her. She’s a nervous sort of woman, this Mistress Paege, born a Grey, another family of landed knights. Dana isn’t sure whether it’s due to her husband’s condition- Ser Halmon took a serious wound defending the Fords and was sent back home to recuperate, and is still walking haltingly with a cane- or simply by nature. She has a soft, sweet smile though, and lovely reddish brown curls, which three of her four children have inherited.

“My lady,” Dana greets her all the same, with a brief curtsey. 

“This is Sallei’s bedchamber,” Muriel confesses, as if being interrogated, “but she and Sylwa are down at the village, and I know she left the clothes-,” she darts over to the wardrobe to rummage through, then turns around happily. “There! We’ve some things for you, before you leave, Lady Danelle.”

“Just Dana is fine,” Dana tries to correct sheepishly, before she gapes at the clothes being set out on the bed, not because they are so fine- although they do look well made- but because they’re clearly intended for a young man, not a woman. “I- I’m sorry, I can’t…” She may be a rather mediocre lady, but that doesn’t mean she’s ever run about in tunic and breeches, either. 

“Well, you can hardly go running about the Riverlands sowing rebellion in a dress,” Mellara says dryly.

“Or… you could, only very slowly,” Muriel offers with a small smile of her own. “You’ll be better off dressed like a man- and safer, too, I hope. Can you use a blade?” 

Dana thinks of the Mormont sisters, and fails to hide her wince. “Yes. I know how to use a knife. And a bow, though my aim’s always been terrible.”

“Then you’ll have one,” Muriel says decisively. She seems to hesitate, then lays a hand on Dana’s shoulder. “You’re very brave to do this. I don’t think I could ever do such a thing.”

Mellara huffs. “Muriel, you’re hiding northmen all over your lands and castle. If that’s not brave-,”

The bedchamber door slams open, and all three of them jump. Halmon Paege stares grimly back at them from the doorway, leaning heavily on his cane. He’s not an old man yet, Ser Halmon, but after the wound he took from Addam Marbrand the Paeges fear he’ll never walk without a severe limp again. He can still ride, but fighting may be out of the question. “Whalen and Jammos are here,” he says hoarsely. “Coming up to the gates, now. Hide her. I’ve got the men down in the cellars.”

Muriel immediately rushes to the window to look out, and Mellara swears under her breath at the distant grind of the gate being raised. Dana scoops up the clothes and jerks open the wardrobe to toss them back in; Mellara is two steps behind her. “In there,” she says urgently, as Muriel says swiftly, “They’re riding in now, we have to go down and greet them or it’ll raise suspicion.” 

Dana doesn’t have time to debate whether or not this is the best possible place to hunker down and wait this visit out; she clambers into the wardrobe, pushing aside clothes, crouches down, and yanks the door shut after her, leaving the barest sliver of light. The Paeges leave the room, carefully closing the door behind them, and Dana waits, heart pounding at first, but gradually slowing its frantic pace as she calms down. Everyone’s hidden. The Freys likely aren’t going to insist on searching the land; they don’t have the time or the men to be coming through fields and outhouses after dark. And even if they did have their suspicions, the Freys should not have sent the Sallei and Sylwa’s own husbands. What man would condemn his own wife as a traitor?

After ten or so minutes of quiet; no raised voices, no running feet, she begins to feel more bored than frightened. She entertains herself by feeling the fabrics around her and trying to guess at the materials, and then when that’s done she traces patterns in the dusty bottom of the wardrobe with a finger. Her broken fingers are feeling better; the swelling has gone down, and they’re still stiff and very sore, especially in the cold, but at least she hasn’t got blood poisoning under the skin or shards of bone sticking out of her hand. She rests her forehead against the cool wood in front of her, trying to keep her breathing quiet and even. Hopefully the Freys don’t intend on staying the night; maybe Jammos and Whalen are here to demand their wives and children come back with them to the Twins immediately. She wonders how that might go over. Sallei Paege in particular does not seem the sort to meekly acquiesce to a husband’s demands. 

She regrets wondering at that when she hears voices outside the bedchamber door. Not raised or angry, but they don’t sound pleased, all the same. Dana tenses, physically leaning back in her hiding spot, and trying not to make the wood groan or creak, just as the bedchamber door opens. She freezes, wondering why she isn’t terrified- perhaps she used up all her fear out in the woods outside the Twins- as Sallei Paege and a man who can only be her lord husband step into the room, arguing in hushed tones.

Said tones immediately raise as soon as the door has closed. Does Sallei know she’s in here? Did Muriel or Mellara have time to warn her? Does he? Dana bites down hard on her lower lip, and closes her eyes, as if that might grant her further protection. It must be why children think you can’t see them if they can’t see you. After a few moments pass without one of them yanking open the wardrobe doors and revealing her, she allows herself to listen to what they’re saying.

“-no need to-,”

“How can you even look at-,”

“It was not my choice,” Jammos Frey is saying flatly. Dana can’t see him, of course, but from the sound of his voice alone, he doesn’t sound like a very tall or fat man. Nor a very old one; so he mustn’t be much older than thirty or so, the same as his wife. “You must understand that, Sallei. I am not consulted in such matters- my father-,” here his voice flattens even more, “prefers the counsel of the Lame, and Ryman’s elder two. One, now. Edwyn is dead. Donella Bolton slew him while he was taking her and the babe.”

“Good,” Sallei says venomously. “I always loathed the slimy little ingrate. But you knew. You knew, and still you said nothing-,”

“I made sure you and the children were well away from it all,” he snaps. “What more do you want from me? Dickon and Mathis were never in any danger-,”

“They are Freys! Your family name is attainted now,” Sallei snaps, “wherever they go, for the rest of their lives, they will be known as the kin of traitors and kingslayers! Do you think that a boasting matter? You let these Lannister use you the way a butcher does a bonesaw-,”

“I did my duty, no more and no less.”

“Your duty?” she scoffs. “He was your King!”

“There is only one King,” Jammos says stiffly, “and he is a child whose grandfather rules from the Iron Throne as we speak. Our name may be cursed by the northmen, yes. But it is the lions we need to concern ourselves with. So long as we remain in the good graces of the Crown, we will be protected. Guarded. Once Seagard and Riverrun fall, it will simply be a matter of scouring the land for rebels, outlaws, and broken men. Would you rather we have yet more warring and pillaging? This land is bled dry, Sallei. There is little left to take, and winter is on the horizon.”

“Winter is on the horizon,” she acknowledges furiously, “and your father decides to play at making and breaking kings of wolves. You’ve made enemies of every Northerner, most of the rivermen, and near all the smallfolk as well. I saw your men’s faces when they rode in. The roads are not safe, are they? You dare not make camp at night for fear of what- who- might be watching from the trees.”

“I know this land well enough,” Jammos says coldly. “Do not think to lecture me on safe travels. But perhaps you should consider a prayer or two on our behalf. We will spend the night here, and leave at dawn for the Twins again.”

“I am not going anywhere,” Sallei retorts. “Nor is Sylwa. This our home. It was our home long before you brought me to the Twins-,”

“Then stay here,” he cuts her off, that flat, even tone back again. “I’ve little interest in dragging you back there just to hear your pecking and nagging, woman. But the boys come with us. Hoster and Garrett must resume their duties as squires. With Damon imprisoned-,”

“For the great crime of coming to Edmure Tully- your lord paramount’s- defense!”

“With Damon imprisoned,” he continues, “Garrett will squire for me, Hos for Whalen. The matter has been decided. I will tell you what my brother is telling Halmon. We are one blood, House Frey and House Paege. There should be no conflict betwixt us. You will come to see that this is for the best when the realm is united once more, Sallei.”

“And someday you may come to see that you are little more than their puppet, and ever have been,” Sallei hisses back. “But I’ll not hold out hope. Leave me be. See to your brother. Or the sons left to us. I fear they are beginning to forget what you look like. But they say all cowards share the same face.”

There is a long pause, and Dana fears she may hear him try to strike her, but Jammos Frey is not that sort, it would seem. He does not yell or raise a hand in anger, only leaves the room quickly and quietly, the door shutting behind him. Dana sits very still, unsure if she should try to get out or not, but then the door opens suddenly, and she jumps back, cracking her head on the back of the wardrobe. 

“Shh,” Sallei says fiercely, a finger to her lips. “Don’t move yet. We’ll wait until they’ve eaten and retired for the night.” She crouches down and takes Dana’s uninjured hand in her own. Her fingers are cold. “No one crosses tonight. Tomorrow. After they’re gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Dana whispers back, “about the boys-,”

“Don’t be sorry,” Sallei squeezes her fingers sharply. “Be careful in your crossing, and find the wolves.”

Dana has cross the Green Fork thrice now. The first time on horseback over the massive bridge, peering into the mist and listening to faint marching songs behind her. The second time as the dawn broke, clambering numbly across a fallen tree, one bloody hand-print after another on the moss, dirt and leaves between her teeth. The third time in the dead of the night, after four hours rowing and steering downstream. The boatman does not even hit the bank, only tilts the prow into the shallows, and they all climb out silently in one movement. She is still getting used to the feeling of being able to walk so freely, with nothing hampering her strides and no stays tugging at her chest and ribs. But the knife in her belt feels good, all the same. Reassuring. 

Sevenstreams is nestled in the northernmost tip of the Hag’s Mire. There are Freys marching down from the Twins even now, some to siege Seagard, others headed for Riverrun to encircle it with the Lannisters, but even combined with the other men who went ahead, the Dana’s group is still only forty men, all much faster on foot with minimal supplies and no baggage than an army at march. The Hag’s Mire is as flooded and dark as Dana remembers, but the bird songs are familiar, and the moon hangs low overhead. The sky is lightening when they reach the outskirts of the village, but they keep off the road and head to the mill, as specified in the last letter out of the bustling little town’s rookery. 

The mill is a ruined mess, draped with ivy and moss, creaking timbers in the wind. 

“Promising,” Ben mutters beside her. Daryn and Olyvar, ever determined, forge on ahead, signaling for the men to fan out. No sense in walking in a neat little line into uncertain territory. They haven’t gone more than a few paces when the windows blaze with torchlight, and faces appear seemingly from nowhere. The yard is flooded with men; less than their number, Dana instantly sees, but a good twenty or so nonetheless. They part like a sea to let one man forward, plucking at a small wood-harp. 

“The fuck is this?” Ben demands. “You going to sing us a little song, Sevens?”

“Surely there’s worse things to hear in the middle of the night,” Tom rejoins with a smile. He’s a small man, and much older than Dana expected; he must be near fifty. But she has little doubt the throwing knives at his hip and the axe at his back have seen as much, if not more, use than that little harp. “Tell me, is there a turnin' Paege among you?”

“The only way you get to the good part of the story,” Robert Paege retorts, pushing his way forward. He nods to Olyvar. “And the best of Frey’s lost with me. How do you fare, Tom? Alesander sends his best.”

“And seldom does he play it,” Tom laughs, loud and bold, ringing out into the night. “Alright. Just one more test of faith. Our friend wants to get a good look at you. I’d introduce him myself, but he prefers women, it seems. Not that I can blame him. Lady Long Jeyne!” He calls lightly, and Dana stares as a young woman- a girl, really, no older than Dana herself, steps forward. Whoever she is- and Dana has no idea who she might be, for Jeyne’s a common enough name, and she’s not dressed like any lady, but then again, neither is Dana- is long. 

That’s an apt descriptor. She’s tall, taller than Dana, even, who stands five foot nine, and slender as a reed, with long brown hair in two long braids down to her narrow hips. Her face is long and pale and hard. Her nose is long, as is her neck, and her arms, and her legs. So is the bow at her back. When she speaks, her voice comes out in a long, husky sort of drawl, as if speaking aloud was unpleasant and unnecessary for her. “Are these your people, Grey?” she demands, and Dana thinks, _Grey, there’s members of House Grey here?_

But it is not a man who steps forward. Daryn makes a muffled sound of shock, almost like a moan. Ben grips her shoulder, hard, fingers digging in. Olyvar loses his grip on his shield, and it falters and clashes against Robert’s armored shoulder. The beast beside Long Jeyne is gaunt and thin, patches of fur missing from his heavy coat, one flank shaved bare. There is a tear in one of his ears, and he favors one paw over another. But the eyes- the eyes are the same gold Dana recalls, glowing in the dark as he sniffs at their scents, wafting in on the autumn night’s wind. “ _Grey Wind_?” she says hoarsely, and without really thinking, steps forward.

“Dana!” Oly reaches for her, and the wolf snarls, low and jagged like shattered glass, and still Tom’s fingers pluck lightly at his harp, and the men around them murmur and shift in their armor, and Long Jeyne does not remove her hard gaze from the direwolf beside her, but as Dana drops down to one knee in the loose dirt, the wolf comes forward, the snarl shifting into something else, a rumble deep in the throat. He sniffs first at the toe of her boot, then at her leg, and then his wet muzzle slides against the lines of her throat. He’s sniffing for Nell, she thinks even as she kneels there, frozen, too shocked to be terrified, as she should be. He’s looking for her. 

But he finds no trace of Donella on her, and when he pulls back, Dana looks into those gold eyes and thinks she finds an almost human sort of emptiness. She tentatively lays a hand on his fur, but he jerks away and turns back to Jeyne, seemingly satisfied. “Good enough for the wolf, good enough for me,” Tom says almost jovially, tucking his harp under his arm. “You’ll excuse all the fussin’, m’lords,” he winks at her, although she barely notices, “m’lady fair. But one can never be too careful these days. All sorts of dishonorable folk roamin’ about, lookin’ for trouble.”

“And what are we looking for?” Daryn asks roughly as Dana slowly stands up. Where did they find the direwolf? How do they know his name? She doesn't recognize any of the men with Tom and Long Jeyne.

“My brothers,” Tom says, still smiling. “And some of yours as well, I wager. Only mine don’t come with banners, and yours seem to have lost theirs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seriously considered skipping updates this week in lieu of the fact that most of you probably have a lot going on, as do I, but ultimately it'd stress me out more to put off updating. So consider this an early Christmas present if you celebrate, and there will be a chapter up on Friday as well. A Nell POV again after this, and then I need to debate whether or not we should jump (briefly) back to Beth, or if I should put that off a little while longer.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I'm actually still working on calculating all the ages for the Frey family tree (got all of Walder's children down, but then there's fifty million grandkids and great-grandkids) so I apologize if at any point any of the Frey stuff is inaccurate in terms of who is who's cousin, uncle, brother, son, whatever. Alesander Frey is Alyx (who married Kirth Vance's) older brother, his mother is Betharios of Braavos, his father is Symond (yes, Symond who canonically ends up in a pie), he's a singer, and like most Westerosi singers, a bit of a fuck boy. His game plan is generally to do some spying and general scouting of his own down the Kingsroad, while also consistently playing a song meant to direct any potential northmen/rivermen who fled from the massacre to, you know, come out the woodwork and get back to the river road to help bug the shit out of the Lannisters.
> 
> 2\. The Paeges are surreptitiously helping Dana's company cross the river down-stream over the course of a series of nights to avoid attracting too much attention. I wish we could spend more time plot wise with this family but I need to keep things moving here. Mellara is a bastard daughter of Walder Frey's, acknowledged but not necessarily well cared for or loved at the Twins. Her and Robert's marriage is unique in this story (and in Westeros in general) in that it was neither arranged, made for political reasons, or a rare case of true love. Mellara was in a difficult situation, being about to be married back into a family she generally does not like, to a man she felt would treat her poorly, and Robert recognized that and intervened on her behalf. This easily could have turned out even worse for Mellara, as she barely knew him, but in this case, the two are, if not passionately in love with one another, good friends and very affectionate and warm together. 
> 
> 3\. Dana may come off as a bit uncouth or crude at times, but for all her complaints that she is far from the picture of the perfect, graceful, cool and composed Northern lady, she has definitely never worn men's clothes before or commonly gone around carrying a weapon, so this is a shift for her. Her realizing that yes, she could probably hide out with the Paeges for the time being and maybe even be happy with them as a sort of pseudo-family, is overshadowed by the fact that she feels she owes it to Nell and their close bond to try her hardest to get back to her and help the Northern cause.
> 
> 4\. Yes, it's extremely cliched to have a character hiding in a wardrobe during a tense conversation! But my jaw also dropped in 'you have got to be fucking kidding me' canon when Arya went months as Roose Bolton's cupbearer! Anyways I headcanon Jammos and Whalen as somewhere in the middle here- they're not really these cackling evil doers or even all that power hungry, they're just guys who do as they're told and who are good at rationalizing stuff to themselves. Jammos doesn't hate the Starks or the Tullys, he just says 'how high' when Dad says 'jump'. They're taking Hoster and Garrett to ensure that Halmon Paege doesn't do anything stupid like send an angry mob of pitchfork wielding villagers up to the Twins. The Paeges in general aren't viewed as much of a threat because their Ser is badly injured, most of their men were at the Twins anyways, and they're on the wrong side of the river to cause trouble at the Siege of Seagard, Riverrun, or Raventree.
> 
> 5\. The Brotherhood! We'll be seeing a lot more of them soon. Tom of Sevenstreams! Jeyne Heddle! GREY WIND! He's in rough shape, but he's back, and he (shockingly) has attached himself to a tall young woman with a cold exterior, husky voice, and long hair who wields a bow and is hungry for revenge. How interesting! Who could that remind him of?


	45. Donella XXXVII

300 AC - THE TWINS

Nell doubts anyone believes she’s developed a taste for the Faith of the Seven, but the Freys don’t find her request to visit their sept worthy of much suspicion or scrutiny either. She is escorted by two guards into the building, deposited in a pew towards the back, and then left to her own devices as the weekly service begins. The Freys have enough men, women, and children to fill their lackluster sept thrice over, but as it stands, this particular service is sparsely populated. 

She counts only a handful of men present, including the septon and her guards, now lingering near the arched entrance, murmuring with each other. The rest of the attendants are mostly women and small children, and she quickly realizes that most of said women seem to be nursemaids and septas tasked with looking after the Freys’ veritable horde of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Presumably weekly service eats up at least an hour of the days and forces them to sit still and be quiet for a little while. 

Nell runs her bare hand along the almost greasily smooth wood of the pew before her, then kneels uncertainly with everyone else for the opening prayers. All the while, her gaze roves the faces around her, searching. She’d asked Catelyn to accompany her, but Catelyn refuses to set foot in the Freys’ sept. Nell is unsure if it is because she thinks the Freys have spit in the face of the Seven by their crimes, or because she has lost her devotion to the Faith in general. Either way, Nell saw little point in turning it into an argument, and left Lysara with her. Now she sits and listens to the septon appeal to the Seven for mercy and respite for the soul of their King.

Not Robb, of course. Joffrey. Three weeks past, a scant four days after the new year, the raven came, and the Freys dutifully tolled their two bell towers, alternating somber tones, in honor of one poor slain boy king, less than a month after tossing another slain boy king’s corpse into a river to rot. Nell did not know whether to laugh or scream or weep when she heard; she settled for a tight, uncomfortable bitter smile to share with Catelyn instead. 

The pitiful truth is that Joffrey was their enemy in name only. It was always Tywin and the Kingslayer they were so concerned with, not some cruel but cosseted child tucked away at the Red Keep. Robb meant to take his head once, yes, but they were never in any condition to march on King’s Landing, certainly not after the failed attempt to ally themselves with Renly. 

And then Renly was dead and Robb was in the West and Stannis was the one trying to do the hard work for them, but he failed, and now Joffrey Baratheon- or Joffrey Waters, or Joffrey the Illborn, or the Bastard King- as Robb’s bannermen used to call him- well, that boy is dead. On his own wedding day, no less. Apparently they mean to put Tyrion Lannister to trial for it, although Nell can’t imagine why. 

Even if he hated his nephew, what would be the point of poisoning him in full view of the court? Surely he must have known he would be the first one they would point fingers at. Wouldn’t it be better to bide his time and wait, and then shove the little prick down a flight of stairs on some quiet night? 

Nell knows she ought to take some satisfaction from the whole thing, nonetheless- the Lannisters are their enemies, and now their pride (if not their joy) is dead, killed horrifically, choking for air, turning purple, if the rumors are true. Should she not count it as fair and just? But what is the point of rejoicing in it? They will simply crown Tommen now. Nell remembers the second son as a fat little boy with red apple cheeks and a timid smile, playing with some kittens outside Winterfell’s kitchens while his septa looked on in exasperation and his sister giggled with her handmaids. 

Tywin will likely continue as Hand of the King, and nothing will really change, will it? Tommen must be nine years old, if that, and even were he a boy poised to grow into a man who would be anything approaching just, or honorable, or even competent at ruling, it will be years before he is of age, and between his grandfather, his mother, and the Tyrells, he will likely never sit the Iron Throne without someone else looking behind him, directing his every move. So she does not feel much of anything, when she thinks on it. In some sense it is almost like how she felt when Robb told her they would be crowned King and Queen.

She never cared about King’s Landing, or the Red Keep, or what happened there or who ruled. That might as well be worlds away, another lifetime. She has never been there, never lived that life, and she never will. The North was always her world, a construct in her mind that encompassed everything and everyone, a kingdom unto itself even before it had declared independence. That must be how the Freys feel about the Twins. What do they care for who rules from Winterfell? What does she care for who rules from King’s Landing? Rhaegar Targaryen could come back from the dead with a bloody dragon that breathed lightning to reclaim his throne and it would not make much of a difference in her life.

But there’s been no word of Sansa, and she can not bring herself to discuss it with Catelyn, either. If Sansa was arrested alongside her husband, there’s been no mention of it. If she somehow managed to escape in the chaos, then she could be absolutely anywhere. Hidden in some holdfast, on a ship, sleeping in a field or gutter… That might have been a cause for hope, however faint, before all this. But now even if someone yet loyal to House Stark managed to find her, where would they bring her? 

Winterfell is lost and Riverrun is under siege. The Eyrie has made their position quite clear. It might be best for her to simply disappear. Be someone else. Nell cannot say she would not take that chance, had she managed to escape with Lysara. Give up all thoughts of friends or family or home, set the crown aside, put her head down, and go somewhere else, far away, some quiet little village, find work, and pretend it all was just some bad dream. 

She hasn’t dreamed in weeks. Ordinarily, she would have been grateful for it. Now she is not surprised at all. What is there to dream of? The worst of the fears that used to parade around in her nightmares, they all came true. If it really was some warning from the gods, or her mother, then they all failed. Them at properly warning her, her at heeding said warnings. She would have rather the dreams Robb once said he had. Of hunting and killing and tearing flesh from bone. She doubts anyone spoke in those dreams of his. There was no need for words, just blood under his nose and the wind moving through the pines. 

She misses Grey Wind in bed with her nearly as much as she misses a man’s warm body beside her. Robb and his wolf both ran so hot, she’d wake up sweating while they slept on, blissfully undisturbed. She misses the weight of them, she misses smelling Robb’s hair in the morning, she misses the familiar comfort of his hand resting on the small of her back, or cupping her belly, or wedged between her legs. 

There’s many things she misses. 

Finally, some twenty minutes into the service, she locates Fat Walda, sitting several pews ahead to the left, near the wall. Nell waits until everyone stands to beg the Father for forgiveness for their latest sins, then moves from her own seat, skirts around the aisle, and makes her way to Walda’s side, boots padding softly across the dusty tiled floor. Walda finally notices her out of the corner of her eye, blanches, but thankfully does not say anything, and faced with Nell’s unrelenting pale-eyed stare, moves over to make room for her to sidle into the pew next to her. Nell can’t recall if Fat Walda were ever so committed to her faith at Riverrun, or if this is due to her impending departure for the heathen North. Or simply a fear for her physical being, not just her immortal soul.

Walda tenses beside her, as if expecting Nell to suddenly turn and slap her, or start hissing threats in her ear, but Nell is content enough to wait until they are all seated once more for the sermon. Only then does she say, out of the corner of her mouth, “Marissa told me I might find you here.”

Walda blinks and pinkens at the same time, her hands tightly laced in her lap. She’s dressed in warm Bolton colors, shades of pink and magenta and fleshy red that Nell has not worn herself in months and months. Something about it prickles at the back of her neck. Did she not wear a similar gown, for the royal feast, the first time she danced with Robb? How proud was she then of her house, her heritage, how mature and cunning she imagined herself to be. Did she not turn up her nose at him and his siblings, recoil at the sight of their wolves, roll her eyes when Dana praised their home, their family? She was a spoilt child. Robb was not the man he would become then, but he was gracious and kind all the same, even when she offered so little in return. 

_You did not deserve him_ , a tiny voice wheedles in her eardrum. _You were unworthy of him. Had he never taken you to wife, he might be alive today. You did not love him as you should have, as you could have, had you tried harder, been better. You do not love his daughter as you should, and now it is too late for her and you. They will call you the ruin of his house someday, in the same footnote as Theon Turncloak. His mother only spares kind words for you for the sake of her granddaughter. When Lysara is gone, there will be nothing left. Better that wildling had slit your throat in the wolfswood. It should have been you who died. He was the king they chose. No one ever chose you once in your life._

 _Robb did_ , she thinks. _He did choose me. He loved me. I know he was not lying when he said it._

 _And Robb chose wrong._

“Nell- Donella?” Fat Walda murmurs to her in concern, blue eyes wide. 

Nell realizes she is digging her nails deep into the wood of the kneeler before them. She exhales quickly, and glances back at Walda as the septon continues to speak. “I wanted to speak with you privately before you leave with my father,” she whispers, and forces herself to add, “and my daughter.”

Walda’s mouth and eyes crease in pity, and Nell really could slap her for that, but then she says, “You were ever good to me, Your- my lady. Truly. I know this is… this has been terrible, but- but no harm will come to your little girl, I swear it. In sight of the Seven, I do.” Walda surreptitiously glances to the altars around the seven-sided chamber. Nell cares little and less for vows made in sight of the Seven. What have the Seven ever done for her? What have any gods? She may still believe, but that does not mean she holds out hope. Mother was right. They don’t care. Anyone who claims otherwise is a fool or a child. 

“I don’t want your promises,” Nell whispers back to her. “I want to warn you, and if you’ve any sense you’ll think to return the favor. I don’t know what game my father is playing with you, but he cares not for you or any children you might bear him. You cannot think to count on him for protection nor consideration. His bastard is a unchained dog with a taste for rape and murder. You keep my daughter well away from Ramsay Snow. I don’t care if you have to barricade her nursery door every night, post guards round her cradle. If he gets a chance to kill her, he will take it. The same goes for you and your own kin. My father might think to shield you from him, but his loyalties shift like snow in the wind. He cares for no one but himself. You must see this.”

Walda simply stares at her, wide-eyed, while Nell nearly twitches in frustration. Finally she whispers, “But Ramsay Snow tried to save Winterfell, didn’t he? He rescued the women and children and brought them back to the Dreadfort.”

“Aye,” Nell retorts, “and Cersei’s children are trueborn and my husband’s men turned into wolves at Oxcross and tore Stafford Lannister limb from limb.”

Walda’s gaze darts from Nell to the septon to the heads bowed in prayer around them. She shifts in her seat, silk and ermine rustling, then says, “I won’t let him hurt your babe. Nor mine.”

Nell narrows her eyes. “Are you-,”

Walda flushes even more. “I- I can’t be sure yet, but… my moon’s blood is late, and I’ve been feeling poorly. I haven’t… I haven’t told anyone. Your father-,” she hesitates, “I promised Lord Roose I’d give him a son. He… he’s not been cruel to me, my lady. Not-,” she licks her lower lip, “he’s not a kind man, to be sure, but he hasn’t… You don’t understand. This is… this is higher than I could have ever hoped to have wed. He is a great lord from an ancient house.”

“Even ancient houses can fall in a matter of days,” Nell says with hushed venom. “My husband’s house did. I don’t wish harm upon you Walda. I don’t like you, nor do I trust you, but I trust my father even less. The North will be against him, Always, even if they claim otherwise. They will not spare you simply for being a woman or the mother of his children. You must ally yourself with my aunt. She is the only one who could help you, or the Manderlys.”

Walda’s mouth wobbles slightly. “He is my husband,” she whispers. “I promised to obey. I have to obey. If he- if he has cause to think me disloyal, or scheming against him and his men-,”

“I never said it was an easy choice to make,” Nell replies curtly. “But you ought to think upon it long and hard. Especially if you suspect you are with child. The world is not kind to wives, and even less so to widows with children to worry about.”

“You don’t know that there will be more war in the North after the Ironborn are defeated,” Walda says almost pleadingly, as if trying to disprove it, somehow, in any way she can. “Winter… winter is nearly here. No one wants to make war in winter. If I can… if I have his children, and someone kills his bastard, then…”

“No wants to make war in any season,” Nell closes her eyes for a moment, trying to keep her voice from rising and drawing attention. The septon is finishing up his sermon, and one of the children in the pew ahead of them is crying softly and plaintively. It reminds her of her daughter. Her daughter, whom she should be spending every last second with, instead of in here, arguing with her father’s Frey wife. “It may be war in winter, it may be knives in the dark, or poison, or fire. The North will have no peace so long as my father draws breath, you can be sure of that. They remember what your kin and mine have done. They do not forget, anymore than they forgot when Torrhen Stark knelt to the Targaryens or when Cregan Stark rode south to restore the King’s order or when the Lannisters took Ned Stark’s head.”

“We will have a thousand men of House Frey to defend us,” Walda says. “It may not go the way you think.” But she sounds far from certain of that.

The rains come to an end at last over the course of the next week and a half, although it does little to abate the flooded, muddy lands around the Twins. Nell stops looking out the window. It only reminds her that soon Lysara will be out there, without her, and she will still be here. Catelyn tells her that she has learned from Zia that Seagard is being sieged by five hundred Freys; enough men to keep the Mallisters behind their fortress walls, but still vulnerable enough that they must rely on the Twins for constant support and supplies. Fair Walda informs her that two thousand men are marching on Riverrun to join up with the westermen flooding in through Wayfarer’s past and the the redcloaks coming up from the Kingsroad. Nell asks after Harry Karstark, but either that secret is very well guarded, or the man and his force truly have vanished into thin air, for no one seems to know anything, and surely there would be word by now had they engaged with either the Freys or Daven Lannister’s men.

“If Marbrand nor Lannister are coming here for us, then at some point they will have to send us down to them,” Catelyn tells her one day, while Nell picks at loose stitches on her frame. She is making a kerchief for Lysara with her initials embroidered on. There is the snarling head of a wolf hidden in one of the elaborate flowers around it. She shrugs without looking up. “That could be months from now. Walda tells me that Ryman believes the Blackfish will give up Riverrun within a few months. But Black Walder is less convinced.”

“My uncle will die before he surrenders Riverrun.” Her goodmother sounds convinced of that, at least. She is rocking Lysara’s cradle gently with one hand. Nell cannot bring herself to look at her babe at this instant. She is near three moons old now. She can roll over now, when laid out on a bed or rug. She coos and babbles when she sees Nell or Catelyn or even Roslin. She loves windchimes and she laughs when you smile at her, even if you do not really mean to. Her eyes widen almost comically when she’s held in front of a looking glass. And her eyes truly look more Stark grey than Tully blue to Nell. But none of that matters, because she is leaving soon.

“She won’t remember me,” Nell says, and hears Catelyn suck in a quiet breath. “Perhaps it’s for the best. If she lives that long, it would only be crueler for her to think back on this. No child should have to remember being separated from their mother.”

“Donella, look at me.” Catelyn grabs her shoulder, her long nails digging into the fabric of Nell’s gown, and she looks up in surprise. This is the hardest Robb’s mother has sounded in weeks, all that tightly bound rage. The braid of hair round Nell’s wrist itches terribly; she resists the urge to pick at it. “When I did not know whether Bran would wake or die I told myself that if I could not save him, I would avenge him. We do not know what will happen. But you cannot treat a living child as though they were dead already. I made that mistake once. Now I will never have the chance again.”

“There is nothing I can do to help her,” Nell wishes her voice would not crack so. “Nothing. Do you understand? She is already lost to me.”

“You have to live with the hope of seeing her again,” Catelyn says fiercely. “If that is all you have left, so be it. You are all I have left of Robb, you and her. I wake up every morning and I want to die, but not until I see his daughter safe where she belongs. We need to watch, and wait, for the next possible opportunity-,” but then a maid enters the room, and Nell never hears the end of that advice. Perhaps Catelyn was trying to console herself more even than Nell. If they give up all hope now, they might as well lay down and die. But it is so hard to want to so much as move a muscle when the terror of losing a child is staring you right in the face.

So it only on the day when her father and his men are due to depart, at the close of the first month of the new year, that she feels she truly loves her daughter. Nell wakes before dawn, gazes around an empty room, rolls over on a cold bed and muffles her scream into the pillows. They did not even let her one last night with her daughter. She got one last night with Robb. The Freys could have tried to butcher them in their beds, as Theon did Bran and Rickon, but she had one last night with her husband. There is a ravenous howling beast prowling through the pits of her stomach. Her fingers are trembling with it. 

She wants to rip something to shreds. Instead she gets up and paces until she is hot and flushed, then rips off her robe and paces some more, over to the narrow window and back, as if awaiting some sort of sign. But there is only the well-guarded bridge below, and the corpses hanging out over the river. She’s only had a few scant glimpses of them, but it was impossible not to recognize some. Short and wiry Owen Norrey hangs next to tall and lanky Dacey Mormont. Her long hair, unbound and matted, veils them both their faces from view. Her uncle’s corpse lolls listlessly in between Willam and Jonnel Flint.

Some girlish part of her is still waiting for a rescue at the last possible moment. Some part of her still believes in childish magic and ghosts, thinks an army of wolves might come streaming out from the treeline, might howl and claw and tear their way through the Freys like parchment. Thinks some gallant dead lover might come riding out on a black stallion, charging straight for the bridge, heedless of the danger, sword raised aloft. But the rest of her knows better, so instead she stops pacing, and sits on her bed, facing the wall laden with tapestries, and watches the rising sun cast mottled shadows across the bedchamber.

Roose and Fat Walda arrive together, in what Nell thinks must be a mockery of wedded bliss. Lysara is very quiet in her arms, wrapped warmly in blankets and peeking out from Walda’s cradled arms at Nell. Something in her seizes, and in that instant she wants to snatch her baby from Walda’s arms and leap out the window. It wouldn’t matter where they landed. It would be better than this. Her legs don’t seem to work properly, as they did not when Roose told her Robb was dead, so she accepts her daughter without standing up. 

“I’m sorry,” Walda says softly, “I wanted to come in earlier, but- well, we haven’t much time-,”

Nell is staring past her at Roose, who lingers in the doorway, unflinching and unconcerned. “The weather’s fair today,” he says, as if this were any ordinary conversation. She supposes to him it is. “We’ll make good time approaching the Neck. My lady wife will write inquiring after your welfare once we have reached the Dreadfort. You may be on your way to Ashemark by then.”

Walda fidgets. Lysara burbles in her arms. Nell adjusts her grip on the bundle and holds up one wrist to Walda. “Untie this.” Fat Walda gapes at her. “Quickly,” Nell says through her teeth, and watches as Walda unties the braided lock of Mother’s hair round her wrist. Nell takes it from her, rests Lysara flat on her lap, and ties it round her daughter’s chubby pink wrist. 

She kisses her on the scalp, on the cheek, and one of her small fists, just as Robb did before he left them forever. Walda steps back uncertainly, and if Roose is watching, Nell does not look up to see. She cradles Lysara once more, presses her lips to a tiny ear, and whispers, “I will come for you. Wait for me, my Sara.” She pauses, breathing in the warm infant scent, and then murmurs, “I know you can be strong, sweetling.” 

“Wife,” Roose is telling Walda, who smiles waveringly at him, although her gaze keeps darting back to Nell and Lysara. “It’s time we departed. Take the child.”

Nell sits there, her daughter in her arms, and feels the scream rise up in her throat as Walda obediently scoops Lysara away from her. She wants to shout, she wants to fight, she wants to spit. Her fingers curl into the mattress, digging and clawing. “Safe travels, my lady,” Walda tells her, even as she takes her place at Roose’s side. Roose simply inclines his head to her. “Prove yourself as loyal to a second husband as you were to your first, and you should have little to fear from Addam Marbrand. That is all that is required of you, daughter.”

Nell finally looks at him head-on, raises her gaze to meet his, and the snarl comes out unbidden, curling at her lips, a visceral, automatic reaction. It does not even sound like a woman’s angry growl. It sounds like some sort of beast or creature. Walda’s eyes go wide, and Roose pauses in the doorway, momentarily startled before it dissipates as easily as it came. “Goodbye, daughter,” he says blandly, and then the door slams shut after him. Nell jumps to her feet as the bar slides into place, then snatches a pitcher of water from the bedside table and hurls it at the locked door. The metal of the pitcher clangs dully against the wood and falls to the ground; she hears the guards outside murmuring to one another, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care at all.

She will not dress or break her fast; eventually they send in Catelyn to ‘console her in her grief’, but Nell knows no sort of consolation that could stem this. She loves her. She loves Lysara, mayhaps not the best way, or not the way she ought to, but what else could you call this? This blade held to her throat, this aching pain in her chest, agony throbbing in her gut. She was hers and they took her away. They took her away and she is never coming back and Nell will never hold her or sing to her or nurse her to sleep. The first scream tears out of her like a howl, then another, and all she is conscious of is Catelyn’s firm grip on her, holding her close, as she shakes and sobs and chokes for breath.

They fall asleep as a mother and daughter might, although Catelyn’s daughters and Nell’s mother are long gone. Nell sleeps fitfully, and wakes at one point to find herself back in Mother’s bedchamber at the Dreadfort, that place that always felt so evil and dire to her, so tainted with wrongness and foully hungry in some sense, like a gaping maw. The bed curtains are as pink as she recalls, the curtains red silk, flapping in the summer breeze. Mother lays wan and dying once more, flush with fever, but her grip is warm and strong, not cold as has been in all the other dreams. “Let go of me,” Nell spits, and though she is a chubby little girl once more in this place, her voice comes out a grown woman’s. “Let go!” She tries to wrench her hand free from Mother’s, but Bethany holds fast, eyes bright and glassy. 

“I did my dying in a bed,” she rasps, “but that is not for you. Did I raise my girl to weep and moan when the hunt grew long and rough?”

“You didn’t raise me!” Nell shouts, shaking her by the shoulder and jerking her hand free at last. It stings and burns as if it’d been dipped in scalding bath water. “You left me! You died! YOU DIED! And I was alone! For days, I was alone, you were gone, and then Barbrey came to save me from Father! She was more a mother than you ever were!”

Her breath comes out harsh and ragged from her throat. Bethany Bolton stares at her weakly. “I died,” she whispers. “I left you here alone. My girl. My Nell. You can never forgive me, can you?”

“You were supposed to protect me,” Nell sobs, “but you weren’t there! You said he would die! He didn’t die! He came back, and you were gone! And he never went away! Even after I- he has always been with me! And you NEVER WERE!”

“I know,” Mother says hoarsely. “My sweet girl. I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go so soon. I thought we’d have more time.”

“Time for what?” Nell reaches up and pulls down the bed curtains, tosses them aside with a snarl, knocks over a candle burning on the nightstand, delights in the smell of the fire streaking across the torn fabric, leaping up to snap at the fluttering curtains on the window. “Time for me to watch you suffer more? What was the point? Tell me, Mother, because I don’t know! I don’t know! You should have killed me the moment they put me in your arms, because I have nothing- everything I ever had, it’s gone! I have NOTHING!” she screams, and the fire is crackling all around her now, licking at her child’s dress, at the bed where her mother still lies, dying, always dying, never any better, never-

“You have never had nothing,” Bethany says, barely audible over the sound of the flames. “I taught you how to hold a bow. I taught you how to slit open a deer’s throat. I taught you how to ride, and hunt, and make shadows on the wall come alive. I taught you to grit your teeth when you were afraid and walk through the pain. I taught you that our gods kept oaths of blood and bone. Do you remember?” She coughs, a long rattle. “I call you proud and foolish, because I was. I remain so. Your faults are mine. But so are your strengths, and you have more iron to you than ten generations of Bolton men and Ryswell women before you. That is your core.”

“No,” says Nell, retching and coughing as the fire reaches the covers of the bed, smoke filling her nostrils, burning her eyes. “No. There’s nothing left. You died for nothing. Robb died for nothing. My daughter will die for nothing.”

“I died for nothing, aye,” Bethany acknowledges faintly, too shrouded in smoke to be visible clearly to Nell now, although her voice is longer than before. “Yet before I died I lived for you. I lived for a child I thought could be more than the sum of all my rage and pain and regret. A child I thought could grow into a woman who might do things I had only dreamed of. And I have been wrong on many counts, my Nell, but never that one.”

Wood creaks and groans; the bedposts crack and fall like tree trunks, and the bedchamber glows hazy orange around Nell. Embers land on her tear-stained face, nestle betwixt her lips. She wakes again in bed beside a sleeping Catelyn, still locked in one mother’s embrace, another mother’s words turned to ash in her ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a pretty dark chapter, but we'll be back to Dana on Tuesday, and hopefully things will be looking a little brighter then. After Dana we are going to be skipping ahead a little (not a lot, I promise) in time to check in on Beth, and then things are really going to be rolling in the Riverlands. Some time jumps are going to be necessary so as not to have events piling on top of one another to an unrealistic extent, but we are not going to be doing any *major* jumps ahead in time, so don't worry about years passing or anything like that. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. In terms of timeline, this chapter covers the span of most of the first month of 300 AC, as we see that Nell has heard about Joffrey's death and Tyrion's imprisonment on suspicion of having poisoned him. Seagard and Riverrun are both under siege, as is Raventree Hall. Catelyn expects that she and Nell will at some point have to be brought further south, as it doesn't seem like Addam Marbrand has any intention of coming up to the Twins himself. Lysara is now about 3 months old, and Fat Walda suspects she may be in the early stages of pregnancy with Roose's child.
> 
> 2\. As far as I know there's no actual canon evidence that there are weekly services in sept, since we don't actually see any characters in ASOIAF *attending* regular religious services that aren't marriage or funeral ceremonies, but that's what we're working with for the purposes of world-building in this fic.
> 
> 3\. Nell isn't really that affected by the news of Joffrey's untimely demise because, as she states, it doesn't really personally matter to her which Baratheon/Lannister kid is on the throne, since they're ultimately not the ones making the decisions, and the Lannisters had a spare in Tommen exactly for this purpose. Additionally, Joffrey has never really been a main antagonist in this story, although his decision to have Ned killed as opposed to sent to the Wall obviously had major consequences for Nell and other characters.
> 
> 4\. In Fat Walda's view, she has really lucked out with this marriage to Roose in terms of the fact that she could have never hoped to marry into an old and wealthy family like the Boltons before. The fact that Roose is not actively being cruel to her is a plus in her mind, as she's used to a good deal of derision and harassment from the men of her family. That said, she's also not an idiot, and doesn't take Nell's warning about Ramsay's potential murderous/predatory behavior and Roose's general inaction/apathy to said behavior lightly. 
> 
> 5\. The real internal conflict in this chapter is the question of 'what does Nell do once Lysara is taken from her?' With her daughter's fate out of her hands at the moment, she seemingly has two real options here: give up and resign herself to a miserable future as a prisoner turned wife, or decide to keep fighting and plotting to break free at some point, even if the hope of reuniting with her daughter seems very faint at the moment. One of the major themes of ASOIAF is 'men's lives have meaning, not their deaths' which is what I hope came across is Nell's nightmare/pep talk from her mother. Yes, Bethany died pretty much as a coincidence, a stroke of bad luck. She didn't go out a hero or have any dramatic last stand. But while she was alive, she chose to raise Nell to be someone who possesses a lot of pride and bitterness and general faults, but also someone who is incredibly determined and resourceful and unwilling to give up on fighting for what and who she wants in her life. Bethany might have been 'just' some poor girl's mother who died young, but her life still had meaning through the strong bond she had with her daughter and the values she instilled in her. What ended up mattering is less about whether she 'won' or 'lost' some great struggle but what she left behind to continue to grow long after she was gone.


	46. Dana V

300 AC - THE RIVERLANDS

Dana is not sure what she expected to happen once they’d found Tom of Sevenstreams and his small group of outlaws, but journeying further south had not been it. She’d thought they might make for Seagard, but instead they cut southeast towards Fairmarket, cross the newly constructed wooden bridge there over the Blue Fork, and push on towards the Red Fork. Where exactly are they going? No one seems keen on telling her, and all she can get out of Tom is that he’s taking them to Harry Karstark, wherever he might be. 

If Daryn or Olyvar know more than her, they’re not letting on, and most days Dana is too concerned with not getting caught by Lannister outriders to spend much time prying into things. She’s always been the curious sort, but so long as they’re moving towards something, anything, and not running away, she supposes she can tolerate the frustration of not knowing. 

They’ve just barely eluded the Frey men marching down to Riverrun, and by all appearances, Tom seems intent on leading them on a winding, looping path south, keeping well clear of the Whispering Wood and Riverrun, and well clear of Stone Hedge and any Bracken men as well. They travel mainly in the early morning or after dusk, although it is always slow going, slow enough to set Ben Flint’s teeth to grinding, and even the generally calm Daryn seems ill at ease at times. “They could be leading us straight into a trap,” Dana overhears Ben muttering to Olyvar and Daryn one night, while she is pretending to catch up on any sleep at all on her thin bedroll. “It’s been three weeks. No sign of Karstark. Mayhaps they mean to deliver us right to Daven Lannister’s camp.”

“We’ve twice their numbers,” Daryn had retorted, “and if they were going to ambush us, they would have done it already. All they would have had to do is push us right into the Freys’ path and let them do the dirty work for them. They’ve got Robb’s wolf, Flint. Do you really think he couldn’t sniff out traitors?”

“Alesander vouched for them,” Olyvar had added quietly, “and Jeyne Heddle wouldn’t be traveling with them if they were working with the Lannisters. She hates them like nothing else, after Tywin had her aunt hung at the Crossroads.”

Long Jeyne, as it turns out, has a real name- she’s a Heddle of the Crossroads. Dana doesn’t know much about the Heddles, only that they used to be landed knights, but fell from that into simply running an inn and farm over the years. They’re not considered nobility anymore, but they’re respected among the smallfolk all the same, as anyone with a proper surname is, and all the moreso, it would seem, for what happened to poor Masha Heddle. Apparently she’s become something of a folk hero in death; killed by the Old Lion for letting Catelyn Stark take the Imp prisoner. That seems like decades and decades ago by now. 

They’re lucky Jeyne Heddle didn’t decide to hold a grudge against the Starks and Tully instead, but Dana suspects there is more to the matter than her beloved aunt’s execution. There’s a tightly strung sort of rage to Long Jeyne, even when she is simply sitting and eating, or bathing in a murky stream. Dana’s not easily intimidated; her best friend is a Bolton, for the love of the gods- but Jeyne Heddle’s silent fury gives her pause all the same, as does Grey Wind’s permanent presence. He seldom strays far from Jeyne’s side, whether guarding her against the men or simply out of familiarity, Dana can’t be sure. She’s tried to ask Jeyne how she came to find the wolf, but nothing much came of that. All Dana knows is that Grey Wind must have found some way to cross the river, and at some point been found by some northmen, who were then found by the Brotherhood, for how else would they know his name? The only person Jeyne seems to like is Anguy, a skinny redhead with a bow of his own, who could be anywhere from sixteen to twenty in age. He and Jeyne go out hunting together often, sometimes sharing the same horse, and seldom return empty handed.

To Dana’s surprise, they do not encounter any real trouble until the reach the Inn of the Kneeling Man. To be sure, sixty odd men, divided into three different riding groups, perhaps does not attract much attention during war time, when men are constantly coming and going from place to place, largely unquestioned and even avoided by the smallfolk. But it is not just luck or mere happenstance. It’s not just that the common people simply look the other way when members of the Brotherhood ride past their small village or cut through some winding lane of their bustling town. The people love them. To be sure, it is not the kind of love Dana is used to; these people do not react the way the villagers of the winter town would react when Robb Stark rode out with his brothers, and they do not react the way the folk of Barrowton would nervously flock around Barbrey Dustin.

This is different; not open admiration or intimidation or a respectful distance, but a genuine sense of comradery. People let them keep their horses in their stables, don’t demand coin for their meals, don’t rush inside or shout curses and shake broomsticks or shepherd’s staffs or throw dirt or shit at them or glare or duck their heads anxiously. These people come out and they clap Tom of Sevenstreams on the shoulders and they don’t ask many questions but they do smile, more than Dana has ever seen any farmer or tradesmen ever smile at her or her kin. 

Their children are bold as brass and their dogs don’t bark and growl or whine nervously and they let them bed down on their floors and in their barns or in a secluded stretch of their fields. They let them drink from their wells and use their privies, and that isn’t to say the journey has been by any means relaxing or easy, but it is… well, it’s something.

“When the Brotherhood started,” Anguy tells her, “we were just going after Lannisters and the Mountain’s Men. All their sort. Then Lord Beric said we ought to be defending the people as well, seeing how they haven’t got much, and they can’t raise arms against no knights or lords. But we’re already outlaws. Been like that for near two years, now. If the people have any trouble, be it from westermen or northmen, they come to us, and we help, and in return they keep their mouths shut and their eyes open.”

“And you,” Dana had asked, “are you… were you highborn?” It’s not as if she could tell by the look of him. In her mud splattered clothes and with her hair in a tangled braid bound with leather, Dana looks as common as they come. She used to wish for that sort of thing as a girl, being common. Small. Growing up on some farm, hauling in fruit and grains and sitting around a crowded dinner table packed with sprawling siblings. At least until her mother had straightened her out. 

“They suffer just like any fine lord and lady,” Alys Norrey had sniffed, “only all the more, for they’ve no maesters, no warm castle walls, no soft bedlinens, and often enough, not nearly enough food to go around those cozy dinner tables, Danelle. You be grateful for what you’ve got. Grateful you’re a lord’s daughter, with a lady’s education, a lady’s rights. You don’t need to worry about some lordling riding down from his castle to try to claim his rights to your wedding night, or being fondled and squeezed by some drunken freerider at an alehouse. Be grateful you won’t see half your children wither and die only to whelp a dozen more. Aye, they’ve happy times and sad ones, just like us, but coin and swords makes the sad times a little easier to bear.”

“No,” Anguy had snorted back at her. “Why, do I look it, milady?” His tone was not openly derisive, but his eyes had a sudden sharp glint to them that had not been there before. “I’m common as they come. From the Marches.”

“This is very far north for a Dornishman,” she’d smiled, to try to set him at ease again.

“Some say Dornish, some say Stormlander, others say Reacher. I say none of it. Haven’t got any home nor kin to miss me, and I’ve not the means nor the thought to ever go back. I came to King’s Landing to make something of myself, and so I have,” he’d said dryly. “A proper outlaw, I am. And a knight, at that. No fancy helm nor armor, yet I wager I make a better one than the likes of Gregor Clegane ever did,” his lip had curled and he’d spat on the dusty dirt road trod underneath their horses at that.

“You’re a knight?” Dana had fought and failed to keep the incredulity from her voice. ‘When were you knighted? In the capitol, before you came here with Lord Beric?” She paused. “Is he really dead? I’ve heard the men talking… they say Thoros of Myr has nursed him back from mortal wounds half a dozen times.”

“Lord Beric’s gone,” Anguy had said shortly, narrowing his brown eyes at her. “But he knighted the worthy of us before he went the last time. You think I’m not worth it? I won these spurs,” he prodded at his horse’s flank and urged the gelding forward, “just as well as any lord’s son. I’ve killed and fought and bled for them. I dare any man to say I’m worth less.”

Dana had stared after him as he trotted forward, then called belatedly, “The last time? What do you mean, he went the last time? Is he dead or not?” But Anguy had just ridden onward to rein up beside Jeyne and Grey Wind.

The northmen are disgruntled, to say the least, by the time they reach the Kneeling Man with no sign of Harrion Karstark nor the thousand men who stayed back with him along the Red Fork. On the other hand, there is no immediate signs of the likes of Daven Lannister, Addam Marbrand, or Flement Brax either, which Dana counts as a blessing. There may be sixty of them in total, but they are no match for any halfway competent fighting force. Their horses are tired after this much long continuous travel, spirits are low, and the reports of Frey banners flying throughout the Whispering Wood did little to raise them. 

That was the place where Robb Stark made his first stand, where many of these men, boys, really, were first blooded in battle, where they felt they truly came of age, stopped listening to old stories and started living them. And now that wood is full of the men who betrayed them, who butchered their friends and brothers and fathers, their king, who stole away their queen and princess. The Kneeling Man is hardly a welcome sight to some of them, either. The rivermen see nothing wrong with it, but Dana knows enough to know that talk of how Torrhen Stark knelt here before the Targaryens is still raw enough to agitate some men. 

Of course, that was three hundred years ago, but what of it? The Starks were still Kings in the North thousands of years before Aegon the Conqueror was a babe at the teat. Torrhen marched his men this far south, further south than they’d ever ventured before, caught a glimpse of Balerion and Vhagar and Meraxes, and surrendered his crown rather than see thousands of men burned in an impossible defense of the North. 

It makes sense to Dana. Honor and pride are all well and good, but not at the expense of innocent lives, surely. Rickard Stark would have done the same. So would Ned Stark. And Robb would have too, had it came to that. She thinks. She hopes. Had Robb lived through the Freys’ attack, would he have knelt to preserve the lives of his remaining men? But the Freys and the Lannisters don’t have dragons, only numbers. But is that the same thing, more or less? 

Of course not, one part of her stubbornly insists. A massive army takes ages to march anywhere. But dragons… she has no idea how fast a dragon might fly, but surely faster than any ship. Aegon and his sisters could have burned the Northern army and then reached Winterfell to burn that too a day later. Torrhen had no choice. There was no hope of holding off the Targaryens for long. This is different. This must be different, because there is still some hope. Daven Lannister is no Aegon. Tywin Lannister is no Balerion. The Mountain was as much a legend as Vhagar, and even he fell, did he not?

The Kneeling Man is a fairly small inn, truth be told, and most of the men make their camp further down the river. Dana accompanies Tom, Daryn, Olyvar, Robert Paege, and Anguy and Jeyne inside the slate building, which is mostly deserted and coated in dust and dry mud, aside from the innkeepers, Sharna and Gerrol, and their son, a husky boy of perhaps fifteen or sixteen who is far too comfortable with the crossbow he keeps at hand. 

It’s obvious to Dana, looking at the couple; pudgy Gerrol and tall and skinny Sharna, both dark-haired and sallow, that the blonde, freckled boy they call Son is not in fact their child by birth, but there must be orphans a-plenty running around these days. Sharna dabbles as a midwife as well, and inquires not very subtly with both Dana and Jeyne as to whether they might require her services at some point in the future.

“Oh no,” Dana says, struggling not to flush red, “I… no, gods no-,” while Jeyne simply mutters, “The man who gets a babe on me’s like to be a dead one when I get my hands on him.”

Sharna cackles with shrill laughter, then sends a dirty look that is evenly split between Tom and Anguy, turning to them. “Fern and her babe are doing well, if’n you might care. One of you louts got it on her, least you could do is pay a visit, or send some coin her way-,”

“I never,” Anguy flushes scarlet and his voice cracks, glancing at Jeyne, “she’s lying if she says it was me-,”

“I’ve got seven sons, no more, no less,” Tom retorts. “If the babe cries sweet as a lark, might be it’s eight. If not, then Anguy’s sired his first bastard. Congratulations, boy. Someone buy the lad a drink.”

There’s the clatter of a wooden door, and another boy comes out the kitchen, wiping his hands off with a dirty rag, the smell of baking bread wafting in after him. Dana’s stomach growls painfully, but she smiles at the boy all the same. He’s plump, with big brown eyes and hair like straw, maybe twelve or thirteen, if that. “How goes it, Hot Pie?” Anguy asks with a small, wry smirk after he’s done bickering with Tom over whose bastard it is.

“Good, but I’m Boy now. Other Boy,” the boy chirps happily enough, sharing a look with the Son, and then asks, eyes widening, as he takes in the sight of Dana, “is she another high lady?”

Tom stops plucking at his harp as he dries off by the fire. Jeyne stiffens. Daryn pauses, a hand on the chair he’d been about to wearily settle down in. “Another high lady?” he asks in a low, suspicious voice. “What other ladies have been through here?”

“None,” Sharna says quickly, “the boy’s talking nonsense- get back to your baking,” she snaps at Hot Pie, or whatever his name is, who obediently scuttles back towards the door, looking guilty as anything. 

Olyvar is staring intently at Gerrol, who is avoiding eye contact. “Did they bring a woman through here, a highborn girl? One of Queen Donella’s ladies-,”

“No,” Anguy says immediately, “no, this one-,” he jerks his head at Dana, “she’s the only woman we’ve found-,”

“You’re lying,” Dana says, and suddenly the heat of anger rises up in her so quick she almost startles herself. “You’re lying to us. Who was it? Did you take someone for ransom? One of the Brackens? A Frey?” Marianne, she thinks, but that can’t be right. They can’t have- but if they did, if there was any chance- “Damn you, who was it?” she snaps, rounding on Jeyne. “Is she alive? Where did you take her?”

Daryn has a hand on the hilt of his axe. Tom has stood up from his place by the fire. Sharna takes a step backwards. “We don’t want any fighting in here, Tom-,”

“We had Arya Stark,” the singer says with uncharacteristic bluntness, and it as if all the air in the room had vanished. 

Dana’s heart vaults up into her throat and stays there. She feels faint for an instant. “You- you had her? Is she dead?”

“If you laid a hand on Ned Stark’s daughter,” Daryn begins, but Anguy snaps, “We didn’t touch that girl. We had her, and we meant to take her to Riverrun, you see. Return her to the Blackfish. This was what, two moons back, maybe more? Only then there was the Hound-,”

“The Hound has Arya Stark?” Olyvar blurts out in shock, paling. “Gods be good-,”

“You let him-,”

“We put him to trial, he won it, we let him go,” Tom holds his hands up in peace. “That was supposed to be the end of it, only the Stark girl ran off and- well, maybe he took her, maybe he didn’t. We searched, we did, on my honor we did. But we couldn’t find him nor her, and what were we to do? She was no proper little lady, that one. We near had to tie her down every night to keep her from stealing a horse, and even then-,”

“You weren’t taking her to Riverrun as a kindness, Tom,” Jeyne says suddenly, and sharply, and all eyes flit to her, Dana’s included. “They had her for the ransom,” she says, shaking off Anguy’s hand. “They meant to give her to the Blackfish for the proper price. You caught her near here, didn’t you? Then dragged her all the way down to meet with Beric. Riverrun’s a week’s ride away, if that. You didn’t want her safe, you wanted your fucking coin,” she snarls. “Now she’s like or not dead in some ditch.”

“Mind yourself, girl,” says Tom slowly, “you travel with us as a kindness. You ought to be back at the Crossroads-,”

“Fuck off,” says Jeyne, “you’re not my bloody father, Sevens. How many times has this bow saved you? I don’t give two shits about the Starks or the Tullys, I’ll tell it true. But my sister’s her age. Nearly eleven. And you lost her.” She storms out; Anguy follows, calling after her almost plaintively. 

The room settles into silence. Daryn curses and slumps down in his seat. Tom looks almost abashed. Sharna and Gerrrol make themselves scarce. Dana leans against a stone wall, and momentarily rests her head in her hands. “So that’s it, then? You had Arya Stark, and now she’s gone?”

“We don’t know that,” Tom says quickly. “I’ve not been back there since. Might be the Hound didn’t take her at all, or she just got herself lost. She could still be around somewhere, hiding out- hells, maybe she went to Karstark and his men-,”

“You should be ashamed,” says Robert Paege grimly. “A child. A highborn one, no less-,”

“Aye, a highborn one,” Tom snaps, “the only ones that matter, are they? You’ve no idea how many dead ones, I’ve seen, with no fine name nor sigil to protect them. Piled up like bricks on the side of the road, or floating down creeks. Some of them still strapped to their mothers’ chests. No one goes carrying on after them, do they? No one can think of their names, nor pledge faith to their fathers or uncles, or swear vengeance for them. They’re dead all the same.”

Dana doesn’t know what to say. She wants to hit him, but she also wants to take a nap. Her head is pounding and it’s been weeks since she slept in a bed. They were so close, is all she can think. What if they could have brought Arya back before anyone left for the Twins? What then? Robb and Nell, they would have… Lady Catelyn, she would have… Her daughter… But if they had brought Arya to them then, like or not, she would have gone up to the wedding, and then where would she be? A prisoner once again? 

If she managed to live this long, seemingly on her own before the Brotherhood were ever involved, mayhaps there’s still some hope. Nell always thought she’d died when the Lannisters had massacred Ned Stark’s household at the Red Keep, that they hadn’t bothered to spare her life, knowing they’d only need one daughter for a hostage. But Dana was never so certain. A slip of a girl like Arya, common looking and boyish, why, she was easy forgotten, overlooked, neglected. And that might have saved her life.

Ben Flint has sent out scouts; they come back two days later with reports of the siege. Ryman Frey has two thousand men in the Whispering Wood, cutting off any escape from Riverrun to the north. Daven Lannister has staked out the area between the Tumblestone and the Red Fork, directly to southwest of the castle. There are knights with a boom across the Red Fork by the River Road, a Ruttiger and a Yew among them. And Addam Marbrand and his men are filling in an empty spaces betwixt them all, blocking off anything from Stone Mill to High Heart. The entire area surrounding Riverrun and the intersection of the Red Fork and the Tumblestone is, for lack of a better term, the lion’s mouth.

“Karstark and his thousand didn’t think to try to break it before they could close ranks around Riverrun?” Ben demands in between hasty sips of stew. Dana passes the bread basket to Olyvar silently; he gives her a small smile, and looks to Tom, who rolls his eyes.

“Aye, his thousand up against the likes of them. I can’t say I’ve met the man yet, myself, but he’s not that stupid. He would have done nothing but waste his own men like that. Anguy and Jeyne know. They came up to our group with the wolf, after Karstark agreed to throw in his lot with us. Told us to look for survivors.”

“Then why didn’t he go up to Seagard?”

“Mayhaps because he thought Bolton was plotting something, and didn’t intend to be there to be caught up in it. Besides, even if they’d headed for Seagard, by the time they got there they would have been caught between the Freys and the sea, and hounded by Brax at their backs. No. They stayed on this shore for a whiles, pushed Brax back when he tried to come at them- now the fool thinks he can hold Harrenhal for long- and then they did what you ought to have been doing from the very start- go where you’re least expected. Thoros came to treat with them, and he took the bulk of his men south with us.”

“To Hollow Hill,” Jeyne says quietly, although no one’s shared where that might be, exactly.

“Why would the Brotherhood want to treat with northmen all of a sudden?” Olyvar asks, frowning. “You’ve never thrown in with any army before-,”

“Grey Wind found us,” Anguy says simply, and Dana casts a quick glance at the direwolf, who is lying by the fire. He always used to sleep by the fire at Riverrun and Winterfell. He is not sleeping now. When he sleeps, he goes somewhere to hide, she thinks, so none of them can find him so vulnerable. He doesn’t like to come inside much now, either. 

There’s something they’re not telling them, that’s for sure, and little enough to be done about it until they get to where they’re going, which must be, at this point, Hollow Hill. Wherever that is. South of here, that’s for sure. Anguy claims they’ll have to be blindfolded when they’re close enough, so if any of them are captured they can’t be tortured into confessing the exact location. Dana doubts that’s going to go over very well with Daryn and Ben, but it’s also not as though she intends on being captured anytime soon. She’s hardly worth much as a hostage, nor is she some splendid warrior that their enemy would be delighted to remove from the battlefield. 

They’re crossing the Red Fork on the ramshackle little bridge near the inn, fit for moving cattle and not much more, when four Lannister scouts come across them. It’s very early morning, and the mist has come rolling down from the hills, but eagle-eyed Anguy spots the red helms first, and without raising the alarm nocks an arrow and kills one from what must be some fifty yards away. Somewhere, a horse squeals, and two of the scouts come charging down, stupidly, Dana thinks, because they mustn’t realize that the dozen or so crossing the bridge is nowhere near the whole of their group, and the third turns his filly back towards the river road. “That one reports back, we’ll be in for it,” Tom comments with more exasperation than concern.

“He’s mine,” Jeyne says stubbornly, puts her heels to her tired mare, and goes racing down the opposite bank, tracking the fleeing scout across the thin stretch of river. Dana watches her go as the rest of the northmen and outlaws swarm the remaining two scouts, who immediately realize their mistake and try to evade the ambush. Jeyne is a grey streak on a grey horse, churning up dirt and silt as she flies along the bank. The scout’s tired mount is flagging; he realizes she’s pursuing and turns away from the river, just as one arrow comes sailing across, then another. The man slumps over, swaying in the saddle, and his horse gallops on, heedless, as he topples off into the dirt. Jeyne pulls up her own horse, and turns back for them.

The dead are in the river as they finally resume crossing. Dana’s not hurt or even all that scared; she’s seen so many corpses by now, what are a few more? At least these men died quickly. It is more than her father got. Once they’re on the far side, Jeyne goes off to check on the man she unhorsed, Grey Wind trailing her. She returns presently, her bloodied arrows in hand. “These are weirwood,” Dana overhears her telling Anguy waspishly, “no sense wasting ‘em.” Grey Wind’s muzzle is red with blood; he must have been feeding on the fresh corpse.

Dana’s stomach churns, and she looks away. This is not the same wolf that she played with when he was little more than a pup, yipping and barking at their feet in Lady Catelyn’s solar at Winterfell. 

They cut a perilous path between the very edge of the siege camps and the Bracken lands around Stone Hedge, traveling exclusively at night for several days and staying deep in the woods, then cut down around High Heart, that towering hill where they say a ghost yet roams. Dana never sees the ghost, but they make their camp in the foothills, in what was once the shadow of the great weirwoods, taller, some say, than castles themselves, trees that reached the peaks of any mountains in height. She doesn’t really believe that, of course, but it’s still a nicer thing to think about before she falls asleep than dead men and a wolf with haunted golden eyes. 

Mostly when Dana dreams and it is not a nightmare, she dreams of Marianne, who knew all sorts of wonderous stories about the Riverlands, who was so suitably enchanted with her own homeland that Dana should think it a terrible cruelty to ever take her from it. Marianne could coax magic into anything, be they toadstools or shimmering puddles in the sun or the godswood at Riverrun. 

Dana believes in the old gods, but she never worshipped them half as much as she did when telling Marianne of them, because Marianne was so fascinated and intrigued that they seemed to come alive between the two of them, this intangible presence, this feeling. In turn Marianne had told her all about the sacred Seven and their miracles, about Maiden’s Day and the girls dancing about in white with flowers in their hair and around the necks, and all those candle stubs glowing in the darkness of the sept. So many holy days and feasts, these southerners have. One for maidens, one for mothers, for fathers…

Her dream of sitting in the godswood with Marianne, dipping their feet into the cool stream water, turns into something else entirely, and she is one again face down on the ground, and Father is yelling, and men are laughing, and someone kicks her but she cannot move because she is dead, and dead girls do not flinch or cry or move at all, and there are leaves in her hair, tickling her scalp and ears, but if she closed her eyes she could pretend they were flowers after all, and she was all in gauzy white, not a corpse in a mud and blood-stained dress lying on the forest floor. 

They spend three nights at Acorn Hall, ruled by Lady Smallwood, a kindly and obviously desperately lonely woman who tells Dana in no uncertain terms that she is always welcome to shelter under their roof. Dana assumes because she is not so important that anyone would be looking for her to begin with. She could easily pass out the winter in service to a woman like Ravella Smallwood. But House Smallwood, small castle and scarce lands and little to now garrison that it has, bent the knee straight away, of course, and even now Theomar Smallwood is present at the Siege of Riverrun, where all the ‘newly loyal’ river lords have been summoned to do their part for the king. 

It’s Lady Smallwood who informs them that there is a new king; Joffrey Baratheon is dead, and it’s the second son who sits the Throne now. They’re holding the Imp on suspicion of his murder; supposedly there’s to be a trial for the sake of formality only. Dana asks after the Imp’s wife, Sansa, but Lady Smallwood hasn’t heard anything at all about her. The pit in her stomach only widens. They just barely missed Arya and now Sansa is either rotting in some black cell or worse. Dana sleeps in a warm bed once more, even better than the lumpy one at the Kneeling Man, but gets little sleep, even with Tom’s voice drafting up from the great hall two floors below her. 

Five days later they finally reach Hollow Hill; Dana can’t be sure how much time has truly passed, but she thinks they must be around the second month of the new year by now, surely. That long journey down south to Riverrun, then back up to Seagard, then back to Riverrun, then up again to the Twins, and now, after all the killing and fighting and tears, this is the furthest south she has ever been. After some heated negotiations, they agree to wear blindfolds for the last few hours of riding, even as the sun sinks low in the sky overhead. There are mountains nearby, grey footholds, barren in preparation for winter. They are very close to the border with the West, yet somehow safer here than they were a fortnight ride’s back when they were slipping past the sieges.

When Anguy gruffly informs her that she can take the blindfold off, they are in the mouth of a tunnel, wide and tall enough to accommodate not only men standing at full height, but men on horseback as well. They push in deeper, and it would be pitch black, Dana thinks, if not for the narrow cracks and crevices letting in the occasional narrow shaft of fading sunlight, and all the torches, burning brightly on the walls. Men must have dug this out she thinks, years and years ago, surely this can’t be natural- and they twist and turn darker, and deeper, and then the tunnel ends, and they are in what can only be described as a massive cave, thronged by white roots almost glowing in the dark. “Weirwoods,” says Daryn, his voice cracking oddly, as if in relief. “What are we under? A grove?”

“A hill,” Tom says with a sly sort of smile.

Dana is still gaping around. She’s explored caves before. Big ones, too, on the Finger, cavernous ones that could have fit perhaps fifty men. This is at least four times the size of any of those. There are not just fifty men here, sitting around the large fire pit, coming out of tunnels and down carved steps, pushing aside tents and hanging curtains and cloaks, dividing off various sections into sleeping and cooking areas. There at least a hundred people in this cave alone. No, two hundred. No, three hundred, it’s- she feels as though she were in a waking dream.

“How large is the Brotherhood?” she asks Jeyne in a low, astonished tone. It is not just men. Women, children, cats and dogs, even a few goats and pigs. “This… this isn’t an outlaw band, it’s a bloody city underground.”

“A thousand?” Jeyne shrugs. “Not all here, of course. Spread out. Here, at Hollow Hill? Maybe five hundred, six hundred underground? The tunnels go on for miles, and there’s other caves too, all connected. The first men dug this place out to hide from the Andals. Thoros says the Lord of Light led him here,” she pulls a face to show what she thinks of that, then clamps up again, turning away.

Someone shouts, it echoes off the dirt and stone walls around them, and Dana whirls. Daryn and Ben are flanking a man she’s seen before, only- no, it is him, he’s got the white sun of winter on his chest. The last time she really saw Harry Karstark was at Winterfell. He was past sixteen, a man grown then, certainly, but he still looked much a boy around his snickering younger brothers. Now he looks like his father. The Rickard that Robb executed. Dana was there, watching with the rest. 

She remembers what he looked like before his head had been lopped off. Harry is tall, not as tall as gangly Daryn but taller than both her and Ben, for sure, and his hair is so dark a brown it is a shade shy of black, and thick and wavy, but greying prematurely at his sideburns and in his beard. He wears the beard well enough, but it cannot disguise the gaunt lines of his face, and when he moves Dana picks up the slight hesitance he puts on one leg. Whatever injury he took at Duskendale, it must have been grievous, although he can walk well enough, and still carries sword and shield.

Daryn and Ben are both peppering him with questions, loud and insistent, but Harry somehow shakes them both off, and looks directly at her. “You were one of Nell Bolton’s ladies,” he says, and his voice is cold and sharp, and he sounds like a younger version of his father as much as he looks it. “You stayed at Winterfell, didn’t you, before the war? I remember you at the wedding. A Flint.”

Ben takes an almost protective step in front of her. “What of it?” he snaps. “She’s just a woman.”

“Calm down,” Olyvar is saying, although he goes ignored once again, of course. Harrion looks around them almost furtively, and says, “I’ll explain things properly, but not here. There’s something you need to see.” He stares past them, inscrutably, to where Tom and Anguy are deep in conversation with a man in ragged pink robes who must be this priest of Rhllor everyone keeps going on about, Thoros of Myr. Robert is speaking with Jeyne and Anguy, gesturing wildly. “Quickly now. They didn’t tell you, I’m suspecting.”

“Tell us what?” Daryn demands. “How they got Grey Wind? Or about the Stark girl?” But Harry is already moving, and the four of them hasten to keep up; old leg injury or not, he’s still got a very long stride and he moves quickly and quietly. They leave the main cave chamber and cut through a short tunnel, then through two smaller ‘rooms’ of sorts, up a very narrow set of stone steps, and then step into another underground chamber. There is no cookfire in this one. It is nearly all weirwood roots, brustling and tangling at Dana’s old cloak and catching at her hair. Something is dripping onto the floor? Water? Sap?

She looks around to see if Grey Wind has followed them, but there is no sign of him.

Finally some light comes into view; a single iron brazier stoked up to flames. They all stop. “What the hells is going on?” Ben snaps, then stops as they take in the sight of three figures sitting around it. The smallest rises.

“This is my squire,” Harry says in an odd voice. “Edd Snow, a bastard boy who came south to fight. He escaped the Red Morning and was brought to my men on the Red Fork shortly after the Brotherhood approached us.”

The boy is small and skinny, with a long, angular face and straight brown hair that falls into his sullen eyes. He stares back at them, fidgeting and shifting his weight from foot to foot, glaring at Karstark. “And this is the man who brought him to us,” Harry says, “Sandor Clegane, who left the Lannister cause after the Blackwater to fight for the King in the North.” Now there is a sardonic edge to his voice. Dana takes a step back, colliding with Olyvar, but the man who is- was?- the Hound does not rise- he’s clearly injured and in pain, slightly feverish and fighting off blood rot, by the smell of his wounds. 

“Seven fucking hells,” says Olyvar in blatant shock. “You captured the Hound?”

“He joined of his own accord,” Harry is saying flatly, but Dana takes a small step forward once more, looking from the young squire to the third figure, whose features are indistinguishable in this dim light. They are silent, making no moves to rise and greet them, but they don’t seem injured or asleep, either. “Edd Snow?” she asks the boy, who looks up at her. “Whose bastard are you?”

“Lord Rickard’s,” says the boy sullenly. “S’why I was brought to Lord Harry. I’m his little half-brother.” He does not sound terribly convinced of this, chewing on his thin lower lip. Something about that- and the Hound-

Daryn knows before her, even. “This isn’t your bastard brother,” he says calmly. “This isn’t a brother at all, is it? The Brotherhood had her, then lost her, and the Hound tried to bring her to the Twins, didn’t he? Then… then they had to flee-,”

“And they came back south,” the words escape Dana in a jumble, and she drops down into a crouch. “Arya?” It comes out hoarse and broken. “Are you…. Arya?” She tries to look past the worn and ragged boy’s clothing, the dirt, the short, lank hair. The eyes are grey, gleaming in the firelight. 

The boy- no, the girl- looks at Harry, who gives a barely perceptible nod, then says, “Yes?” But it sounds like a question, and there is so much pain behind it that Dana wants to cry out for her. She reaches out to Arya, but the girl jerks back like a frightened horse. “Stop it!”

“It’s alright,” Dana says soothingly, as Ben lets out a long stream of shocked curses. “We’re… we’re friends, Arya, don’t you remember me? I was at Winterfell before your father took you south. Do you remember? You must, it wasn’t that long ago-,”

“Get away from me,” Arya shies away, stumbling over some loose stones, retreating to the side of the final, third figure.

“Who is that?” Olyvar asks, as Dana slowly stands back up, heart sinking.

Finally, the man- it must be a man, it must- rises, pulling off their shroud of a cloak. He takes a halting step forward, as if his legs were weak as a newborn foal’s. He comes into the firelight at last, Arya clutching his arm, eying them warily.

“No,” says Daryn after a beat of horrified silence. “No, this- I saw him die. What is… this is madness.”

“Liar,” says Arya furiously. “You liar, he’s not dead, he didn’t die, you LEFT him! All of you LEFT HIM! Tell them,” she begs the man, “tell them how you went into the water, and then Grey Wind pulled you out, and the Brotherhood came and saved you-,”

He does not look saved to Dana. Daryn is shaking his head furiously, then falls to one knee. Olyvar is making some sort of noise she can’t place. “Your Grace-,”

“Fuck,” says Ben, a sort of wrenched half-sob, “fuck- what happened, what is this-,”

“Thoros claims it as the work of his red god,” Harry says derisively. “The Hound names it madness. Lord Beric prayed for a miracle, they say, before he brought him back. I say it’s justice. His Grace agrees with me. The Freys and Boltons stole his breath away, but the old gods brought it back on a northern wind. Tom and his men do not yet know that I hold Arya Stark, but they know about her brother. Thoros led me to him, where they’d raised him on the banks of the river. I knew then what must be done.”

Dana is only half listening, still staring at the man in the firelight. She recognizes individual parts of him; the auburn curls, red as embers in this lighting, the lines of his face, the width of his shoulders. She cannot comprehend the whole. They are not the same. It is not the same. Arya is staring up at him, looking near as feverish as the silent Hound, but this is not- this is not the man she last saw go riding off to war with the Ironborn. This is not-

“Where is she?” The voice crawls out between cracked lips. The hole in his chest is black with old, rotten blood. The eyes are not the same. Robb Stark had eyes blue as a summer’s day. Even Dana could see that. He was a handsome young lord turned king. He had a kind smile and bright blue eyes and a warm, rich voice once it dropped all the way. That blue is gone, replaced by grey. Something or someone washed it away with the river. The voice is not rich nor warm nor kind. “Where is she?” he says again, and takes another step forward. Daryn does not rise from his kneeling position. Ben has staggered down to his knees as well. Olyvar tugs her down with him. 

Dana stares at the cold dirt floor beneath her knees, eyes stinging with tears. She glances up quickly, and sees his hands. His bare fingers are curved unnaturally, as if they wanted to be claws. The nails are cracked and black with dirt and blood. The skin of all his knuckles is split, as if he’d thrown his fists repeatedly into something- or someone. “Your Grace,” Daryn says, and it sounds strangled. “I… we must beg your forgiveness. Had we known…”

“They do not have her,” says Harry to the corpse that used to be their king. “The Freys still hold the queen.”

“Robb will save her,” Arya is saying passionately, “he will, once he’s strong enough-,”

Dana chances one more look up at him. His skin is sallow and grey, clinging to his cheekbones and scabbing at his neck as if he’d been clawing at himself. He looks down at her, and she sees nothing. No recognition, no warmth, no relief. Just rage and pain. Enough to fill this hollow hill from bottom to brim. He turns away suddenly, and smashes over the brazier; the logs go tumbling to the floor, the fire immediately extinguished, and in the dark the lump of fear in Dana’s throat throbs fiercely when he screams. But it is more like a howl, truly, because men aren’t meant to make that kind of sound, and he is not a man. Dana does not know what he is, but he is not the Robb she knew, and he is not a man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was a lot. On the plus side, we finally reached the 'dark fantasy' portion of a fic tagged with, you know 'dark fantasy'. Next chapter we'll be back to Beth at last, and then doing some (short) jumps forward in time.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I hate traveling chapters, which is ironic since there's been a lot of traveling back and forth in this fic, so I have no one to blame but myself. Basically this chapter covers the span of the first month of the new year, parallel to Nell's last chapter, and takes Dana and co. all the way from Sevenstreams to Fairmarket to the Kneeling Man to High Heart to Acorn Hall to Hollow Hill. I kind of glanced over a lot of it in order to get us to this final scene without having to split the chapter in half.
> 
> 2\. Hot Pie accidentally spills the beans that the Brotherhood had (well, have again, now) Arya. This is obviously met with a lot of shock/anger from the northerners. Something that is really confusing is that the Brotherhood originally catches Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie near the Kneeling Man. Then, instead of taking her straight to Riverrun at that time, which is not that far from there, they instead go weeks out of their way to take her all the way down to Hollow Hill, which is much further south. I assume GRRM did this to explain Arya meeting Beric and seeing his resurrecting, and to also kickstart the whole Arya-and-Sandor roadtrip plot. Otherwise, the Brotherhood could have easily just taken her to Riverrun then and there, gotten the ransom money from the Tullys, and Arya would have been reunited with Robb and Catelyn around the time of Robb's return from the West. So unless I'm missing something here, that is probably the most contrived canonical part of the Riverlands plot to explain why Arya isn't reunited with her family pre-Red Wedding. 
> 
> 3\. Back to this fic, so the truth comes out, Dana and co. are infuriated at the Brotherhood's shitty babysitting, and Jeyne reams Tom and Anguy out, not necessarily because she's that loyal to House Stark or House Tully, but because she thinks they put a child in unnecessary danger by dragging Arya off to Hollow Hill in the first place, instead of just taking her to her surviving family right away. What's also probably confusing is that, yes, Harry Karstark and his men seem to have teamed up with the Brotherhood, but Tom, Anguy, and Jeyne Heddle do not know that Harry has Arya and the Hound, as they showed up after the Tom/Anguy/Jeyne group had ventured further north again to look for survivors. Hence they have no idea upon returning to Hollow Hill that Arya is back with the Brotherhood once more, or that the Hound is present, albeit badly wounded.
> 
> 4\. Riverrun is pretty much completely surrounded by a combination of men under the command of Ryman Frey, Daven Lannister. Addam Marbrand, and Ruttiger and Yew. Also many of the river lords who have already surrendered are there or headed there, very reluctantly and *not at all planning on some light sabotage*. Flement Brax tenuously holds Harrenhal with some support from the Tarlys, but no one's really bothering with them at the moment.
> 
> 5\. While obviously some members of the Brotherhood and the northmen are going to know exactly who Arya is, the large majority have no idea, and just assume she is some squire of Harrion's. He thought 'Arry' was a little too on the nose. Sandor is present, we'll hear more about what happened with him and Arya in the future, but he's kind of out of it at the moment, hence the lack of cursing and general raving about how shitty the world is and how little respect he has for the Brotherhood. 
> 
> 6\. When I said 'beast for a bridegroom' in the summary of this fic, I really, really meant it. Grey Wind's not really acting like his usual wolf self, and Robb's... well, we'll see.


	47. Beth VI

300 AC - THE DREADFORT

Beth knows she will be climbing today when she spills Sour Alyn’s wine. It’s not really her fault; she wasn’t even meant to be on kitchen duty this afternoon, she was meant to be sweeping round the hall, but Sour Alyn caught sight of her first and shouted across the hall for her to bring him some wine and food, and she knows better than to say no or make excuses as to why she can’t. So Beth had dropped her broom and scurried off to the kitchens, then legged it back with a tray of food balanced unevenly in one hand, a flagon in the other. She’s so good at carrying things like this by now that she rarely ever stumbles or drops them, but she hates serving Sour Alyn, whose teeth are all gone to rot in his gummy, dark mouth and whose breath constantly reeks whether he’s been drinking or not. He smells like an old beggar and he’s not even yet five-and-twenty. 

Beth has learned to tolerate much more than she ever thought she could, but she doesn’t understand why or how a man like Sour Alyn, who’s been provided for near all his life by the Dreadfort, who sleeps in a cot in the barracks and not a ragged mat on the floor, who could certainly order himself a bath when he was off-duty, somehow can’t work out how to keep clean. He’s stupid, aye, but he’s not that stupid. Does he simply not care? Does he take pride in the looks of revulsion he catches whenever someone brushes past him or sits beside him? What is it? Is he just too lazy to bother? Alyn is big and broad; is it too much work to wedge those hulking limbs into a tub? She supposes no one ever taught him to wash, and the rest of the Bastard’s Boys musn’t smell much better, so none of them ever really took notice.

But Lord Ramsay usually smells nice. He takes pride in it. He bathes near every day, and there’s hell to pay if he finds that his clothes haven’t been washed to his satisfaction, or his boots have been left out with mud or grime on them. Damon Dance-For-Me smells like grease and leather from carrying that whip around everywhere. Ben Bones smells like wet dog, which isn’t very surprising. Skinner smells like meat and blood and sometimes like copper, from the metal dice he plays with. 

Beth doesn’t know about the rest. And mayhaps she’s not one to talk. She’s not sure what she smells like, but she suspects it’s not pleasant. At least she’s still got nearly all her teeth, though, and they’re not rotting. She sets the tray of food down before Alyn, breathless, snatches up his cup, and heaves up the flagon to pour the wine. Her arms used to tremble terribly when she did this, but she was weak then. Just a baby. She had a little girl’s arms, soft and useless. 

She is not so sure of the days, although she’s knows they are two moons into the new year, because Ramsay and his men celebrated the turning of the year by hunting down some girl in the wood, returning to the castle to drink themselves into a proper stupor. They say Stannis Baratheon took all his men and sailed them all the way up to the Wall. Beth’s got no idea what for. Some people said he was going to turn the Night’s Watch into another army and come riding down from the Wall to kill the Lannisters. Some people said he might come free them. Beth doesn’t think a man like Stannis Baratheon even knows they exist, and even if he did, what of it? What does the Dreadfort matter to a king? They’re meant to fight big evils. Lions and dragons and bastard pretenders to the Throne. Maybe it’s all lies, anyways. There’s surely enough of them going around the North. 

Every so often some rumor spreads that Bran or Rickon Stark are really alive and have rallied an army of wildlings or mountain men or wild beasts and are coming to take back Winterfell and kill all the Boltons. Or that Robb Stark really lived through what the Freys did and is leading a pack of wolves through the Neck. Or that Nell Bolton is a witch and she’s laid a terrible curse on her vile bastard brother and traitorous father, and someday soon the Dreadfort will burst into flames, and demons and dead things will come bursting out of the ground to drag them away to suffer forevermore. That’s certainly not true, of course. Beth believes in many things she never used to, all sorts of horrible stories that turned out to be really true, but she doesn’t believe in hells, or demons, or the dead come to life. She’s got more sense than that. Sensible mousy little Beth, who never spills wine anymore, who’s never late and never insolent.

Sour Alyn snorts around his mouthful of pie at something Luton is saying, a little ways down the table, and it’s so loud and obnoxious that Beth flinches slightly, overfills the cup, then draws back too quickly, stopping the flow of the wine. He notices, of course, and turns a glower on her. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop before it spills, you stupid cunt?” Alyn sneers, and grabs her by the scruff of the neck, knocking her into the table. Beth stumbles, loses her footing, and scrambles to keep upright as his thick fingers dig into her neck. 

He’s breathing on her now and it smells something awful. She fights to keep a straight, sober face; if you get too scared and start to cry or plead they get even angrier, except for Damon and Ramsay, who enjoy that sort of thing, and if you look too upset they think you’re being insolent and beat you twice as bad, and if you keep too straight a face they think you’re not listening properly-

Another wave of his breath hits her face, and Beth, who hasn’t eaten anything all day beyond a little porridge quickly slurped down this morning, feels a wave of uncontrollable nausea, and retches. Nothing comes up except spit, but she knows she’s in for it now. Alyn lets go in disgust, cursing, afraid she’s about to vomit down his breeches and swings a hammer of a hand to strike her away from him. Beth ducks, then wipes frantically at her mouth, muttering an apology, but Luton is laughing hysterically, at her or Alyn she can’t tell, but Sour Alyn thinks it’s at him, so then he’s up from his seat, his hunger forgotten in the face of his rage. He takes a sip of wine as if in preparation. Beth has managed to escape a beating for three weeks ongoing now, and is too tired for another one. She backs away, hands up pleadingly.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, m’lord, I didn’t mean to-,” Sometimes they like if she calls them ‘m’lord’ or even ‘master’ and that is all it takes. But Alyn must have some spare time on his hands, because he doesn’t sit back down, appeased. He keeps coming, further infuriated by her fleeing from him. 

“Luton, get her!” he snaps at Luton, who just shakes his head, unable to speak, he’s laughing so hard, and Beth decides it’s now or never, spins on her heel, and takes off at a dead run. 

Alyn thunders after her, cursing, but Beth’s run from men like him before, and strong as he is, easily strong enough to take her by her short mop of auburn curls and toss her down a flight of stairs or snap her ribs like firewood, he’s not nearly fast enough, not when she’s smaller and slighter by far, and can slip through places and scurry up onto things he could never hope to get to. Beth reaches the end of the hall, barrels through the door, hangs a sharp right, and clatters down a set of stone steps, knocking into Turnip, who is dragging a sack in the direction of the kitchens. “Alyn,” she hisses at him as she goes by, and Turnip gapes after her, then drops the sack and jumps out of the way as Alyn charges past him, still screaming curses after her. With any luck, he’ll be winded soon and give up on the chase. Then again-

“When I catch you,” Alyn calls in between pants as she breaks out into the cold sunshine, “you’ll be wishin’ it were Skinner, I’ll take the skin off you like a fucking onion-,”

Beth doesn’t care. Alyn is never going to admit he couldn’t catch up to a scrawny little girl who doesn’t even turn eleven for another turn of the moon, and he’s certainly not going to go crying to Skinner about it, or Lord Ramsay. That’s the trick of it. If you’re running from one of the Boys, you’ve a fair shot at keeping away from them, unless you happen to run into Ramsay in the process. And she knows Ramsay’s down in the village, like as not flaying someone who came up short last time they collected taxes. 

Not that there’s any rhyme nor reason to it- the steward can go on about how they need to collect their dues, and the men will put it off, then forget about it, then finally assign someone to it, then come late to collect them, or very early, and it’s the same every time. Sometimes people just offer up pigs or goats or sheep instead. Or their daughters, or sisters, or wives. 

She slides through a pile of sawdust, vaults over a low stone wall, feels Alyn’s fingers graze the back of her neck, and the X burns and burns, but she doesn’t care, she’s fast, she’s faster than all of them, and the maester’s turret is just ahead. Beth dashes round it, slips behind the shed there, scrambles up the loose pile of stones and bricks, hauls herself atop, and leaps up for the overhanging bridge going from the turret to the rookery. Her callused fingers hook into crevices in the stones, she dangles there perilously as Alyn rounds into view, breathless and red-faced, and then she scrabbles up, feet rabbit-kicking at the stones of the bridge as she clambers up and onto it, out of his reach. 

Beth doesn’t stop there, in case he has a mind to go back inside and try to come out through the rookery to corner her; she runs back towards the turret, finds the purchase in the side, and one hand over another goes up, up, up, far away from Alyn’s shouts, and then the top of the library comes into view, and Beth hangs on the side of the turret for a few moments, breathing hard and loose, every fiber of her aching.

Then she carefully picks her way to where the always-open window of the library loft is, shutters clattering in the wind, stretches out a foot, gets a hold there, and sucking in a nervous breath, pushes off the outer wall of the turret, draped in ivy and dead vines, and jumps through the window, just wide enough to support the movement of her skinny frame tumbling through. She lands in a heap on a pile of old rugs and quilts, sending up a small cloud of dust and feathers. 

Beatings make runners and climbers of them all, at least anyone small and fast enough to make it. In a few years, Palla keeps warning her, once her bleeding has begun and her hips have widened out and she weighs more and her limbs are longer and unwieldy, this won’t work half as well. A girl of fourteen or fifteen can’t bounce right back up again the way a girl of ten or eleven can. 

And even now, all it takes is one slip, one fall, and she won’t have to worry about no whippings or beatings or flaying, because she’ll be dead or worse, wishing she were dead, every bone broken, bleeding out in a crumpled heap on the cold ground. She still remembers Bran, remembers the day he felled, the terrible scream that Lady Catelyn gave, the way the wolves howled and moaned at the moon all night, how Father held her close and made her promise to never, ever, go climbing like that, even in a tree. 

She would have laughed then, if she hadn’t been so upset- climb? Her? Little Beth, good, well-behaved, ladylike Beth? What cause would she ever have to go climbing? At eight she’d fancied herself far too old and mature for such things. She was going to be a lord’s wife. She was going to be proper and loved and respected. Why in the world would she be going climbing?

She lies there a little longer, thinking. The library at the Dreadfort is much smaller than the one at Winterfell; just a large room on the top floor of a building, more of an expanded attic than a proper hall or tower all its own. There’s no septon at the Dreadfort, of course, so there’s no one to look after it besides Maester Uthor, and he’s said himself that he hasn’t the time, what with all the injuries to regularly tend to and his specimens to keep sorted and organized. Beth has helped with the leeches before, the thick briny bottles of them, all yellowed and oranged in the torchlight, the little shapes moving and shifting restlessly, hungry for blood. They would have disgusted her once but now she just doesn’t mind much. At least it doesn’t really hurt to be leeched. 

Eventually she rolls over and scrambles back up onto her feet, slipping slightly in the worn down soles of her shoes on the dusty floor. There’s a few missing floorboards up here, looking directly down to the library stacks. Beth peers down anxiously, always slightly afraid this will be the day someone decides to wander in, but really, what use do the Bastard’s Boys have for books and scrolls? Most of them can’t read. She makes her way over to the rickety ladder leading up to the abandoned loft, scuttles down it quick as a beetle, and then glances around the darkened room. She ought to at least wait a little while before leaving, she thinks. Alyn might still be lurking around nearby, although she doubts it. He’s probably gone back to his meal by now, but she’ll be in for it anyways if anyone realizes she left the sweeping half done. It was Cook who told her to do it, though, and Cook’s bad leg means he’s not much good for giving a beating beyond a few strikes with a belt to the open palm. Beth flexes her scarred hands unconsciously, testing the built up scarred lines there. One of her nails is filled up with blood, gone dark purple.

There’s a rustling nearby, and she stills. It could just be one of the cats; even a wretched castle like the Dreadfort always has its share of cats to keep the mice and rats at bay, but it sounded bigger. Much bigger. Beth rocks half a step back, glancing towards the door on the far end of the room. Should she run for it again, or hide? Something rustles again, parchment, maybe, or a skirt, and as the back of her neck burns and the skin of her arms prickles, she edges towards the wall just as someone comes round the corner. Beth stares at the girl from the godswood, who stares back at her, several books in her arms. She has seen her before, of course, not just in dreams. She saw her that day with Palla when they were burying the moon tea, she’s seen her across crowded feasting halls and at the end of long corridors, coming up and down stairwells, walking up on the ramparts. 

“You shouldn’t be in here,” she blurts out after a moment of silence. “We’re not supposed to be here unless we’re getting books for the maester.”

“These aren’t for the maester,” the girl says. Beth recognizes her voice immediately. She’s heard it in a dream before, after all. But it sounds slightly different here all the same, echoing around the empty room. 

“You can read?” Beth scratches at the side of her neck nervously. “I know you.”

“You do?” the girl’s lips quirk up into a small, bemused smile. She’s tall and slender, and her hair is braided back intricately along her scalp before flowing down her shoulders, the way Lady Catelyn sometimes braided Sansa’s, so she would look a proper northern lady. Beth always wanted a mother to braid her hair, but she had Old Nan instead. Now Old Nan’s fingers are too stiff and gnarled for anything but weaving and scrubbing. She sleeps in the kitchens on the floor by the fire besides Turnip, to comfort him when he wakes up sobbing from nightmares. 

“Er, you’re one of the maids,” Beth corrects, because there is still enough left of when she was a Cassel to be polite to a stranger, and it is very much not polite to tell a stranger that you saw them several times in dreams. “Aren’t you? The steward said some new girls came in from across the river before- before we came here.”

“The winterfolk,” the girl says thoughtfully. “From the winter town.” Then she laughs. It is as clear and sharp as the peal of a bell. “Isn’t that where you’re from? You were Stark people.”

Beth flinches. “We- Lord Ramsay saved us, is all. From the Ironborn. We’re very grateful to him.”

“Lord Ramsay?” The girl arches a thick, dark eyebrow. “I thought he was only a lord’s bastard.”

Beth gapes at her for a moment, then looks quickly around the quiet library. “You- you can’t say that, someone might hear- he’s been legitimized.” The last word lodges in her throat and she coughs hoarsely. “King Joffrey made him trueborn. So he’s a true son now. Lord Roose’s proper heir.”

“I thought the King was dead,” the girl sounds more bored than anything else. “Aren’t they all dead?” She sniffs. “The dragon king, the stag king, the wolf king-,”

Beth thinks back to when Ramsay had announced to the hall one night that the Starks were all dead or captured, that the Boltons were the Wardens of the North now, and Dreadfort the proper seat, not the shell of a castle that was Winterfell. He’d said Robb was a savage monster who’d finally been put down by ‘our brave friends, the Freys’ and that the true and loyal northmen, such as the Karstarks and Dustins, were already pledging themselves to his honorable lord father, who meant to keep the king’s peace. The king in the south’s peace, not the king in the north’s. Last she'd heard, Lord Roose was somewhere in the Neck, trying to get past the crannogmen. Beth had looked at the Walders then. Little Walder had been grinning and snickering as if someone had just told a fine jape, but Big Walder had only stared at his plate.

“King Joffrey is dead, the Imp killed him,” Beth says quickly. “But there’s a new king now, King Tommen. The little brother. I met him once. He came to Winterfell.” There is some dull stab of pride somewhere in her when she says it, foolish as she may be. That once she was Beth Cassel and although she was not even a lord’s daughter, she was deemed fit to associate with princes and princesses. She remembers little Tommen and his sister Myrcella, who sat and did needlework with them, even if her stitches were crooked more often than not. They were nice, even if their father wasn’t really who he ought to be and their kin were all traitors and murderers. 

“The Imp?” the girl’s eyes gleam grey as stone in the sunlight. “I heard a rumor it was the Stark girl. That she cast a curse on the Lannisters after their business with the Freys, and now they’re paying the price for it. They say she’s a skinchanger like the rest of them, the Starks. They have warg blood, I heard.”

“That’s just an ugly rumor,” Beth says warily. “That’s… wargs aren’t real, anyways. That’s just something people say to scare their children.”

“Does it scare you?”

Beth flushes red. No. It doesn’t. She’s had a noose around her neck, she's felt the whip and the brand and the flensing knife, she’s seen men die and mopped up their blood, she’s listened to people scream and beg for death while she stitched them back up again, she’s run and hid and lied when she had to, and she is not a little girl anymore and she is not scared of wargs or wolves or witches, whether they’re real or not. “Of course not. I’m not a child.”

“Hm. You look like one.” The girl sets down her stack of books on a low table and takes a step closer. Beth stares back at her fiercely. “Do I look a child?”

“No,” Beth says, although she thinks ‘yes’. The girl is tall for her age but she wears her hair down like a maid and her hips are narrow and her breasts are small. She may be of age, at least sixteen or so, but she does not look like a woman, not quite. “You’re grown. How old are you?”

“It’s rude to ask a lady her age,” the girl retorts, although she doesn’t sound very angry. She tucks a lock of dark brown hair behind an ear. “I am grown, though.”

“You’re not a lady,” Beth snorts, then pauses suspiciously. “You can’t be.” It sounds more like a question than she meant to it.

“I’m a lord’s daughter, but I’m no lady,” the girl shrugs, but a shadow crosses her face, like a cloud coming over the sun. “I was taught to read and write, and I know my little sums, but you’re right. I’m here to serve. Just like you.” There is something twisty and angry to her voice for an instant, like a thorny bramble.

“You’re a bastard, then,” Beth surmises. She stills. “Not Lord Roose’s?”

The girl all but chokes with laughter at that, shaking her head. There are many lords beyond the great ones. She could be the natural daughter of some minor lord or master. Beth doesn’t really care. “It’s a shame they set you to work here,” she says, trying to be nice, although she doesn’t feel it. “You could have been married.”

“I was.” All signs of amusement vanish from the girl’s face.

Oh, Beth thinks. She’s a widow, and a young one at that. Whoever her father was, whoever her husband was, they mustn’t have left anything for her, and with no trade she fell into servitude instead. “Are you bound to the Dreadfort now, then? What’s your name? I’m Beth.”

“Beth of Winterfell.” The girl’s tone softens slightly, although the look in her eyes is still dark. “I’m Arra.”

Arra’s more often heard up in the mountains, Beth thinks. Like Anya, who was once her mother, a long time ago. Mayhaps she’s from one of the clans. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says tentatively. “Arra.”

Arra just turns back to her books. “These are on herbs,” she says lightly, as if she hadn’t heard Beth. “You can read, can’t you? Would you like to borrow one?”

Is this some sort of trick? Ramsay could have set her up to it, or Damon, or Skinner. They know Beth can read and write. It could be a trick to get her into some sort of trouble, to frame her for something. Like when they let Kyra steal the keys. Beth knows all about Kyra and the keys, because Palla came to her one night, shaking her awake, to say that Kyra had the keys and she was letting Theon Turncloak out of the dungeons, and did Beth think they should run with them? It was so unlike Palla to turn to her for advice that Beth had just stared at her blearily. Bandy and Shyra had been up as well, their faces moon pale in the dark, looking to her with hunger in their eyes, waiting for her to say yes, yes, let’s all run together, they can’t catch all of us, one of us will make it to safety, we will, and then-

But Beth had known better. “No,” she’d said. “No. Let them go. If they make it they’ll come back with men. If they don’t...” And she hadn’t needed to explain the rest.

Kyra and Theon had not made it, of course, although Beth had been a little envious of Kyra’s bravery. After months of rapes and beatings and starving, Kyra had still had the strength to go running out into the cold autumn night without anything but a ragged shift on, and to hear the Boys tell it, she’d fought like a shadowcat when they’d been caught, screaming and cursing and throwing rocks. They’d brought Theon back alive, but the only thing of Kyra’s that had come back were the keys and her head. Her mouth had fallen open and stayed that way, even as it rotted on a spike above the postern gate. 

“She should have begged mercy,” Shyra had said. “They brought Reek back. Mightn’ve let her live too.”

Palla had shoved her over. “Stupid. What do you think she was doin’ all these months? Begging mercy.”

Now she glances from Arra to the book, shaking her head fervently. “No. No, I can’t-,”

“Can’t read?” Arra wrinkles her long nose. “Weren’t you a knight’s daughter? That’s what I heard Yellow Dick saying. He said your father was the last knight in the North. He said he died screaming.”

Beth forgets to think, and instantly reacts, snatching the book from the edge of the table and throwing it. It falls to the ground with a dull thud. “Shut up! Shut up about my father!” she’s as close to yelling as she dares. “He wasn’t- he never! He was brave and true and- and they _murdered_ him! He wasn’t a craven.” Her voice trembles and her eyes prick with tears, but she refuses to cry. “Take it back.”

To her shock, Arra comes forward, not to strike or scold her, but to enfold her in a gentle, hesitant embrace. She smells like the godswood, piney and mossy and crumbling leaves. “Poor Beth. I’m sorry. I was only repeating what I heard. I’m sure he was very brave. You’re brave too, aren’t you? It’s only a book. I just thought…” She dips her head low to whisper in Beth’s ear, “I only heard that your friend Palla might need some herbs. To bring on her bleeding.”

Beth jerks away from her, reddening and paling at the same time. “You- who told you?” Palla only confided in her a few days past; Beth doesn’t know what to do. Palla’s missed her moon’s blood and is terrified it might be a babe. Damon’s babe. Beth wants to go to the woodswitch, but she hasn’t had the chance yet, and besides, she’s worried it might be too late to get rid of it without hurting Palla, although her belly hasn’t started to grow yet. 

“I hear things,” Arra smiles that same confiding little smile. She bends down, picks up the book, dusts it off carefully, and gives it to Beth. It’s an old maester’s journal, small enough to be concealed under clothes. “Here. You can look it after your work’s done. I won’t tell anyone.”

Beth accepts it, but bites on her lower lip. “Why do you care? It’s not you who might be with child. Palla doesn’t know you. Nor I.”

Arra is silent for a moment, as though she’s thinking. “I know something about babes and bleeding,” she finally says. “I’m no midwife, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it? If it’s a boy they’ll make it one of them, and if it’s a girl they’ll feed it to the dogs. No one wants that.”

Beth shoves the little book into the pocket of her stained smock, then rubs her dusty hands together nervously. “Are you a witch? Like the woodswitch?”

Arra smiles at that, and looks young and girlish, a child in truth for a moment, not someone pretending to be a wise woman grown. She stands a little straighter, like she really could be a lord’s daughter, even if she is just a bastard turned servant. “No, but I’d like that. Wouldn’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ironically, it's often easier for me to write Beth chapters because I have more 'freedom' as far as the timeline and what's going on, since our only POV in the North south of the Wall at time in canon is Theon. When I write a chapter set in the Riverlands there's a million moving parts to account for and I'm always nervous about missing something or contradicting myself and accidentally setting off a massive plot hole (or writing myself into a corner inadvertently). When it's just Beth and the people of the Dreadfort I feel allowed to go a little wild and just enjoy her narrative. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. This chapter is set about 3-ish months after Beth's last chapter. She is aware of the Red Wedding and Joffrey's death, although she has very few details on either. She is also aware that Stannis Baratheon is up at the Wall, although what he's doing there is anyone's guess and the regular people of the North have their doubts that he's going to come swooping in to deal with the Boltons anytime soon. Ramsay has been legitimized and is currently regarded as Roose's heir. Roose, as far as Beth knows, is on a very long journey back north, somewhere in the Neck, (probably) being delayed by crannogmen and/or others. The kids of Winterfell are beginning to address Theon as "Reek" after his failed escape attempt with Kyra.
> 
> 2\. I thought there could be some interesting parallels with Bran here; another little redheaded kid is learning how to climb and sneak around a castle, albeit out of necessity, not for fun. Introducing Arra has been a long time coming and she has an important role to play in the story. Now that the story has taken a decided turn for the fantastical, I am also introducing some more explicitly fantasy elements into the plot in the North as well, so I hope the supernatural foreshadowing of things is not turning people off. Beyond that, I wanted to keep Beth's childish nature intact; she has been through a great deal of trauma and obviously changed some, but she is still a 10/11 year old, right down to her extended 'you smell really gross, why don't you just take a bath' internal monologue when dealing with Sour Alyn. She claims to not believe in wargs or witches, but clearly has her doubts. 
> 
> 3\. Next chapter we should be back to Nell, we will have jumped forward a little (not not too long) in time, and we will check back in with Beth at a later date.


	48. Donella XXXVIII

300 AC - THE TWINS

Nell begins to count the days without her daughter. On the third Arwyn whispers that Roslin suspects she is with child. On the sixth there is word that the Ironborn have crowned Euron Greyjoy king. On the twelfth the Freys have word that Tywin Lannister has been murdered and the Imp has vanished. On the fourteenth there is news that Lysa Tully plummeted to her death out the Eyrie’s Moon Door at the hands of a singer mad with love. On the sixteenth a raven comes down from the North claiming that Stannis Baratheon sits on the Wall alongside the new Lord Commander, Ned Stark’s bastard. On the eighteenth Tommen Baratheon’s marriage to Margaery Tyrell is announced. 

On the twentieth day she is given warning that the Freys mean to move her and Catelyn soon, not just to different bedchambers or different wings of the castles but out of the Twins entirely, all the way down to Riverrun, where the siege stretches on and on and the Blackfish stubbornly refuses to give in. Where her great-uncle by marriage does not know that she and his niece have been promised into new western marriages, and where Ryman Frey hopes some blatant threats to erect a gallows and hang them both might finally stir Brynden Tully to throw open his gates and surrender. They would send Edmure as well, and might truly hang him, but Old Walder refuses to let his unwilling goodson out of his sight until Roslin’s pregnancy is in its third trimester, for fear she will lose the babe and they will lose their chance at a plausible Tully heir.

During the first three days Nell weeps. She hates herself for it but she does. In private, of course, as she refuses to sink to the level of being victim to the Freys’ scorn or worse, pity, at her distress, but she does weep. She weeps because every morning she wakes up and forgets, for an instant, that Lysara is gone. And she had only just stopped waking up every morning and forgetting, before she opened her eyes, that Robb was gone. There is no comparing the two wounds. The loss of her husband is deeper because she knew him longer and far better than she could ever hope to know her child. The loss of Lysara is sharper and keener, the worst kind of raw cut, and it never softens, not at all. It should feel like this, she thinks. She cannot be a failure of a mother if it feels this terrible. If she did not love her daughter surely it would not feel like this. It’s not her fault. She wanted to love her. She tried to love her, but it was too little, too late.

 _You would be tearing your hair and screaming were she a son, an Eddard,_ , the little voice says admonishingly. _You would truly mourn her, fear for her, were she a boy, Robb’s boy. You had resolved to set her aside as a failed attempt at your perfect little prince from the moment she was born. You deserve this pain. A good mother would have loved her instantly. A good mother would have gone to Seagard with her straight away, as Robb wanted. It is your fault, and you will always know it to be true. You failed him by giving him a traitor for a goodfather, a daughter instead of a son, and a disobedient wife. Had you stayed Edmure’s hand the Lannisters would all be dead, and you would be free, and together, and Robb would be alive. You chose one triumphant battle and lost Robb’s war for him and now it is eating away at you, and you will never make the feeling go away._

Some small part of her hates poor Roslin, who is risking everything to try to help them, to save Edmure’s life, sheerly for being able to have a child, any child. Nell will never have another child, and without Lysara… She will not have Addam Marbrand’s children. If it comes down to it she will make very certain of that. If they think to have her before any statues in a sept it will have to be in chains, and she will widow herself a second time before she couples with some Lannister bannerman. Better an honorable death at her own hands than a lifetime of shame. But it will not come to that, because she means to run, and hide, and rally the remaining river and northmen to avenge their fallen, or die in the attempt. 

She knows very little of the man they call Crow’s Eye, but she had always heard it claimed the Greyjoy brothers were all mad, and Euron by far the worst of the lot. Good. She hopes he loses a thousand ships battering the western shores, she hopes he lights up Lannisport, she hopes the sea rises up and swallows Casterly Rock whole. She hopes the Ironborn starve on their cold little rocks come winter, and are reduced to eating rats and human flesh. She hopes the Mad Crow locks the Lannisters into a new decade of war. She hopes they all kill each other and drift down to the bottom of the sea. 

She wonders if anyone has told Theon Turncloak, if he is in any state to hear it. Her father was not wrong when he claimed that whoever held Theon could demand whatever they liked from the Ironborn in exchange for his death. Perhaps that is how he means to rid the North of the last of them. But why should he? When they are gone he must know the northerners will turn on him, perhaps not all at once, but that doesn’t manner. Loose a dozen arrows, and one is sure to find its mark. It should bring her comfort, the thought that he will never live through the winter. It should warm her when she lies awake, cold and shaking at night, despite the warmth of her captive bed. It does not. Nothing much can warm her now, without her babe in her arms, without Robb or Grey Wind sleeping beside her. She thinks his skin might warm her. His and the Bastard’s. She’s dressed deer before. How different could it be?

She has dried her tears by the time Zia tells her with a gleeful edge that Tywin Lannister is dead. It’s funny, Zia explains, because her aunt Beony, wife to her uncle Raymund Frey, just have birth to twins not a fortnight past, boys whom Raymund named Tywin and Jaime. Their second youngest, Cersei, is a playmate of little Shirei’s, only they call her Little Bee, after her mother and her honey blonde hair. So Tywin is dead. It’s not clear how he died. Nell is told that the Lannisters have officially claimed that he was murdered in his sleep by his villainous, treacherous youngest, for the Imp is now missing, vanished the night before he was to be executed for kingslaying. 

“I think the Martells did it,” Zia informs her all the same, with great relish, “and so does Walda. They poisoned him. They really found him dead in the privy, did you hear? It’s all anyone can talk about. They say the body smelled something foul, and they found him with his breeches down! The Dornish are always poisoning people, aren’t they? And everyone knows they think the Lannisters killed Princess Elia and her babes. I bet they did it, and they’re only claiming it was the Imp so they won’t have war with Dorne. The Martells have got the princess Myrcella, haven’t they? Besides, why would the dwarf kill his father if he was already escaping?” She gives a mincing little shrug. “Doesn’t make much sense, if you ask me. Makes even less sense to invite the Martells to a Lannister wedding. Can you imagine? Who invites their enemies to a wedding-,” she had ended that thought rather suddenly at the look on Nell’s face, and hastily changed the subject to something less incendiary, like the weather or the continuing spate of wolf attacks up and down the Green Fork.

Nell supposes she should be leaping up and down and shouting for joy. And on the inside, mayhaps she is. But it is far more fruitful to simply watch the Freys’ reactions in the days following the news. To see the smug smiles and knowing looks simply… vanish. They aren’t stupid. Well, they aren’t so stupid as to believe that Cersei Lannister is going to be tripping over herself to properly fulfill her late lord father’s dealings with them, are they? Tywin was the great threat, the axe hanging over all their scrawny necks, and now he is gone. Nell did not believe it when she heard. 

Men like Tywin Lannister were not found dead in a privy at the hands of their own son or by some Martell poison. They manufactured dignified deaths in battle, or passed peacefully surrounded by their solemn brood. It is fitting, she thinks. She hopes he went shitting and weeping with terror. Old men are all the same when they are naked, when it is just their frail flesh and bones, no armor, no fine silks, no gilded helms. She wants Old Walder to go the same way. At least he never made any attempts at a courageous or honorable image. He’ll squeal like a pig when he dies, and no one will be surprised. Tywin is dead. Gods be good, why couldn’t they have married Joffrey off sooner, why couldn’t they have had the wedding straight after the Blackwater? 

She and Robb could have laughed and sang when they got word of it, and toasted Casterly Rock that night at dinner. She hopes he was terrified. Robb was not afraid, or if he was, it was for her and Lysara, not for himself. Robb once told her a man could only be brave when he was afraid. Then he must have been afraid near every day of his life, after his father was killed. The thought saddens her. She should have tried more to keep his spirits up, instead of always dragging him into talk of politics and war. She should have been more of a wife, less of an advisor. He did not need that from her. Look at all the good it did him. She should have spent more time at the harp. She could have played for him, to help him sleep. Instead she laid awake night after night, waiting for his night terrors to end so she could fall asleep and dream her own horrors. 

But the Lannisters are broken now, she tells herself. Who is left? The old shrew of a sister? The obedient younger brother? Cersei and Jaime? Does anyone truly believe them capable of presenting a strong base of power from King’s Landing? They’ll be at the Tyrell’s throats within the next six moons over who is to rule, Cersei or Margaery, Kevan or Mace. She has to believe that, because this has to mean something, has to be worth something, anything more than Tywin Lannister’s legacy of rotting shit. Gods, if only he could have died a little sooner, if he was meant to go like that, and not on a battlefield or in a besieged castle. It would have been so sweet to share that news with Robb, as sweet as when she and Edmure had word of Oxcross or that Stannis had King’s Landing under siege. 

It is strange, though. The spectre of Tywin Lannister has loomed over for so long that she does not what to do without it. But she supposes it was never really him after all. She never met the man, has never even laid eyes on him, and now she never will. Roose was the dark cloud on the horizon, and Tywin was just the wind pushing him onward. How much gold was it, she wonders? It must have been enough to set the Dreadfort up in finery and lavish comfort for a few generations. Or just one. She doubts her father intends to hoard it. What would be the point? Why, Ramsay shall have new jewelry and hunting bows. The nursery will be lovely, at least for a little while. 

The news of Lysa is odd, however. Nell cannot begin to fathom what has been going through the woman’s head this past year. She is with Catelyn when Barbara tells them; Barbara is given more freedom than either of them, her father having allied himself with the Freys and Lannisters, her marriage to Black Walder all but assured, for no one expects Raventree Hall to hold out much longer, despite Lord Tytos damnable stubbornness. Catelyn is completely silent, and Nell does not know what to say, so she embraces her instead. Sometimes she wonders if Lysara might look like Catelyn when she is grown; the auburn red hair, the tall and graceful frame. Other times it is too painful to consider. A fragment of a world in which Lysara is permitted to live for that long would seem to necessitate living without Nell. Another motherless child. 

“She was my sister,” Catelyn says finally, turning her hands over and over in her lap as if trying to knit something out of the air, some shape or material. “I was afraid of her and the whimsy and madness I saw in her, the last time we met, and I have been so angry with her for so long, that were she before me now I think I could strangle her. But she was still my sister, and we were as close as any sisters could ever be, once. She abandoned us, forsook her own family, threatened me when we last spoke- she would not act to help us, and we suffered for it. With the knights of the Vale at our side things might have been very different.”

“She was afraid,” Nell says. It is not an excuse, but it is not quite the condemnation she wants it to be, either. She is a mother. She knows what it is like to be afraid for one’s child, particularly when said child is all the family one really has left. “She was afraid, so she did nothing, for or against us.”

“Against us, I sometimes think,” Catelyn replies with a bitter edge. “It was her letter that sparked this, or at least- most of it. She was the one convinced the Lannisters had murdered Lord Arryn. She knew- she must have known Ned would be duty-bound to investigate, to try to see justice done. If not for that letter… he would have refused Robert, I think. Or at least put him off for a few years, until the children-,” she chokes on the word, then says hoarsely, “until they were older. But it… I had urged him to accept the position, before that. Robert was his dearest friend once, and our king. He was offering us great honor, great opportunity. His firstborn for Sansa, a life at court for Arya and Bran, fine marriages, knighthoods… Only with her letter did I see the danger. Then I begged him not to go. So mayhaps it as much my fault as Lysa’s.”

“No,” says Nell, taking her cold hands in her own. “No. You could not have known. Anyone with a lick of sense would have urged their husband to do similarly. You wanted what was best for them.”

Catelyn shakes her head mutely. “I should never have pushed for it. I should have known the Lannisters could be dangerous-,”

“Politics is always dangerous,” says Nell, grip tightening. “Stop this. You are not to blame. I would have done the same, were it- were it Robb and I, and our children. Who would refuse the title of Hand? You cannot lock children up in their bedchambers until they are grown. The girls would have had to go south at some point. They belonged to a great house. No one would deny that they deserved great marriages.”

“Great marriages,” says Catelyn thick. “My Sansa got hers, to a murderer- only he wasn’t when I thought he was. Is that not funny?” And she lets out a strange, hysterical laugh, and for an instant Nell wants to laugh with her, before her senses claw back into control. “And Arya… There is so much I- I had always hoped we would- that things could be easier between us, when she was a little older. She was always Ned’s special girl. I… I did not know what to do with her, half of the time.”

“She knew you loved her,” Nell reminds her sharply. “Of course she did. Don’t you remember? You had their painting done, the girls, before they left. I was there with Jeyne Poole and Beth Cassel, sewing, and… and you hugged them and told them how pretty they looked, and what fine young ladies they would become at court.”

“We were so close as girls,” Catelyn says. “Lysa and I. We spent every day together, except when I was with my lord father. But she… she did not have the relationship with him that I did. I see that now. I was a child myself then, foolish in my own way, but convinced I knew best. She was not always happy. She was lonely, and Petyr…” her mouth twists into a knot. “I don’t know. I should have paid closer attention. So much needless suffering could have been avoided. Jon Arryn was a good man, but not a well matched husband for a girl of sixteen. And she was still a girl then. Very much so. All those years alone in the Vale or at court… all those lost babes…”

Nell lets go of her hands; she can not stand to speak of lost babes right now. So they say no more about it.

Jon Snow is the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch now, and he does not rule from the Wall alone. It plucks viciously at something in Nell, that they could not come to terms with Stannis, yet now Stannis is in the North, no doubt promising Ned Stark’s bastard all sorts of things in exchange for his support. Aye, the Night’s Watch is not to interfere in the petty politics and wars of other men, but when has that ever stopped any boy of seventeen? And he is a boy, she thinks. Robb became a man while his bastard brother was sitting up at the Wall, befriending thieves and murderers and rapists and courting favor from kings. Does Jon know that Robb is dead? He must know by now the fate of Winterfell, of Bran and Rickon, but he and Robb were always so close. She remembers that, as much as she does not want to. They might not have looked alike, but they were brothers in every other sense. And they both went on to great, albeit unexpected heights. And no one is dead, washed away by the river, and the other yet lives, in his black cloak and furs, with his queer mute wolf and a would-be king. 

And Tommen’s hasty coronation and marriage comes as no surprise; the Tyrells are not the sort to just turn around for Highgarden, having lost Joffrey. They likely prefer it this way. Tommen is a coddled little boy of nine or not quite, who Nell remembers best as being chiefly interested in kittens and sweets. His marriage to Margaery will be in name-only for years to come, and the Tyrells will be able to do just as they please, guiding his chubby little hands like a mummer’s puppet. She does not know how to feel for the Tyrell girl. Joffrey was by all accounts a cruel and vicious little thing, but she merely traded in one bastard born of incest for another. Mayhaps Margaery does not care, or is too foolish to notice, or wishes she’d been born into a family with decidedly smaller aspirations. Nell would not want to be within reach of Cersei Lannister at a time like this.

Yet the news on the twentieth day is the real shock. Not so much that the Freys mean to move them, but now. It seems so soon, although the more she thinks about it, it seems less startling. She has been their prisoner for nigh on two moons now. The Freys are juggling two sieges, neither of which seem inclined to let up any time soon. They need something to push the Blackfish over the edge, and what better than to use his own kind against him? He may be on amicable enough terms with Nell, despite his anger over the Fords, but Catelyn is near a daughter to him, and he likely does not know that she is needed alive.

And when it comes down it, they really don’t need her alive, nor Nell. If it really was their last option, Nell thinks this talk of new marriages for both of them could be easily dismissed. They really might hang them. The marriages were Tywin’s arrangement, a final humiliation. He is dead. The remaining Lannisters might very well go ‘so be it, kill them, and see if that riles the Fish’. If they were clever, they might serve him their final terms, then hang Nell the first dawn after he refused them, to show him they meant it. So perhaps she will not be wed again after all. That is almost cheering. At least being hung would be quick. It is better than a crow cage.

No one bothers to inform her of when she is leaving, of course. Even the Frey girls do not seem to know. She is woken up one morning and told to dress warmly. That is it. Some maids come in and start heaping clothes into a trunk, and Arwyn comes in while she is dressing to tell her that she’s been bid to tell Nell that she, Zia, and Fair Walda are accompanying them to Riverrun. Nell can’t imagine why, until two things occur to her: one, that a slow siege must be very boring indeed and that with so many western lords and knights present, the Freys must be eager to throw their available women at them in the hopes of securing further alliances, and two, that since Black Walder is apparently the one leading their party south, he and Old Walder are the ones who have determined that they should come along as well, and not just for the chance to make marriages. She can hardly imagine Black Walder arranging matches for his sisters and nieces with a straight face. No. This is a warning to her. Were she to attempt any escape or manage to plan some sort of ambush on the way down there, these girls would be in the middle of it all, and Black Walder would not hesitate to kill any of them, she knows. 

In some sense, it is a weak deterrent. On the other hand, they are also still holding the Bracken sisters and many northmen at the Twins- and Black Walder demonstrates just that on the morning of their departure, when he takes her and Catelyn on a brief sojourn out onto the bridge so they can see Lymond Goodbrook hanging in a crow’s cage out over the water, a limp bundle of a man hunched behind metal bars.

“What is the meaning of this, exactly?” By some innate talent, Catelyn manages to inflect a venomous level of contempt into every syllable.

“If I have any trouble from either of you,” Black Walder says brusquely, looking sharply at Nell, “Lord Lymond won’t be the only one in a cage. That Bracken girl-,”

“Your future wife?” Nell inquires coldly. 

“No,” says Black Walder. “The lackwit sister. She’s not promised back to her father until he gives us the Blackwoods. And we don’t have much use for her otherwise. See how well she does out over the water. They say the rushing’s constant enough to drive any man mad after a while, and these rains are cold and bitter. She was your lady, wasn’t she? Pledged to your service, Your Grace?” He makes the last two words sound more a curse than any actual swearing. “Don’t make yourself responsible for her death.”

“You are an honorless coward,” says Catelyn, “and I pray you receive exactly what you deserve.”

“Bold words from a woman with more dead children than living,” Black Walder retorts, and Catelyn lunges for him then, and Nell would have followed were she not abruptly jerked back by her guard’s meaty hands. 

But Black Walder needn’t have worried, Nell thinks, even as she is placed in a saddle with her hands bound neatly before her and the reins attached to the rider beside her’s, lest she try charging off as she did last time. She has no intention of some ill-planned escape attempt just outside the Twins, or in the Hag’s Mire, or at the Blue or Red Fork. Why would she risk being immediately caught again, with no allies to turn to, when she could simply wait until she is among friends once more. After all, Fair Walda has been most useful to her, and Black Walder enjoys fucking his cousin in his solar, where he frequently leaves things out. Like maps and notes. House Goodbrook, House Lychester, House Piper, House Roote, House Smallwood, both branches of House Vance, House Paege, House Grey, House Mooton, House Nutt… they are all present at this siege, them and many more who were never any friend to the Freys. They do not have the great numbers the westermen do, but they are there all the same, filling in the cracks and gaps. Fair Walda estimates at least five thousand of them, maybe six thousand. 

The things Nell could do with five thousand men. The only trouble is, she won’t be able to much of anything while under lock and key, or worse, immediately carted off to the West with Catelyn. That’s the trick. Fair Walda brought her a message from Perwyn a week ago, offering the explicit support of House Vance of Atranta. Atranta sits along the Red Fork, in between Riverrun and Stone Mill. Perwyn has nothing to do with the Vances of Atranta, only that he accompanied Jammos and Whalen Frey on their last visit back to House Paege to assuage their angry wives- the other Frey men joke often about the henpecked twin husbands and their shrewish twin wives, always ranting and raving about their sons being taken for squires-

And so Perwyn claims that while he was there and the Paeges were getting Jammos and Whalen good and drunk, he got off a raven to Atranta, for he and Robert and Damon Paege were good friends with Bad Ronald as children, and have both been to Atranta several times. Ronald is a hostage of House Frey now, of course, but his wife remains. Old Lord Norbert is blind as a bat and incapable of commanding any men, but Lorelle Vance is not the kind of woman to roll over meekly and accept things as they are, and she claims her good brothers Hugo and Kirth- Kirth who Nell wed to Alyx Frey, of all people- are at the siege and very much prepared to shed Lannister blood at a moment’s notice.

So the plan as it stands as such. Nell and Catelyn will play the peacemaking women who want nothing but for all this violence and disorder to be over and done with, stall for as long as possible outside Riverrun, Perwyn will convince Black Walder to send him in to treat personally with the Blackfish, as they have met before and Perwyn fought by his side with Robb and Olyvar in the West, and Perwyn will make a big fuss of announcing the final surrender, throwing open the gates- while the Blackfish swims out the water gate. At the same time, or thereabouts, Hugo and Kirth will smuggle Nell and Catelyn out on a boat down the Red Fork to Atranta. As soon as they are discovered missing, mass panic and chaos will go up, as without them what do the Freys have?- and hopefully- gods willing- the rivermen at the siege will turn on the westermen, and in the confusion, they might have something of a victory, or at least completely ruin the siege and wipe out a good deal of the enemy while they are at it.

These men have been sitting there for two months now. Near three, by the time Nell and Catelyn will arrive. They wanted a fight when they got there, and now they grow fat and lazy and used to sitting around all day, she hopes- prays. They think the rivermen beaten into sullen submission, they think it all a lost cause, but there are wolf packs on the move and rumors everywhere, growing up like weeds, that the Brotherhood without Banners is collecting broken men, both northmen and rivermen, and hitting sieges left and right- at Seagard, at Riverrun, at Raventree. Nothing monumental, but harrying them, harassing them, stealing from supply trains, killing outriders, setting fires and traps, leaving men hanging from trees and bridges and mills. Mayhaps much of it is just mere conjecture, mayhaps it is just Nell wanting to believe, but-

Is this makeshift, cobbled together little plan a very good one? No, Nell thinks, as she feels a horse lurch into motion beneath her for the first time in months. No, it’s really very terrible. A thousand and one things could go wrong, it’s the product of her, Perwyn Frey, and Fair Walda, the latter who she could hardly call trustworthy, in fact, it’s likely that Brynden will not trust Perwyn at all, that Fair Walda might betray them to Black Walder at any moment, that they’ll be caught, that no one will fall for the ‘I just want peace’ act, that things will spiral drastically out of control and all that it will result in will be wanton bloodshed and more pain and horror. 

But Nell has to try. She has to try or she might as well throw up her hands and go mad, or pitch herself from this moving horse and crack her skull open on the ground. She has to try, and if it fails miserably, it fails, but at least she will have made one last rallying attempt. At least she will die a queen, and not a mere captive to be shuffled around like a cyvasse piece on the board. She is putting innocent lives in danger. She is playing with fire. She is going to regret this. Well, what else is new? All of Robb’s plans were tremendously risky, weren’t they? And he had armor and a warhorse and a sword. She has her wits and some unlikely allies and a scrap of a promise from an angry woman who would rather die than face never seeing her husband again.

Besides, ironically enough, she doesn’t really think Fair Walda will turn on them, not now, after months of spying for Nell. The thing about Walda is that Nell realizes now, she has nothing left to lose. Walda has siblings and parents and cousins and aunts and uncles, but none of those people matter to her. They have not mattered to her since they decided to look the other way while Black Walder came into her room each night and did as he wished with her. Fair Walda would sell any of them for a few gold dragons. She would sell herself for a few gold dragons. She would sell Black Walder out for a copper and the chance to serve his head up on a silver platter. She has absolutely nothing left to lose, and she means to see them all pay for denying her what she believes is a well deserved prize- the Twins. 

They make decent time south. Black Walder wisely avoids the Hag’s Mire entirely and follows the course of the river until they are past Oldstones, then has them cross at Fairmarket. They do not stay over at any inns, they never make camp for long, and he keeps his fifty-odd men in constant guard rotation. The man is not a fool, she’ll give him that. He barely seems to sleep himself. He takes them straight for the Whispering Wood once they are out of Fairmarker- the town where the folk there looked at her with strange eyes and muffled whispers, as the woman who was once a queen rode by a hostage, the town where they say there are wolves in the woods and Nell could not shake the constant sense that they were being watched-

Just shy of twenty days of constant riding, and they are at the siege. Nell has never been at a siege before. Robb broke the Kingslayer’s first siege of Riverrun, but she was kept well away from that, and after that, well, she was at Riverrun. There are many tents, and banners, and the mood seems incredibly… bored. Looking again upon Riverrun from a distance like this is very strange. She is in these woods where Robb had his first great victory, and all these leaves have fallen, and she does not recognise any of the trees nor the valley or the stream where she and Robb once bathed together. It all looks entirely foreign and strange, as though she were in a dream. When last she was here, she was still a girl. She was newly wed and had no child. Robb had called himself a lucky fool. She had told him he would be the pride of the North. Perhaps he still is, just not in the way any of them intended. She looks at Catelyn and neither of them have to speak to know what the other is thinking.

This long silence is interrupted by hoofbeats; Petyr Pimple is there and begging for Black Walder to meet with Lord Ryman immediately; something about a raven from the Twins, something about Seagard and a name she doesn’t recognize- Bloodborn? Her head turns a little too eagerly, and Zia begins to whisper to Arwyn, who shushes her nervously, but Black Walder is already berating the squire furiously, barking that his father bloody well knows he can’t meet until he’s settled the matter of the Stark women- which he manages to make sound very close to ‘whores’- and then there’s another echo of hoofbeats, and Nell looks away from the squabbling Freys to see another rider approaching. He is not in the blue and grey of House Frey, and she can freely admit his horse is a thing of beauty- a fine red course in his prime, with a fiery mane to match.

“Marbrand!” Black Walder hails disgruntledly, and Nell realizes this is who they would make her second husband, and steels herself all at once. “You’re supposed to be with Lannister, on the other side.”

“So I am,” returns the man who must be Addam Marbrand, who rides up with his helm under his arm as if he were some knight of old prancing into a maiden’s dream, “but I don’t think Tully like to break free if I leave my post for an hour or so.” His words are polite enough, but his tone is brimming with sarcasm. He looks from Black Walder to Nell and Catelyn, and the vaguely derisive little smile that means ‘don’t presume to command me, Frey’ turns into something else entirely. Nell was prepared for a scowl of distaste or displeasure, a derisive leer, anything, really. Anything she could work with. 

What she was not expecting was the genuine look of concern that comes across his face. He’s handsome in a lucky sort of way, and she wishes his hair were any color at all but reddish, although it is lighter than Robb’s ever was, and hangs straight, no curl to it. He must be around thirty or so, but carries himself like a younger man, and certainly has the unlined, tanned face to make up for it. “Why are the women bound?” he demands sharply. “They are ladies, Frey, and you have them trussed up in the saddle like common criminals.”

Catelyn sends a small glance Nell’s way. Nell attempts to look relieved at this immediate show of gallantry. 

“You don’t know them,” Black Walder snaps. “The Bolton girl put a knife through Edwyn’s ribs and the Stark woman nearly killed Petyr. Had to be sure they weren’t going to try anything on the way down here, didn’t I?”

“Well, it certainly seems as though the danger has passed, hasn’t it?” Addam Marbrand retorts mockingly, and one of the men who rode up with him gives a small snicker. “Untie them. We have boats waiting at the Fork for them to cross over.”

“We didn’t agree on where they’d be held-,”

“Seeing as Lady Donella is my betrothed, and her goodmother is Lord Banefort’s, I should think they’d be held where they might be most comfortable.” _Somewhere you are not_ , is the unspoken insinuation.

Black Walder reddens in fury. 

“My ladies must accompany me, to keep myself and Lady Catelyn company and to safeguard our virtue,” Nell says before he can speak, her voice coming out soft and solemn and not at all like herself, to her relief. Good. “You must understand, my lord, what it is like for us, to find ourselves surrounded by strange men, many of whom we have only ever known to be enemies.” She doesn’t smile at him. That wouldn’t be convincing. She holds his gaze instead, and is careful not to look as though she is begging or pleading for mercy, either. This is a game she’s played before, when she did not yet know who and what Robb was. She can play it again all the better now, for she’s learned so much.

“Of course,” says Ser Addam, like the chivalrous southern knight he is, and she sees then from the way his eyes soften that he already likes the look of her, already respects her for being straight-faced and sober, not glaring or cursing at him, nor weeping and moaning in the saddle, pleading to be taken away from these monsters. “You have my word you shall be well-treated during your time here, my lady. Lady Genna is most anxious to meet you.”

“Then you have my thanks, my lord,” says Nell, inclining her head, and looks to an incensed Black Walder, arches a dark eyebrow, and holds her wrists out for him to cut them loose. “Go on, Ser.”

The look on his face is almost worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While outlining this fic I guesstimated I could write maybe five chapters of Nell being held captive at the Twins before it got very old for both me and the readers, and I was right. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. Timeline wise this chapter takes us through through the middle of the second month of the new year and into the third. At the end of this chapter when Nell and co. reach the Siege of Riverrun 2.0, it is early in the the third month of the year. A lot has gone down since then and I tried to present Nell's reaction and thoughts on each matter. Roslin is suspected to be pregnant with Edmure's child, but even assuming they managed to conceive on the night of their wedding, she's still only in the first trimester. The plot in the Riverlands here is obviously advancing at a faster pace than in canon because I can't have characters sitting around twiddling their thumbs for months on end. 
> 
> 2\. Tywin is dead, but it's not clear to Nell whether he was murdered by Tyrion or by the Martells while they were at court. (There is a somewhat popular fan theory that Tywin's corpse smells so horrifically terrible and is decomposing so awfully at his funeral because he'd already been poisoned when Tyrion shot him, and was going to die regardless). Even had I elected to have Tyrion killed off in this AU, I still don't like Tywin's chances of living much longer. I don't think the Martells planned on letting him survive past their little visit. YES OBERYN IS ALIVE. YES THIS WILL BE SIGNIFICANT FOR THE PLOT. Tyrion is alive because, as in canon, Jaime's not willing to let baby bro die. I also think Varys has a vested interest in sending Tyrion to Team #YoungGriff.
> 
> 3\. Nell is not particularly pleased to hear that Jon has been made Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Granted, she has no idea what Jon has been through since joining the Watch and kind of assumes he's had an 'easy' time of it compared to her and Robb, and thinks it's a little suspicious that Stannis is now supposedly up there too. 
> 
> 4\. The Freys are bringing Nell and Cat down to the siege because of the promised western marriages (which means they'd have to be moving them at some point anyways) and in hopes of riling the Blackfish into breaking his own siege or doing something stupid. I didn't think this was all-that-contrived when compared to canon, when they bring Edmure down for the same reason, basically, and proceed to threaten to hang him, all the while not actually hanging him, for months on end. The Freys also want to keep a hold on Edmure here because he is a major hostage and because they really, really want a Tully kid from him, and if Roslin's early pregnancy does not pan out, they want to keep trying until something sticks. 
> 
> 5\. "Nell is talking like Lysara is dead." In a sense Nell *feels like* Lysara is dead. I wanted this chapter to recognize the tremendous loss/trauma of being separated from her child while not spiraling into constant angst the entire time. Nell feels a massive amount of guilt for various reasons. She feels guilty about her postpartum depression and disappointment with Lysara's gender. She still feels guilty about not 'giving' Robb a son. She feels guilty about the Battle of the Fords. So it's not just a loss of her husband and daughter but her hopes and dreams for a good future in general.
> 
> 6\. "This plan is batshit insane." Yeah, Nell's not what I would call 'hopeful' about it either, but at the moment her attitude is 'we are so far past 'Plan A, Plan B, Plan C' that we might as well start throwing stuff at the wall'. The plan basically boils down to 'break the siege themselves by freeing the Blackfish from Riverrun, trying to get Nell and Cat downriver to temporary safety at Atranta, and rallying the rivermen and doubting Freys at the siege to turn against the hardcore Freys and westermen'. It's a massive risk to even assume Brynden will agree to treat with Perwyn in the first place, not to mention what might happen if Black Walder, Ryman Frey, Addam Marbrand, or Daven Lannister get wind of it, but I think Nell's attitude is basically 'go big or go home, either way I am *not* going west'. 
> 
> 7\. Addam would like to think of himself as a Good Guy who happens to be in the company of some Not So Great Guys but who ultimately is fighting for a Noble Cause. Nell believes she can play him like a fiddle by taking a 'Dignified Lady in Defeat' tactic and appealing to his sense of chivalry. I'm really excited about introducing Addam Marbrand and Genna Lannister. I think they're fun characters to work with since neither is the stereotypical brooding villain type.
> 
> 8\. "What's this about Seagard and Bloodborn?" Well, we're going to find out. I did not make up Bloodborn, he is a canon outlaw born Aegon Frey, I swear to God you can't make this shit up.


	49. Dana VI

300 AC - HOLLOW HILL

Dana can vividly recall sitting on her father’s bony knee as a child, clutching onto his arm as he bounced her up and down, begging him to tell her a story. He’d been a shit father, most of the time, with no patience for children, and even less patience for girl children, but when he was drunk enough to mellow, while still sober enough that he wasn’t waist-deep in memories of the Rebellion and his childhood on the Finger, he was a decent storyteller. She must have been no more than four or five; her hair was short she remembers, a dark mop of curls and a stained smock. She remembers her little brown boots, kicking back and forth onto the stool beneath them. 

“I want a story about the Warg King,” she’d said (or something like that). “Please, Da. Please.”

He’d probably taken a sip of something, and then began to speak, and Dana would always lay her head on his chest so she could hear his voice rumble there, a faint growl. When you are small, of course, all fathers are bears or giants or lions, and they all have thick manes and growly voices and shoulders broad as mountains, until you are old enough to see them for what they are. Weak and frayed and stunted and suffering. “The Warg King,” he said, “he ruled Sea Dragon Point, didn’t he? He wasn’t born a king.”

“All kings are born,” Dana might have said, she can’t remember. Or maybe it was, “That’s not right, was he a prince first, or a lord?” Maybe. Children don’t really talk like that, do they? 

“He was born a man,” Da would say, “or mayhaps a bear, or a wolf, or a bird. He didn’t stay that way. He was a skinchanger. It’s in their nature to move around, do different things. He found some skins he liked more than others. First the Warg King was a dog, a cat, a moose, a crow or a seal. He could take other men’s skins, too, but he’d never admit to that. Some things shame even monsters.”

“He was a monster,” Dana had said, pleased. She was always pleased to hear about monsters as a little girl, because they were something to be defeated and triumphed over. You could not have a happy ending without killing a monster first. “So the Starks had to come kill him.”

“He was a monster,” Da would shrug, then cough, deep in his throat, hacking and taking another drink. “There were many monsters in the days after the Long Night. Some were wargs and some were wildings and some were even Starks. He ruled the land and the sea, for all the beasts and birds obeyed him, and all men feared him, and his sons spent more time as wolves and bears and shadowcats then as men. His greenseers bathed in blood and drank weirwood sap.”

“And his daughters?” Dana had pressed. “What about them? Were they wargs too?”

“What do you care about his daughters?”

“I want them to be wargs too.”

“Fine, they were wargs too,” he’d snap in exasperation. “They wore crowns of feathers and brambles and they flitted from branch to branch as birds to spy for their father, and they slipped into seal skins to drown Ironborn who came prowling up and down the coast. The Warg King lived down under the ground, and his throne were the roots of a great heart tree, and his daughters bathed in pools of starlight that trickled down from the ground, and the children of the forest filled his court with enchantments and played their music from dawn to dusk, and he lived much longer than any man or monster had a right to, and the Starks grew strong enough to make proper war without fearing they’d be wiped out by old magics.”

“But the Starks won.” She can still smell him, if she thinks back hard enough, she can smell the smoke of his pipe and the whiskey on his breath and feel the steady sensation of his knee rocking up and down and hear her mother in the corner of the room, watching reproachfully while she knitted. “They always win.”

“Not always,” he’d snorted, and then said, “Yes, they won. They made war on the Point for seven months and when it was over, the King of Winter cut off his head and mounted it and all his sons on pikes and caught his daughters up in nets and carried them back to Winterfell. And that’s why the Starks have some warg blood to them.”

“What happened to the Children of the Forest?”

“They hid underground, and came out when the fighting was done to curse the land, so no man might lay claim to it ever again. And all that generation of Starks died young, because the rot was in their blood.”

“Why was their blood rotting, Da?”

He’d taken her off his lap then, and sat her on the cold ground, and his face had gone as strange and frightening as if he were a monster himself, and not her father at all, and said, “They couldn’t slip out of their skins when they did terrible things in them, as the Warg King could. They had to lay down in them at night.”

Dana lies down in her same old skin every night, and often wishes she could slip out of it, not to discard it, this skin that is a Flint of the Fingers, that loved Nell and loved- loves- Marianne, this skin that danced and sang and stumbled and ran and sighed with happiness when it sank into a hot bath and cringed in disgust when it vomited on itself- she’d just like a different one, for a little while, a strange new skin to inhabit during this time, when she sees the sky perhaps once or twice a week, and never knows whether it is night or day, and cannot dream at all, and wakes and sleeps to woodsmoke and shadows dancing on the earthen walls.

With nowhere to run and plenty of time to sleep and brood in the dark, Dana thinks she can be forgiven for crying herself to sleep a few times. Not always about Marianne, sometimes about Nell, sometimes about Lysara, or Jory, or Dacey. Mostly about Marianne, though. She doesn’t know what to compare it to. She feels like a spoilt child, crying about having something nice yanked away with no promise of when it will be returned. But Marianne is not a toy or a new pair of boots, she is a person, and people cannot be forgotten as easily as things. Dana doesn’t dream of her, but she thinks of her often, and once she thought she saw her in the great crowded Brotherhood camber, and almost cried out, but it wasn’t her at all, of course, just some other girl, hurrying back to her mother’s side. Marianne hasn’t got a mother. Dana may never see hers again.

It’s better not to dwell on these things, anyways. Better to focus on what she can do for now, as opposed to what and who she has lost. There was no point in her coming all this way if all she’s going to do is lie around moping or weeping or just sitting in a corner, waiting to be told what to do and where to go. Dana falls into an easy enough rhythm with the other women present; many of them lowborn but some knights’ wives and some merchants’ daughters and some petty lords’ sisters. Jeyne thought there were perhaps five or six hundred people living in the Hill, but Dana thinks she’s mistaken; by her estimate there’s at least seven to eight hundred. Then again, new people arrive each and every day. 

Some claim they were directed this way by a song played by a singer named Alesander, no surname given, so that is something, Dana supposes. She feels hopeful whenever she recognizes newcomers as northmen, or at least anyone who looks capable of swinging a sword. There are still things to be done underground, even if it often feels like a very peculiar dream. There’s constantly people coming and going; there’s animals to feed and be cleaned up after, buckets of water to be carried to and thro, a constant cycle of filthy clothes that have to be washed in underground pools and streams, which, contrary to the stories, do not contain magic starlight but are freezing cold and sheen with wavering black reflections. There’s young children to look after, and fights between wild children to break up, and more often than not, Dana spends her time looking for Arya, a bowl of food in hand.

Dana’s always had an easy way of it with children; she knows how to settle and calm them, she can be firm without coming across as severe or unkind. She doesn’t mind playing silly games, she has more patience than most people she knows, and she’s not one to shy away from tears or snot or hiccups or exasperating lisps or tics. But the Arya she knew was a lord’s daughter. A wild little thing, yes, but wild for a daughter of a great house, not truly wayward or neglected. The girl Dana remembers had a fierce temper and a determined set to her jaw and chewed on her lip constantly and was often mocked or dismissed or chastised, but she was also loved and catered to and carefully looked after it, be it by her parents or the servants. The worst thing that girl had ever done was repeat a curse word she’d heard in the stables, or swipe a hot bun from the kitchens, or fling mud at her sister and her friends. 

The girl is- well, she is older and taller to be sure, although still small and scrawny for her age, and she’s stick thin and gaunt in the face and the limbs, as if she might snap in half at any moment, and her teeth are yellowed and her skin has a grey, underfed pallor to it, and her hair is lank and greasy and in good need of a wash. This is not the girl who was used to being cared for and looked after, this is another girl entirely, one who has grown used to another way of living- if you could call it that. Dana wouldn’t. She’d call it surviving, barely etching out an existence, living every day with nothing but luck and quick wits to fall back on. This girl carries a sword she claims Jon Snow gave her before she left Winterfell, this girl eats like a wild animal, hunched in a corner with her back to the wall, eying each passing person warily, this girl sleeps in a hunched up little bundle of cloaks beside Grey Wind each night.

Dana remembers a child who was obstinate and hotheaded, but sweet-natured and curious all the same, who looked more like her lady mother and sister when she smiled. That Arya is dead, she thinks, or at least much of her is. But Dana is not the same girl she was at Winterfell either. And Robb- she cannot even think of him as Robb. The creature that was once Robb has many more names beyond just ‘His Grace the King in the North’ and ‘The Young Wolf’. In turn, he is Stoneheart, Hangman, Freysbane, Brother Bloodyhands, and the King of Winter. It is almost funny. Her father once told her stories about the Kings of Winter killing a warg king who lived underground, and now…

The Brotherhood brought back some men a week and a half after Dana’s party joined. She’s not sure if the men were Frey soldiers, or Bolton soldiers, or had originally been northmen or rivermen who’d turned to raping and thieving after the wedding, but- She did not stay around to watch what happened to them, but the crowds parted like a sea for Stoneheart, his wolf, and Harry Karstark. Later, she watched the bodies be dragged away, and her stomach did nervous flip-flops for the next hour, although she knows she should have felt vindicated, should have rejoiced that justice was being done, that there was still some sense of law and order-

It just doesn’t feel that way, not when Grey Wind seems to actively avoid the man who once was his own master, or companion, or packmate, however you want to put it. That is queer as well. The man wants to be left alone, and the wolf seeks out people. Grey Wind prefers to follow about Jeyne Heddle or Arya Stark, and Stoneheart disappears deep into the chasms and tunnels of the hill most of the time, only emerging when there is killing to be done. The man and the wolf, they come together for the killing, and not much else. Dana’s not sure what everyone believes. Some people genuinely seem to think he is a corpse walking. Others simply think he was brought back from the brink of death by healing magic, as their noble Lord Beric once was. Others act as though he were simply a man like any other, deeply scarred on the inside and out by war and betrayal and murder, but still capable of thinking and feeling as much as any other man. 

He is stronger, though. Dana has seen him move, and it is not the unsteady gait he had when she first saw him. She has seen him pick up a sword and slash at the air, at the dark. She does not count herself as anything approaching an expert, but she watched him spar briefly with Harry Karstark, who for all the wear and tear is still a healthy man of one-and-twenty in his prime, and Stoneheart had Harry Karstark flat on his back with a sword’s point to his throat in a far quicker and more brutal manner than should have been possible. Death makes no man into a Mountain, or even a Sandor Clegane, but surely he should be much frailer, much weaker. The look on Harry Karstark’s face was not just shock, or begrudging respect. It was fear. He looked terrified, and when the creature with Robb’s face, only gone grey, turned and glanced at her, Dana felt it too, not fear of a man, the way she’s been afraid many times before, but the fear you get when you come across a bear in the wood and it rears up onto its back legs. It was terror, deep and instinctual.

Yet Arya is often with him, and Dana wishes she were brave enough, but she is not. When Arya is with… with her brother, Dana stays well away, and so she does not get the chance to speak to her privately until she has been under the hill for close to three weeks. Arya is bathing alone in the cave where most of the women do their washing. There are only a few torches around, and in this lighting all Dana can make out is a pale swath of a skinny back and stringy dark hair turned black from the water. As it stands, to most she is still known as Edd Snow, Karstark’s squire, although the look on Tom Sevens face when he glimpsed her again did almost make Dana forget everything else and burst out laughing. What are the odds, after all, that she would make it back here in the company of the Hound, of all people?

Dana debates on what to address her as, and then finally sits down instead, at the edge of the water. She’s certain Arya noticed her presence as soon as she came in, although she was trying to be quiet; she’s gone rigid with tension, like when an alleycat sights a person. “I just want to speak with you,” Dana says gently after a few moments of harsh silence. “I don’t… I promise I’m not going to make you tell me anything you don’t want to. And I won’t tell you anything you don’t want to hear, either. I just... “ And to her embarrassment, her voice breaks, as if she were the child in need of comfort, and not the woman grown. 

“You do remember me, don’t you? Because… because all my friends are prisoners or dead, and I miss them terribly, and I blame myself for not being able to help them. And the traitors killed my father. He was trying to protect me, and they killed him. And I don’t know if I’ll ever get to go home again, or see my sisters, or my mother. And I’m scared. I’m really scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen and I don’t know what to do and I don’t know if there’s even a war left for us to win.” She swallows, hard, feeling the silence compress her like a wet, heavy blanket. “And if you’re not scared, you’re much braver than I could ever be, Arya.”

A naked child turns around and stares at her, wide-eyed, and then ducks back down under the water. She can hold her breath for a long time; Dana is beginning to grow concerned when she finally resurfaces. She wordlessly tosses her a ragged cloak. Arya scrambles out of the dark pool and squats on the ground, wrapping it around herself, messing with her hair, trying to work out tangles. She curses under her breath when her fingers snarl at them. Dana slowly, cautiously stands and makes her way over to her. “Let me.”

“No,” Arya snaps, jerking away, but Dana kneels down beside her and tentatively puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“Let me,” Dana says again, in a gentler voice. “Alright? Your hair might be short, but I’ll wager it doesn’t get brushed much, does it? You’re lucky it’s not thick, like mine. That’s when it’s a real pain to work through.” 

She carefully begins to comb her fingers through it, and for a few moments thinks the girl is about to wrench away, or even hit her, but Arya seems to ease up gradually, and after a few minutes says in a raw, small little voice, “My mother had thick hair.”

Dana wants to say, ‘Your mother still has thick hair, she’s likely not dead, she’s too valuable as a hostage for the Freys to kill’, but nothing good can come of that. Instead she says, “Yes. She did. I always thought she was very beautiful, when I… when I first saw her. She looked like a lady out of a story, with her long red hair and her blue eyes.”

“I never looked like a lady,” Arya says. This is the most Dana has heard her speak, at least to her, since she first saw her by the light of the fire. Perhaps she finds it easier because she does not have to look at Dana. “That’s how I got away. Yoren cut my hair.” She sounds far more bitter than any child should.

“Who is Yoren?” Dana dares to ask, holding her breath.

“A man from the Night’s Watch,” Arya says after a moment. “He was in the city to recruit more men, and he… he found me when they were….” She stops talking again. “He cut my hair,” she says. “I didn’t want him to. I thought he was killing me.”

“Did you like your hair long?” Dana is slightly surprised. She would have thought a boyish little thing like Arya would have been thrilled to see some locks sheared off.

Arya shrugs curtly. “No. Maybe. It never looked right, anyways. It’s stupid. I don’t care how it looks. I have to keep it short now, else I might start to look a girl again.”

“You won’t have to be Edd Snow forever,” Dana says, as she works through yet another knot. “You know? When… when we’ve rescued Nell and defeated the Freys and the Lannisters, you can be a girl again. You can be Lady Arya. And you can grow your hair out as long as you like.” She pauses, then adds, “I don’t like my hair short, either. I was always a little vain about it. I like how it looks so long. But mayhaps I ought to cut it too. I dress like a man now anyways.”

“You don’t look like a man,” Arya points out flatly. “You still walk like a lady. And talk like one.”

Dana exhales. “So I do. It’s a hard habit to break, acting the way you were brought up. I’m sorry. I think… I think it must have been very hard for you, to have to pretend to be a boy to escape, when you only ever knew how to be a girl.”

“I wasn’t good at being a girl,” Arya snaps, “I- I have hands like a blacksmith and a face like a horse. Septa always said-,” She stops herself again. “She’s dead, I think. The Lannisters killed her.”

“Lots of people are dead,” Dana agrees. “But we’re not. That has to mean something, do you think? Do you still pray to the gods, Arya?”

“Yes,” Arya says, suspiciously. “Why?”

“I want to think they spared me for a reason,” it is Dana’s turn to shrug, even as her eyes sting with tears. “Because I feel guilty that I’ve gone free while others were captured or killed. I think… I think you might feel the same, sometimes?”

There is a long pause. She’s done working through Arya’s short hair. The girl turns around, and her grey eyes are big and terribly sad under that furrowed brow in the torchlight. “Yoren said he’d take me to Winterfell. Then Ser Amory’s men came and killed everyone at Gods Eye. Then the Mountain’s Men took us to Harrenhal.” Her throat bobs and she licks her lips. “I ran with Gendry and Hot Pie. Long Jeyne says you saw him at the inn. And Gendry went to the Crossroads to smith there. I hate him,” but her voice trembles so. 

“Then the Brotherhood caught us. We were so close to Riverrun. I didn’t know how close we were. I could have gone home, but they brought me back here to Lord Beric, and the Hound, and the Hound killed him, but Lord Beric came back, and then they meant to bring me to Riverrun, but Robb and Mother had gone off to the Twins, and I told them the Blackfish wouldn’t know what I looked like, I only met him once when I was very little, and- and then the Hound took me, but when we got to the Twins everyone was dead or dying or in the river and some men chased us and- and he killed them all but he got hurt and he kept getting sicker and more hurt and by the time we got down to the Red Fork he could barely sit a horse and Harry Karstark was fighting Flement Brax and then some scout found us, and-,”

She is heaving more than speaking now, and Dana moves and pulls her close, wet and cold and bony as she is, and tucks the small, brittle body against her own. “But you’re safe now. That’s all that matters.”

“I don’t want to be safe, I want to go home,” Arya says in a voice just shy of a sob. “I just wanted to go to Riverrun and find Robb and Mother. And Robb doesn’t- he says he knows me but he doesn’t, he doesn’t, and I don’t know him, he’s different-,”

“It’s alright,” Dana rubs her back carefully. “It’s alright. You’ve been very brave, but… but you’re not alone anymore.”

“Yes I am,” Arya jerks away, wiping at her eyes angrily. “I am! Everyone who says they’d stay keeps leaving! I’m supposed to have a pack! I’m a wolf!”

“I’ll be your pack,” Dana says quietly.

Arya glares at her. “You’re a liar. Everyone says that and then it ends up being lies and they leave anyways.”

“I don’t have anywhere left to go but where you’re going,” Dana tells her. “So I’m not leaving, because I can’t. I need to stay with you and… and Robb and the Brotherhood and the Karstarks and whoever is left, and save Nell and your lady mother and the princess.”

Arya looks at her intently, as if searching her for signs of lies, then gives a small nod. “Alright.”

“Alright?” Dana tries to smile, although it falls flat on her face. She rubs at her eyes. “Do you know what I heard today? Tywin Lannister is dead.”

Arya stares, then gives the barest hint of a smile. “Good. He was never on my list, though.”

“You have a list?” Dana stands up with a groan, helping the little girl to her feet.

“Yes,” Arya retorts defensively. “When I- when I pray. You know.”

“I know,” Dana says, although she has never prayed for anyone’s death. Perhaps she should start. “The people you pray to die, do they?”

“Sometimes,” Arya slips out of her grip once again, and pads over barefoot to snatch up her swordbelt. 

Dana sleeps beside her and Grey Wind after that; Arya is not necessarily friendly, but she is nowhere near as hostile, either, and she seems to brighten slightly when she sees Dana in a crowd or coming out of the mouth of a tunnel. Dana does not ask about the sword, and if she’s had to use it. The answer is likely yes. If she couldn’t use it, she would have lost it by now, or she might really be dead, floating facedown in some river. When Arya wants to tell her, if she ever does, she will tell her. In the meantime, mayhaps it’s for the best that she can start to feel somewhat like a child again, although she never plays with the other children of Hollow Hill.

The only youth Dana has ever seen Arya interact with is pale-haired Ned Dayne, who they say is really the Lord of Starfall, that fabled Dornish castle, and who used to be Lord Beric’s squire. They must have had some sort of falling-out, for whenever Ned tries to speak to her Arya seems to pull faces or make some excuse or simply just walk away, while he stares forlornly after her like a kicked puppy. He is sweet enough to Dana, however, chattering on about his sister Allyria and going on about all the good the ‘knights of the Brotherhood’ have done for the Riverlands. But whenever Stoneheart or Karstark are mentioned, she sees the doubt in those deep blue eyes. He’s not alone. She’s doubtful too. It seems a miracle that they even made it here, but now what? The Brotherhood is a band of outlaws; a massive one, to be sure, with connections and hidden support and hideaways everywhere, but it is not an army. Harry Karstark cannot think to line them up in formations and march them off to Riverrun.

But she doesn’t know what he means to do, because no one tells her anything. Dana is not a soldier, not a commander, and more precisely, not a man. Once they reached Hollow Hill she was neatly shoved aside to join the rest of the women in cooking and cleaning and washing, and most day she’s so busy with chores or keeping track of Arya that she doesn’t have time to even think about it. But the weeks stretch on all the same, and other news trickles in from the outside world, which now seems like an entirely different life, up above the ground, far away from this sanctuary. Lysa Tully is dead and the Vale is in an uproar. They crowned the little lion cub king and wed him to twice-widowed Margaery the Maid. Stannis Baratheon ran away to hide up at the Wall and save his strength for winter.

In the end Dana contemplates who might be the easiest to crack, and turns the full force of her persuasive powers on poor Oly Frey, which really means incessant nagging and pleading with him. Finally, he succumbs, mostly because on this particular evening she is holding his dinner hostage, refusing to ladle any stew into his wooden bowl and glowering. “They’re moving them south to the siege,” he admits. 

“Who?” Dana demands. “Nell? Lady Catelyn?”

“Both, the Paeges claim. They also claim there’s some plot afoot with the Vances- I’m not getting into it here. Come find me after dinner.” He thrusts his bowl at her impatiently, and she narrows her eyes but gives him his stew all the same.

Later, in a deserted cavern stairwell, Olyvar leans tiredly against the damp wall and closes his eyes, folding his arms across his narrow chest. “Ryman and Black Walder think they can break the siege with Queen Donella and Lady Catelyn, if they use them against the Blackfish. They kept Edmure back; they won’t give him up until they get a son out of him so they can try to fight for a claim to Riverrun once it’s won.”

“Then this is perfect,” Dana is so excited she almost loses her balance on the earthen, crumbly steps. “We can rescue them while they’re being moved-,”

“No,” says Olyvar. “That’s not the plan. The siege has to be broken. Even if the Brotherhood sent men up to try to save them, the Freys could just push them back straight into their allies.”

“So we’re just going to let them be carted off-,”

“No,” says Olyvar, “Harry Karstark didn’t bring all of his men here. Most, yes. But he sent some north up to Oldstones to hide out there and harry the siege of Seagard, and some west to pester the Brackens sieging Raventree.”

“How many is some?” Dana scowls

“At least a hundred to each siege. And the Brotherhood has got some man of theirs treating with another outlaw.” He gives a thin little smile. “My cousin Aegon.”

“Aegon Frey?” Dana almost wants to laugh; the idea of a Frey named Aegon-

“He goes by another name now, Bloodborn.” Olyvar grimaces slightly as if to demonstrate what he thinks of that. “He’s hardly trustworthy, but he does hate our house. They couldn’t afford to spare much more than a token force to siege Seagard. If he agrees to bring his men-”

“If Seagard’s freed, then there’s nothing to stop the Mallisters from coming down and blocking off the path back up to the Twins.”

“Yes,” says Olyvar. “We want them to bring the women down, so they can’t take them back up again. Riverrun’s much closer to here than the Twins, after all.”

Dana breaks into her first genuine grin in what feels like months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was like pulling teeth for two reasons: I'm still trying to get used to Dana's POV, and I'm not at all confident in my ability to write Arya. Initially it was going to be more of a breakdown of the Brotherhood's plans, but that felt somewhat unrealistic for Dana to have all this information, and I also want to leave some sense of suspense, which doesn't really work if we know exactly what everyone has planned.
> 
> 1\. It's very cliche to start with a flashback to childhood storytime, but I just think the Warg King is really cool and wish we heard more about the old legends and stories in ASOIAF. Some very obvious allusions there with a shapeshifting king living underground, a King of Winter, some less-than-heroic Stark history, and talk about skins and monsters and 'bad blood'.
> 
> 2\. We don't really see Robb/Stoneheart/whatever you would like to call him in this chapter for a reason. Dana is obviously terrified of him and has difficulty thinking of him as 'Robb' at all, preferring to avoid even thinking much about him. There are some executions going on, but Robb is not riding out with the immediate frequency that Lady Stoneheart was to kill Freys and/or their allies, mostly because they can't afford the Freys or Lannisters realizing that a guy they're pretty sure they murdered is roaming around hanging or beheading people. 
> 
> 3\. Arya's identity is still not widely known. It's weird to write her after not seeing her in this story for so long, and this Arya is in a very difficult place. She feels very betrayed and angry by so many people leaving her, she's not fond of the Brotherhood, she's finally been reunited with Robb, but he's obviously not the boy she remembers. She does eventually give Dana the brief rundown on what's happened to her since King's Landing, but does not mention being Roose's cupbearer, all the killings, and the overall abuse she's suffered, which I thought made sense given her lack of trust. 
> 
> 4\. Sandor is still recovering from wounds he took coming back down from the Twins with Arya. The Brotherhood has some... shall we say... 'mixed feelings' about him at present, as do Dana and Arya.
> 
> 5\. Last chapter, we heard at the very end that something bad had gone down at the Siege of Seagard involving Aegon 'Bloodborn' Frey. In this chapter, we see that Harry Karstark had sent some men up there to try to harass the siege camp, and the Brotherhood had sent someone to treat with Bloodborn. We will hear more specifically about what happened with that next chapter, when we're back to Nell again.


	50. Donella XXXIX

300 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell quickly realizes that a slow siege is in truth not much different than any market or fair gathered in anticipation of some great tourney. True, she has never been to a tourney, and likely never will, but she has read about all the famous ones, and they always were great centers of commerce and trade, not just knightly pursuits. For these southerners, she thinks, this is like waiting for an interminable tourney that has no set beginning. That might change at any moment, but after two months of this, with only a few minor scraps of fighting every few weeks, what is there to do but wait? The men are hardly going to assemble themselves into their armor, climb into the saddle, and sit there for hours every day on end, not daring to take their eyes off the small castle. They are tired. They are bored. The weather grows colder and harsher by the week. 

And when the Blackfish heard news that he was being marched on from multiple directions, he gathered every remaining bit of produce and grain and goods available into the keep and ejected the hundreds of smallfolk that Edmure and Nell had permitted to seek shelter so many months ago. All those people, mostly old men, women, and children. Nell tells herself that she had given them their word as their queen that they would have sanctuary. Had Riverrun fallen under siege from Tywin’s forces before or during the Battle of the Fords, surely she would have abided by it. Queens must keep their word, for better or worse. She would not have forced them out to conserve as much food and supplies as possible. But yes, she would have been sorely tempted, of course she would have. 

But the point remains, all those people fled to the nearest villages, and when it became apparent that the westermen and Freys were settling in for a siege, not raping and pillaging the surrounding areas at will (although Nell is sure there is some of that on occasion), they swallowed their pride and set to trading and business as usual. The camps are not just tents and tents full of proud westermen, scheming Freys, or bitter river lords. There are plenty of smallfolk present as well, hawking wares or volunteering to cook or clean or forage for coin or just some food, there are little children, boys and girls, running past her with heaving pails of water or saddlebags, there are gawky adolescent squires sitting on overturned barrels and playing dice or trying their hand at fishing, and there are women. 

Gods be good, there are so many women. Nell has certainly used the line ‘I marched south with soldiers’ in her defense or a show of her humility and grit plenty of times, and while she was certainly not sitting cozily in a wheelhouse or spending nights in lavish inns, nor was she making camp among the common soldiers or bold young lordlings and knights, either. And once they reached Riverrun, of course, Robb took his men and left her behind with his uncle, and so her experience with what these camps are like is rather limited. But there are so many women. 

Camp followers, they’re called, or whores, or bedwarmers, or war-wives, or whatever you please, but she had not expected to see so many. Some are old crones stirring pots over fires, watching with beady eyes, others are middle-aged women with a child on each breast and another pawing at their legs, wailing, others are young, Nell’s age or even younger- seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, even fourteen or thirteen- children, really, dressed in rags, helping their men into or out of armor, sweeping out tents, chasing off stray dogs with pots and pans, tending to horses. Nell had not been there more than a few hours, that first day, being escorted along to Genna Lannister’s tent, when she’d paused, something about one of the women nearby catching her eye. 

It took her a moment to understand why. She knew that girl. Had spoken to her, even, what seemed like ages ago, when she’d once held a women’s court in the godswood of Riverrun. She doesn’t remember her name. Is that a shame or a solace? She’d told Nell that Lannister soldiers had pressed her and her cousins into service, dumping corpses into the river, wading in with poles to push the bodies downstream when the current would not move them immediately. She does not recall her name, but Nell remembers her face, young and plump and glossy with tears. That same girl was here now, sitting in the dirt next to a tent-pole, heavy with child, polishing some soldier’s helm for him. She looks up as Nell passes on horseback, and the dull recognition on her face stings the most. 

That says it all. Nell listened to her all those months ago and promised her justice and safety, and now that little girl, who can be no more than fourteen or fifteen, sits there in the dirt polishing some Lannister knight’s helm, pregnant with some other man’s bastard child, watching her former queen be trotted past as a less-than-glorified hostage. As Nell looks her way, a filthy toddler comes running up to the girl, crying over a bloody knee, their torn smock covered in dried sick. Nell watches her put down the helmet and slowly, painfully, struggle to her feet, and then she has to look away. Somehow this is more shameful to her than it would have been had they stripped her naked and driven her through the camp with dogs barking at her heels, and the Lannisters don’t even know it.

Marbrand certainly doesn’t. For all intents and purposes, he seems to be treating this little excursion as if it were just that. A charming tour of the countryside. An idyllic afternoon stroll. An excellent conversation starter. It’s not mindless chatter- the man’s obviously not a fool, just slightly uncomfortable and clearly used to being around women in much less… tense… circumstances- but it’s close. Nell barely comprehends a word of it, but fortunately, saying very little beyond, “Yes, Ser” and “No, Ser” and “Thank you, Ser” plays into her part very well. It would certainly raise his suspicion were she to be gaily conversing with him as if nothing were wrong at all. 

She keeps her head meekly bowed and her lips pressed together, and focuses on trying to develop a map of the camp in her head. Where are they relative to the castle’s gates and the intersection of the rivers? How far from one siege camp to the other? Is this within shouting distance of the next? If a fire were to start here, how long until Ryman’s men over in the Whispering Wood took notice? How long until Yew and Ruttiger’s knights smelt it on the wind? How often do people ride over from one camp to boom to the next? How many ravens in the air is normal? Do they have a routine? When do the guard rotations occur? Are there any loopholes, grey areas, problems of management or efficiency gone unnoticed? Their focus is on keeping anyone from leaving Riverrun, not from leaving the siege itself. She has to rely on that.

When they finally come to a halt outside one of the larger and grander tents, Nell just barely catches herself from readily slipping down from the saddle herself, as she has for years and years now. Even were she out riding with Robb, while he would usually make some motion to, after she had grown comfortable in his company it was something of a custom for her to jump down herself, before he had time to reach her horse- Roddy, she thinks, and feels sick to her stomach- and offer her his hand himself. The first time she’d done it, not thinking, she’d hesitated for a moment, concerned it would rile his pride, make him think she was derisive of his manhood in some sense, that she did not care to wait for his assistance. If anything, Robb had seemed to find it amusing, even charming, just as he had found her look of disgust when the topic of side-saddle riding had come up.

Now she takes her cue from her goodmother, and like Catelyn, waits for the men to dismount first. Marbrand comes round her docile little filly- how Nell misses the imposing height she always had atop Roddy, for he was such a fine warhorse, men in their fields would stop and whistle when she went cantering by on him at Barrowton, ask her how she coaxed a wild young stallion like that to be biddable for a lady- and puts his hands on her waist and neatly lifts her down from the saddle as though she weighed no more than a doll. There is nothing untoward or lecherous about it; he spares her a polite smile and no more. 

It reminds her of how much older he is. When she was still a naive girl of eleven or twelve, before she’d ever been betrothed to Robb, the idea of being promised to a man like Addam Marbrand- a northman, of course it would have been, but someone older, mature, already well past his majority- well, it would have excited her in some ignorant, girlish sense. She would have found it terribly thrilling, the idea of it, of someone experienced and world-weary and able to grow a full beard before she’d even flowered. On her own wedding night, she had stood shivering in that bedchamber with Robb, looked at his young, earnest face, still slightly rounded from childhood, bare as a babe’s, and wished he’d been older- eighteen, twenty, twenty five, anything but fifteen. _Gods, I wish you were older_ , she’d thought, and then they’d gotten on with it.

She would give anything to see that boy, two years her junior, smiling with trepidation at her once more. 

They’re led into the suffocating confines of the tent, and Nell comes face to face with a wild-maned lion and a smug kitchen cat. Her first thought is that she had not thought Daven Lannister was so old, and she can see from the look on Catelyn’s face that she is similarly caught off guard, but after a few moments it becomes apparent that he is not, in fact that old, only growing out his beard to such an extent that at first he seems it. Daven Lannister really cannot be much older than Edmure- twenty five or twenty six, she’d say, younger than Marbrand but old enough to have been named Warden of the West without raising many eyebrows. He is tall; his sheer height reminds her of the Kingslayer, although his shoulders are broader and he has a bulkier, stockier build than Jaime Lannister ever had, even in his prime. His eyes are hazel, not green, and his hair is yellow as straw and thick as fur. His nose is short and upturned, incongruous with the rest of his chiseled face, glowering from under all that hair. 

“What’s this, then?” he demands gruffly. “You promised me a look at my bride, Marbrand, not yours and Banefort’s,” he spares Nell and Catelyn little more than a derisive glance, as if hoping they might take the hint and assume a suitably frightened disposition. Nell thinks this is a man who likes having the sense that he is intimidating more than he actually enjoys intimidating people.

“Now Daven,” says a much smoother voice reprovingly, “is that any way to greet a lady?”

Nell stands by her descriptions. Daven is the snarling lion with the wild mane, prowling the length of the tent and testing out his roar, and Genna is the smug old kitchen cat, rich and fat from years of skimming leftovers and spare ribs and legs from plates and trays, sunning herself in a dusty windowsill, preening at her luxurious coat and licking at a pink little paw. She had expected to see an older, more severe version of Cersei Lannister, from her admittedly faded memories of the woman’s visit to Winterfell. 

But Genna looks nothing like her niece, aside from sharing the same thick golden blonde tresses and rich green eyes. Where Cersei was tall and willowy, she is much shorter and fatter, although she had admittedly no trace of grey to her hair, and little to no wrinkles to her face or neck, even though the woman must be over fifty. She has a square, wide jaw that she may or may not share with her nephew, a truly impressive sets of hips, and a bosom that is very much not disguised by the cut of her deep yellow gown. 

“Lady Stark,” she says graciously to both Nell and Catelyn, not bothering with individual greetings, and without looking away from either of them, barks at a blonde squire smirking in a corner in a corner, “Fetch them a seat at once, Ty. Seven help us, they’ve been riding for hours, have you taken leave of your wits, boy?” Tsking under her breath, she straightens slightly and as if commanding a dog, jerks her heard from an irate Daven to the table. “Either pour the wine yourself or have one of your idiot squires do it, nephew. I imagine we’ll all be in need of a drink for this. Addam, my dear man, always a pleasure-,”

Nell watches Addam Marbrand dutifully incline his head so Genna Lannister can kiss his cheek without having to rise up on her tiptoes, and it immediately becomes clear who she will really need to watch out for her here. Not Marbrand, not Daven Lannister, but this woman. Gods damn it all. Why couldn’t Emmon Frey’s wife have stayed at the Rock, or gone to King’s Landing to try to talk some sense into her niece? No, instead Nell will have to contend with this one, who it would seem little escapes the notice of. “Lady Lannister,” she says, because there is not a hint of House Frey’s colors or sigil in this tent, and she’s heard many times that Tytos Lannister was the laughingstock of the West when he foolishly agree to wed his only daughter to a second son of the Twins. “Thank you for your hospitality. It was a very long journey south.”

Genna smiles widely, although it never reaches her eyes. This is Tion Frey’s mother, Nell thinks. Neither Nell nor Robb slew the boy, but he was a squire imprisoned under their purview when he died. Her own uncle helped murder him. She does not touch the wine she is given; nor does Catelyn. “Well,” says Genna, once they are all settled. “That’s much better, isn’t it? A long journey indeed. Ty told me Black Walder had you both bound to the saddle. I always found him very disagreeable. Even for a Frey.”

Neither Nell nor Catelyn say a word in response.

Genna takes a long sip of her wine. “My mother was a Marbrand, did you know, Lady Donella? Ser Addam’s aunt Jeyne. So it seems a Stark and a Lannister might be nearly kin at last. A pity it had to come to this. So many innocent lives lost, and for what? Our last terms were rather generous. Had your late husband accepted them, House Tully would still hold Riverrun, and House Stark might yet rule from Winterfell.”

“As far as I am aware, House Tully continues to hold Riverrun, which is why we are speaking here, and not in my father’s solar,” Catelyn says coldly, and Genna Lannister’s smile vanishes.

“I recall the terms,” Nell speaks before Genna can retort. “Your nephew Tyrion was very clear. Two Lannisters are worth four northmen in any season,” she recites tonelessly. “Of course, he could not have known about Oxcross at the time,” she adopts an innocent, tentative glance at Daven Lannister, who reddens with fury, slamming a fist down on the table. 

“The Young Wolf’s craven ambush took my father from me, and then his bloody _honor_ took my vengeance. I’ll not be needled about it by his widow-,”

“Mind your tongue, Daven,” Marbrand snaps. “You are addressing my betrothed. The girl meant no offense, surely- she was only speaking true.”

Catelyn had wordlessly reached over and placed a cold hand on top of Nell’s when Daven’s outburst began, and now the big man seems almost chastened, although arguably more so by the look his aunt is giving him then by Addam Marbrand’s sharp words. “I apologize,” he says brusquely. “All this waiting makes men short of temper. If Ryman Frey means to rouse the Blackfish from his little pond, he ought to have brought down Ser Edmure, not two women. It’s cowardly-,”

“Never fear,” Genna cuts in again, her smile returned, only razor sharp now. “We certainly have no intention of letting him set either up you up on a gibbet. How would that look? The Freys may make promises they have no intention of keeping, but House Lannister does not. As I said, we are to be close to family soon enough.” She glances at Catelyn almost curiously, as if searching for kernel of rebellion. “I know Lord Quenten. A grim man, to be sure, but I’ve never met a Banefort who wasn’t. Their sigil is practically the Stranger. Nevertheless, you can be sure he will treat you well enough, my lady. And in exchange for your good behavior, I give you my word I will not change too much of the furnishing of Riverrun. Although, you could not fault me for having the tower you kept my son in, where he was slaughtered in his sleep, demolished.” She takes another sip of her wine, raising her chin slightly. “Why, all three of us here know what it is like to be a grieving mother. It seems all we women do in war, grieve what has been lost to us.”

Before she can say anymore, some messenger comes in with word from Ser Ryman’s camp, and Genna Lannister, being no fool, has Nell and Catelyn escorted out before any reports can be given. Nell is unbothered. Daven Lannister cannot hold his tongue; he will doubtless speak of it again, away from his aunt, and either Perwyn will hear something and get word to her and Catelyn, or Arwyn herself will hear of it from her betrothed upon meeting him for the first time. Arwyn, who is just fifteen, easily a decade Daven’s junior. He does not seem as callous as Black Walder, but nor does he seem the sort to be the most patient or gentle of husbands. But she should not care about Arwyn Frey’s marital prospects. That time is very much over. 

Catelyn and her will share a tent during their time here; it is less than a minute’s walk from Addam Marbrand’s, it is guarded at all times, even when they are not inside, and which appropriately furnished, a cursory search makes it evident absolutely nothing inside it could be used as a weapon. Marbrand may comes across as mild as milk, but he is no fool either. Yet if she and Catelyn speak in hushed tones, Nell is reasonably sure that combined with the constant clamor and noise of the camp around them, the guards outside will not be able to hear anything beyond faint murmurs from them. 

“What did you make of Genna?” she asks, wrenching off her wet boots. 

Catelyn has sat down on her cot, and is staring blankly for a moment at the side of the tent, before she pulls her gaze away. “Clever,” she says after a moment, “but not nearly as clever as she’d like to think. She is only here because of her husband. He wants Riverrun, and he is not willing to wait for it. They are here to put pressure on Lannister and Marbrand to take it all the sooner. But there is little they can do unless they wish to introduce ballistas or ram the gates. And they’ve no love for Ryman Frey, any of them.”

“Good,” says Nell curtly. “All the better that they are not comfortable in the bed they’ve made together. They need the Freys’ numbers but they cannot stand any of their commanders. It is better than we could have hoped for. They may tear each other apart within weeks, or offend the Freys to the point where Ryman takes his men straight back to the Twins. Then what?”

“My uncle will likely have enough foodstuffs to last him the rest of the year, if not even longer,” Catelyn shakes her head, “and winter will be here within a few months, if not sooner. They will have to storm the castle sooner or later. A siege cannot be maintained during the winter, once there’s snow on the ground and the rivers have frozen over”

“Then they’re running out of time,” says Nell. “If it comes down to destroying the castle to put an end to House Tully, they will. The river lords hold out hope so long as the Blackfish endures.”

“I saw Lord Piper in the crowd before,” Catelyn takes off her cloak. “And he saw me. I think if you ran out there now and called for their swords, many of the rivermen would still rise for you.”

“I am worthless to them without Robb and without my daughter,” Nell almost laughs, and not out of amusement. “And my father led the slaughter of many of their sons, brothers, and cousins. I can do nothing without the support of Ser Brynden or the Vances. And nothing without you. You are Hoster’s daughter, Edmure’s sister. They have not forgotten that.”

“Any love they ever had for me went with the wind when I released the Kinglsayer,” Catelyn’s voice turns hoarse and raw with pain. “And now- better I had slew him in that cell with Brienne’s sword than sent him forth. He promised me the girls, and let them wed Sansa to his brother. And Brienne must be dead by now, I fear. I sent that girl to her death. She was little more than a child.” 

“You can’t know that.”

But Catelyn will say no more, and so Nell goes to sit by her, and holds onto her, and in the back of her mind pretends she is Barbrey. Embracing them often feels the same; they have very similar builds, tall and slim and sharp-shouldered and elbowed. But Barbrey’s hair always smelt of spice; cinnamon and cloves, and Catelyn’s hair smells of river reeds and smoke from the campfires burning all around them outside. 

They have the truth of Seagard soon enough, anyways, delivered in scattered whispers from Arwyn, Zia, and Fair Walda. Seagard’s siege has been broken; it was a tenuous one to begin with, for the Freys were tight-fisted and only spared five hundred men to keep the fort town at bay, praying that would be enough and that the Mallisters would be too craven to try to break free of it, knowing they’d have no reinforcements from any of the other river lords. Yet they did have reinforcements; apparently the Greatjon Umber, whom it is well known had escaped the ambush of Robb’s men with at least one of his sons, Cregard, rallied broken men and soldiers on the run alike, and together with yet another outlaw company- there seem to be dozens of them roaming the Riverlands now- attacked the Freys in the wee hours of the morning, splintered the siege by imitating the howls of wolves with Bloodborn’s fierce dogs, and spooked men and horses alike. The Mallisters were on their guard, took notice of what was going on, and came charging out in a final sortie. Three hundred Freys are dead, caught between outlaws, northmen, Mallisters, and the sea. The remaining fled back to the Twins, and Old Walder is now demanding Ryman Frey return with his men, for he doesn’t want to weaken his own garrison any further by sending more men from the Twins after them.

Yet the Mallisters have wisely not launched a counter attack on the Twins- they haven’t the numbers for it anyways, Zia swears- and are instead marching two thousand men down along the coast of Ironman’s Bay. Everyone outside Riverrun is in a right state over it; torn between eagerness for a fight, although it will take at least a fortnight for the Mallisters’ host to arrive, or incensed at the Freys’ haplessness. 

“Ryman wants to take his two thousand out of the Whispering Wood and up to meet them, but Lannister and Marbrand won’t hear of it,” Walda reports with a thin smile. “Black Walder’s like to go charging up to challenge them himself, he’s so angry. My uncle Raymund and Martyn Rivers were both captured.”

Nell is so pleased she could have kissed her. Instead she says, “They’ll want to resolve this siege before the Mallisters get here, then. No more waiting.”

“Perwyn will convince them to let him treat with the Blackfish,” Walda says confidently. “Just wait and see. You know, he’s not very handsome, but he’s not stupid, either. He’s got Black Walder convinced he’s too craven to want to break the siege with swords instead of words.”

“Well, Black Walder has never put much stock in settling things peacefully,” Nell mutters. Not that Perwyn really means to settle things peacefully, either, but Black Walder doesn’t know that.

She is so thrilled she finds it difficult to sleep that night at all; she and Catelyn stay up late speaking quietly in the relative privacy of their tent, and rather than immediately changing for bed Nell begs a walk off of Benfrey Frey, Perwyn and Roslin’s brother. She knows that at the very least he is aware of their plans, if not wholly committed, but she’s been reassured multiple times that he will not turn on his own siblings, not with their lives at stake. But that does not mean he is necessarily fond of her, either. 

Nell senses he’d much rather they put all this to bed and see her miserably carted off to Ashemark, and Catelyn to the Banefort. She doesn’t bother trying not to hold it against him, and instead leads him on a wheeling walk through the darkened camp, for she’ll need to get her bearings around it the dark, and not just the light- chances are any escape attempt will not be happening in broad daylight at high noon, after all. 

If Benfrey suspects she has ulterior motives, he doesn’t say anything, although he is distracted by a group of washerwomen bathing naked in the moonlight reflected on the Red Fork. Soon it will be far too cold at night for any thought of plunging into the river, but Nell almost envies them for a moment. She hates to bathe now, hates to even look at her body nude. It reminds her of the milk drying up in her breasts, the stretchmarks on her belly and thighs, the reminders of a missing child. When Benfrey realizes she is watching with him, he reddens like the young man he is, and starts to lead her back to her tent. They are nearing it when Nell catches a glimpse of a familiar face in the torchlight, and stiffens to a halt, as does Benfrey, who mutters a curse under his breath as Addam Marbrand approaches.

“My lady, it’s late to be out for a walk,” Marbrand says, giving Benfrey a hard look. “Nor is it always safe. We’ve lost six men this week alone to desertion or outlaws. A siege camp after dark is no place for a woman of gentle birth.”

“Ser Benfrey was escorting me,” Nell replies more calmly than she feels; the last things she needs is to provoke Marbrand’s suspicions, inadvertently or not. “I assure you he is a very able protector, my lord. But I’ve kept him from his sleep for too long. Thank you, Ser.”

Benfrey inclines his head to her swiftly, and walks quickly away, sparing a short glance over his shoulder at Marbrand, whose hair looks more bronze than copper in the light of his lantern. Nell wonders how she looks. Pale and tired and weak, most likely. Not a threat in the least. It’s for the best. She doesn’t want him to see her as a threat, she wants him to see her as a girl who knows very little of war or strategy or death. “Your concern is very kind, Ser,” she says, when it becomes clear Marbrand is not just going to send her off to bed as well like a misbehaving child. “I… you’ve been very gracious to me and my… my goodmother.”

“You are highborn ladies,” he replies evenly. “It is my duty.” He leads her into the nearest pavilion, which is quiet and almost deserted, aside from a few squires speaking quietly and drinking at the other end. “And you have both comported yourselves well. I confess I did not know what to expect when I received word of your arrival. There have been all sorts of rumors.”

“What sort of rumors, Ser?” Nell tries to sound concerned for her womanly reputation.

He exhales in bemusement. “Nothing I attach any value to. Witchcraft, blood sacrifices to your old gods, packs of wolves reaving like Ironborn… Men will invent all kinds of fantasies to amuse themselves when the nights grow long. You should be commended for your composure, nonetheless. I worried I might have to console a weeping child.”

“I am- I _was_ a women wed, Ser,” Nell says more sharply than she means to, already chastising herself internally. “I am mother to a child of my own, even though she was taken from me. I have not been a weepy little girl for some time now.”

Marbrand looks at her for a moment, then gives a short nod. “No,” he says, “you are not. You need not keep up the ruse, my lady. I know you’ve no love for me. I would not expect it. Your husband has not yet been dead half a year. They say you still keep his favor.”

Unbidden, Nell’s hand goes to her left wrist. How did he know that? The sleeves of her gown are long, he cannot see the old tattered pink silk favor she gave Robb, which Roose returned to her, tied around her wrist. One of her maids must have glimpsed it, and reported back to him. She will have to be more careful. “He was my husband,” she says. “I pledged to love and obey him, as all wives do their men. He treated me with kindness and respect. He loved our daughter. Surely you will not begrudge me some sentiment, Ser, even if I am pledged to you now.”

“Of course not,” Marbrand is quick to reassure her, and to her surprise he looks almost sheepish for an instant himself. Good. The man is not made out of stone, or ice, or iron. He can be bent. She means to bend him thoroughly. “I did not mean to imply that I would deny you your… more pleasant memories, so long as you understand that you cannot be seen in any way to continue to align yourself with House Stark once we are wed. Do you understand, my lady? You will be a Marbrand of Ashemark then. My sisters will welcome you, but there will be expectations of loyalty upon you.”

“I know what men expect of their wives,” Nell says simply. “Will you have me convert to the Faith of the Seven, my lord?”

“No,” he says, although that gives him pause. “We have a godswood, albeit likely not what you are used to. But our children will be brought up to worship the Seven, not your gods. I would not ask you to forget your daughter, either, but understand that her fate is not determined by me. I cannot demand your father send her back to you. But perhaps once the winter has come and gone, if peace permits us, we could visit her at the Dreadfort. And I would never stop you from writing to her.” He likely means that to sound encouraging, reassuring, hopeful. 

Nell feels none of those things. “As you say, Ser.” She steels herself, and then adds, in a small, tentative lie, “You should know, Ser, that Lady Catelyn and I both begged my late husband to make peace with the Lannisters. I never sought to be queen, let alone in open rebellion to the Iron Throne. I loved him for his good heart, not his family name or claim to kingship.” 

Perhaps a fraction of that is true. She wanted peace, but she never begged Robb for it, and she would never have agreed with him submitting to the Lannisters. It’s true that she never wanted to be queen, but she came to quite enjoy the rebelling bit when she was seeing a queen’s justice done and pushing back westermen from the fords. Yet the last line is the most true, she supposes. When she did come to love Robb, it was not for who he was or who he’d become but for how he’d treated her and how he’d loved her in turn. If only she had loved him a little sooner.

“He may have had a good heart,” Marbrand acknowledges, “despite his treason. You seem to have been a fine wife to him. In time, I hope you may be a fine wife to me, and myself a suitable husband,” he gives her a small smile. “Stark would have been better served to send you and his mother home to Winterfell, rather than take you to war with him. This is no place for a woman. Lady Genna's... fierceness aside, you are the fairer sex. Your wisdom is no less valuable, but better served for a household than a war council.” 

It takes a good deal of effort not to grab his flickering lantern and smash it across his chivalrous face. The worst of it is that she doubts he is even attempting to goad her, or to make some snide commentary on the value of letting your wife make war with you. He simply thinks he is treating her with every ounce of courtesy and gallant manners, this poor little girl who had the misfortune to marry the wrong man- the wrong boy- at the wrong time. “Of course, Ser,” she says, nodding obediently. “I look forward to overseeing a household once more. I pray your sisters will be willing to help me adjust to my new circumstances. But I am very grateful.” 

Grateful. They are all the same. They all want to hear how grateful and blessed she feels to be considered by them, even as they are crushing her underfoot. They all want a pleasant smile while she thanks them for ripping her child from her arms and selling her to another man so he might get his own children on her. 

And Marbrand is every bit the gentle southern knight; he smiles and escorts her to her tent and wishes her a good night, and the realization that she will have to do this all over again on the morrow is so deadening that the only thing that lulls her to sleep is the distant howls of some wolf pack further along the banks of the river.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How the the turn tables...
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I wanted to spend some time this chapter detailing how the siege is not just a big old 'Evil Family Reunion' but that there are a lot of innocent people present as well. There's plenty of smallfolk around, as well as river lords, hostage squires and pages, little children, and tons of camp followers, women who don't have any real options but to attach themselves to a soldier and hope for the best. Nell recognizes one of the girls present as one of the peasant women who had fled to Riverrun to escape the Mountain's Men and the other westermen raiding the Riverlands months and months ago. While Nell is still being treated reasonably well as a highborn woman, this girl is right back to where she began.
> 
> 2\. We only ever see Genna Lannister through Jaime's eyes canonically, and I think she would obviously treat her beloved nephew differently than she would Nell and Catelyn. That said, I wanted to preserve her very observant and blunt nature while not just making her a younger version of Olenna Tyrell or a smarter version of Cersei. I don't think she necessarily hates Nell and Cat for what happened to her son, but that doesn't mean she's forgotten, either, and she's taking a certain amount of pleasure in finally getting the chance to have a keep and lands of her own.
> 
> 3\. The Siege of Seagard's been broken, and the Mallisters are now on the march, much to everyone but Nell and a few other's dismay. Raymund Frey and Martyn Rivers have both been captured which means there is now some amount of leverage against the Freys still at the Twins holding Smalljon Umber and others captive. While those present at the Siege of Riverrun are not immediately flying into a panic, since they still far outnumber Jason Mallister's men, there is now a big source of tension between the Lannisters and the Freys on top of everything else, and increased pressure to resolve this siege, stat, especially with no immediate backup on the way from King's Landing in the aftermath of Tywin's death and Tyrion's escape.
> 
> 4\. So Addam may be pretty decent compared to a lot of other people in this story, but he does not at all see Nell the way Robb saw her. His attitude is basically that he is willing to give her 'the benefit of the doubt' but he doesn't want to put up with any of the acts of rebellion we see from Jeyne Westerling in canon- crying and screaming, tearing her clothes in defiance, being considered a serious flight risk, etc. Addam thinks of her as an innocent girl whose first marriage ended up as a massive mistake. He's prepared to accept her grief over Robb and her daughter, but he makes it clear he's not making her any promises of 'oh, I'll get your daughter back for you, don't worry'. Addam likely thinks he's being very reasonable and gracious with Nell here, and she is actively playing the role she believes he wants in order to get him to let his guard down and be more trusting of her. No, it's not strictly fair of her to compare Addam to someone like Roose or Walder Frey, but it's not as if circumstances have been very fair to her as of late either.


	51. Dana VII

300 AC - RAVENTREE

Dana counts it as something of a success when Arya offhandedly informs her that today is her name day. Granted, it may not be all her doing- there are plenty of factors at play beyond Dana’s forcibly cheerful greetings to the girl every morning, her insistence on sitting beside her at every meal, ostensibly to make sure she is eating properly, and laying down beside her at night, huddled together under some fresh furs Ben Flint brought back from his last hunt. It could just be that Arya’s mood has tremendously improved because they are above ground and breathing in the fresh air, as opposed to whiling their days away under some hollow hill, surrounded by miserable people bracing for winter. 

It’s not just her; everyone here at this little makeshift camp up in the hills overlooking the Siege of Raventree is in remarkably high spirits, for being so close to the enemy. Or really, the ally turned enemy. Far below them lies the foreboding castle that the Blackwoods constructed after being driven from not just the Wolfswood but the North entirely by the Starks, thousands of years before Aegon and his sisters ever came to Westeros. Legend has it that the Blackwoods were forced to swallow their pride and beg refuge and lands from the Teagues, who they would later go on to help overthrow several generations later, when the Teagues began burning godswoods and erecting septs. 

Dana was momentarily thrown when she first caught a glimpse of Raventree through the trees; the architecture is so markedly northern in design that, had she been dropped in these woods without any context, she would have reasonably assumed that she was in the North as soon as she laid eyes on this castle. Truthfully, although she would never admit something like that aloud, Raventree Hall looks a good deal like the Dreadfort in design, but with a rectangular wooden keep like Barrow Hall inside the stone walls. The black and scarlet banners of House Blackwood are defiantly flapping on in the breeze, and beyond those, the grey and white of House Stark.

The only reason she and Arya are here is because Harry Karstark took her aside a week ago and informed her brusquely that he meant to lead three hundred men out of Hollow Hill up to Raventree to regroup with the hundred Karstark men he’d left there and break the Bracken’s admittedly weak siege (they’ve barely five hundred men, everyone says, and hardly five hundred of the most enthusiastic men, given the general loathing for being in bed with the Lannisters, Lord Jonos’ obsession with getting one over on Lord Tytos Blackwood aside). The Siege of Seagard is functionally over. The Mallisters are marching down on Riverrun. The Freys are in a panicked frenzy. The westermen, Lannister and Marbrand included, will not know what hits them if they are suddenly confronted with the full might of the Riverlands. 

If the Brackens can be dealt with swiftly, the logic goes, then they can march Bracken and Blackwood men alike on Riverrun from the east, while the Mallisters and other surviving northmen come down from the north, and the Brotherhood summons all its fighting men and comes scything up from the south. It’s risky. If the Brackens have caught wind of this and manage to bring in reinforcements from Harrenhal to the southeast, or even from the siege camps around Riverrun, everything could fall apart. But everything already fell apart for them at the Twins, Dana reasons, and surely the gods are not so cruel as to pull the rug out from under them once again. The Brackens are reluctant enemies at best; everyone knows that the Freys hold Jonos Bracken’s two eldest daughters. He cannot be seen to turn cloak again for the North, but if defeated and caught squarely by Karstark, well, who could blame him for submitting once more? Dana just hopes no harm comes to Barbara or Jayne. They are her friends, and they have suffered more than enough at the hands of cruel men. 

But the real reason why she and Arya are present is because, while Harry Karstark initially intended to be the only commander present of this force, when Stoneheart made it known he would be accompanying them, who was going to deny their king? Harrion? Her cousin Ben? Daryn Hornwood? Of course not, and where… where Robb Stark goes, so must his sister, and Dana was certainly not going to let Arya be dragged off by yet another group of reckless men without any sort of guardian or caretaker. She promised Arya she would not leave her, after all, swore it to be true, and if Arya is Nell’s sister by marriage, and Nell is Dana’s sister by the forge of friendship, then Arya is near enough to her kin, and Dana would die before she let her little sister be taken from her. Much like Jeyne Heddle, who is off paying a visit to the Crossroads, where they say her own little sister, willful Willow, is running a makeshift orphanage of sorts. 

With Gendry Waters at her side, but Dana has never met this boy Gendry, who Arya doesn’t like to speak of, and will only say that he is a bastard from King’s Landing who ‘likes to hit things with his stupid hammer’ and ‘thinks he’s going to be some sort of knight master armorer but he’s only a fool apprentice and I don’t care what he says, I’m never going to call him Ser’. When Dana asked her what this Gendry looked like, and how old he was, Arya simply said that he was ‘big and dark and hairy’ but ‘just a stupid boy, he’s barely even of age and he doesn’t know what to do with a woman, that’s what the whores at the Peach said’. 

The Peach is a brothel that’s quite popular with the Brotherhood, apparently, in Stoney Sept. Dana would rather not waste much time wondering what Arya may or may not have seen going on there.

“I think it was four days ago, really,” Arya corrects herself, breaking Dana free of her tangled knot of thoughts. The sun is dipping down very low in the sky now. Below them, the distant fires of the Bracken’s siege camp are burning bright. High up here among the few trees that survived the ravaging of the surrounding land, for the Mountain’s Men put it all to light and it went up like tinder, there are no fires, just men spread out in smaller groups throughout the hillside. It reminds her of the Whispering Wood, but instead of the leaves in the trees whispering, it is the wind moaning from the cold, masked the occasional hushed murmurs. It will be soon that Harry Karstark leads the attack. He’s eager for it, she can tell; his leg hurts him less these days, and he’s even been sparring with the Hound, who seems to have recovered from the worst of his fever, although he is noticeably gaunt and aged by it. 

It must seem very funny, Dana thinks, that suddenly the likes of Sandor Clegane is judged to be less intimidating than a dead man brought back to life. She wouldn’t really know, because she is a sensible woman, and never puts herself anywhere near the man. Diminished or not, turned cloak against the Lannisters or not, Arya’s reluctant savior or not, she trusts a Clegane about as much as she trusts any Ironborn. The Hound might not be the proud rapist his monster of a brother was, but the absence of one particular atrocity from a man’s slate does not suddenly make him a hero. Arya hates him, Dana thinks, or, well, sometimes it’s hard to tell- Arya has confided that he used to be on her list of people she prayed for the old gods to destroy, but now he is not, but does that mean she hates him any less? He did save her life. 

What of it? It’s not hard to save a child’s life when you’re a man of that size carrying a sword taller than most men to boot. It’s somewhat harder, Dana thinks, to be a terribly strong and feared man who’s used to doing as he’s told, and to not kill some poor butcher’s boy or run down some screaming women whose only crime was to live in the wrong village or pledge fealty to the wrong lord. She doesn’t make it a habit, to forgive men who’ve prospered off being known as monsters. He may not have chosen those horrible scars, but he did choose the rest, time and time again. 

Then again, she is ungrateful, wayward Dana Flint, who still cannot forgive her own father, and his crimes were far less substantial than Sandor Clegane’s. So perhaps she is just trying to assure herself of her own righteousness. “You’re a woman,” Ben had snapped at her once, when she was indignant over some historical massacre they were learning about as children, “you haven’t got to make any difficult decisions in your life, so it’s hardly your place to be preaching about it, is it?”

Ben is no great monster himself, just her cousin, an overgrown prick who thinks his cock ought to be as renowned as his sword, and he’s kind enough, at times, to go out and hunt and bring back skins and pelts for his cousin and little Arya Stark to lie under at night, so they don’t catch their deaths shivering away. But sometimes she thinks he almost envies her, as if she’s lived some life of perfect idyllic peace and blissful ignorance up until now, all because she’s gone about in skirts for most of it, doing needlework and tending to crying children.

“Four days past, really?” she murmurs back to Arya. “How do you figure?”

Arya brightens at that; Dana remembers how Maester Luwin once praised her talent for mathematics; she would sit on the children’s lessons sometimes, and Arya was always the quickest with numbers, even compared to her elder siblings. Mayhaps she could learn geometry at some point. Dana is not strictly sure of what geometry is, as it’s generally only something taught to young lords with especially learned tutors who feel capable of instructing them in it, whereas most of said young lords sisters aren’t taught much past being able to do simple division and multiplication, but- Surely it has to be useful for something. Building castles or calculating ballista trajectory or something of the like. That’s got to be it.

Arya is busy scratching out tally marks in the dirt with a stick, explaining how she knows what date her name day is, so accounting for how many days it’s taken to go from Hollow Hill to here, also accounting for their stop over at Tumbler’s Falls, and so therefore if this is all correct, then she must have, in fact, turned one-and-ten four days past, which means she is now eleven. When she’s done she looks up at Dana with a small, satisfied grin. Dana can’t recall seeing her smile like that since they were at Winterfell together, and she’d just beaten Bran in their very last sparring match. It had been the day before Robert Baratheon had arrived. Dana wants to go back to that day very badly. Instead she smiles back.

“That’s clever. I’m awful with dates and numbers, really. I don’t even know when…” She stops, thinking. If Arya is eleven now than Nell must have turned nineteen several weeks ago, because she’d turned seventeen just before they’d set off from Barrowton for the Dreadfort in the first place. And if Nell is nineteen and Arya is eleven, then that means in a few more weeks Dana will turn nineteen as well. That seems very old indeed. This time last year they’d only been at Riverrun for a few months. She’d just met Marianne for the first time. Marianne’s name day is not for two more months. Dana had picked her flowers for her last name day, when she was still trying and failing in vain to pretend that it was just friendship, that she just cared for Marianne deeply and passionately as a friend, a confidante, not… not what she truly felt.

But Arya is as distracted as she, for Ned Dayne has come over, carefully picking his way across the ground strewn with dead leaves and crackly dried out underbrush, for the only ones up on horses at the moment are the men preparing to ride down within the hour. “Lord Hornwood says I’m to guard you while they’re freeing the Blackwoods,” he says somberly, as if Daryn Hornwood had gone ahead and knighted him then and there, too. The idea of Daryn knighting anyone almost makes Dana laugh aloud at the thought. 

“And what did my brother say?” Arya demands waspishly, knowing very well, Dana thinks, that poor Ned Dayne is far too terrified of King Stoneheart for any words to pass between them. 

“He- well-,”

“Robb wants you to be safe,” Dana says, even as the back of her neck prickles at the thought of referring to that… to him as Robb. But it is Robb. It’s just- she knows Arya must feel it as well. She must. But when you are very cold, you will pull anything close for comfort, even if it is dead and rotting, so long as there is some semblance of warmth left to it. He has a new helm now, forged by one of the Brotherhood’s many smiths. Dana almost prefers to see him with it on. It is less disconcerting to stare at that steel wolf’s head and its wordless snarl than to look anxiously between Robb Stark and his real wolf, who sometimes seems the more human of the two.

But Grey Wind is at their king’s side now. Dana can smell him on the breeze; his fur is wet from the nearby creek, and bloody from the deer he killed there. The indents of his paws on the earth are larger than her bare hands, if she laid them down to compare, and she’s always had big hands and feet for a woman, to go with her height. “He wants you to be safe,” she repeats herself in a murmur, “so we are going to stay here, and not draw any attention to ourselves. This is what Nell and I and… and your lady mother had to do, when Robb was rescuing your uncle Edmure from Riverrun. This is not so different.”

“I’ve never met Uncle Edmure,” Arya mutters, before her brow furrows. “I don’t remember, though. Mother always said we visited Riverrun when I was little, when I was-,” she stops, then starts again, in that strangely light tone children use when they come to a topic they dislike, “when I was Rickon’s age. But I don’t remember that. Sansa used to say she did, but she was lying.”

“He’ll be pleased to see you, my lady, when you’re all together again,” Ned Dayne says with a slight smile; he’ll grow into a handsome man someday, Dana observes, with those soulful eyes and that pale hair, but he could use some work on his tact. That is, he seems to have very little. It seems a common thread between children with no siblings close in age. Dana didn’t have much at thirteen either. Then again, neither did Nell. Perhaps that is why they became friends so quickly. They were both used to offending everyone else, inadvertently or not. 

“I’m not talking to you,” Arya informs him through her teeth. “You don’t have to talk to someone to guard them, my lord.”

Poor Ned appears more befuddled than irritated. “But shouldn’t you? Lord Beric used to say that if I was ever escorting a lady somewhere, I ought to talk to her gently to put her at ease-,”

“Well, you can tell dead Lord Beric that ladies aren’t wild bloody horses you’re trying to slip a bridle on!” Arya retorts under her breath.

Edric Dayne gapes at her, nonplussed. Dana can see his blush even in the gathering dark. “Why don’t you tell us about Starfall again?” she suggests, before Arya can say anything else. “Is it truly on an island in the middle of a river? My father told me a story about it once, he said the stones of the castle were magic, that they glow in the dark and they came from the sky.”

Ned latches onto this subject eagerly. “They don’t glow in the dark,” he scoffs, “but I suppose in a certain light the Palestone Sword might-,”

This goes on for a good ten or fifteen minutes until Dana hears the sounds of men’s armor shifting and clinking and the quiet whinnying of horses. Ned’s quiet voice stops completely, and Arya tenses, a hand on Needle. At the Whispering Wood there was a horn, Dana remembers. It was the first warhorn she’d ever heard. She did not hear one again until that dawn outside the Twins. There is no horn this time. Grey Wind barks once, and it’s muddled on the wind, then howls, and the sound goes twisting down like a torrent to the valley below, and she hears the first sounds of alarm from the Brackens, just before the men charge past them. There are no war cries and no calls to arms, just a great scream and clash of steel.

Dana squints down into the darkness, keeping a firm hand on Arya’s rigid shoulder, and watches as one by one, the fires below go out, either extinguished by Bracken men trying to hide their position, or trampled out by fleeing men or horses. Still Grey Wind howls, again and again, and then a different series of cries go up, and she realizes it is because they must think- well, if the wolf is here, who’s to say- who’s to say that man with the wolf’s head helm- it’s funny, you see, because Arya told her that the Hound lost his infamous helm when they were attacked coming down to the Red Fork, that it’s somewhere at the bottom of the Blue Fork by now, and so Dana wonders would that make him less intimidating on the battlefield, or more? Is it better to realize who you’re up against, or to go in blind? 

She couldn’t say; as Ben would remind her, or even Daryn, she’s never held a sword in her life, never worn proper armor, and is sitting up here with a little girl, a wide-eyed squire, and a few other nervous men. At some point she hears the grinding and squealing of gates opening, and watches Blackwood men come pouring out of Raventree Hall to join the fight. They must assume they’ve little to lose at this point; Jonos Bracken has been starving them out for the past three moons, it’s now or never if they hope to put up a decent fight before they’re weak with hunger and too gaunt and frail to sit a horse. The shouts die out quickly after that, and it’s just faint grunts and moans and the constant sound of hoofbeats.

Arya is chewing her lip again. “Stop that,” says Dana, “you’re going to split it open and you’ll be wincing every time you eat.”

Arya glares at her, but obeys. “Chew your nails instead,” Dana suggests, pulling off a worn glove to show her own fingernails, bitten to the quick. She was always a nail-biter. Nell used to tease her about it, how ragged they’d look sometimes, and once when they were fourteen Dana had snapped back about how Nell was always pulling and picking at that hair braid around her wrists, and that was an uglier sight then chewed nails. She hadn’t known it had been Bethany Bolton’s hair- but of course she had, she’d just chosen to forget it in the heat of the argument. The look on Nell’s face had kept her up all night, kicking herself, even though she’d brushed it off and insisted she knew Dana had just been japing. 

Dana has never been close with her own mother, it’s true. Alysane Flint was Alys Norrey’s pride, and Jenny Flint was her joy, and Dana always thought of herself as an unwelcome third party to their womanly gaggle, but she was always there nonetheless. When her father was in a drunken rage or screaming himself awake with nightmares, it was her mother’s bed she scrambled into, and when she cut her knee or pricked her finger, it her mother she ran to, whining. She knows Nell would have given anything for that. Barbrey was kind in her cold sort of way, but she was never the sort to sit a child on her knee and let her lay her head against her breasts and cry for very long. 

“We’ve won,” Ned Dayne announces excitedly when the moon is high. 

Arya moves towards her gelding, but Dana yanks her right back, ignoring her yelp of protest. “No,” she says. “We don’t move from this spot until someone comes for us. I’m not risking it.”

Not risking you, she wants to say, you are not leaving my sight for an instant, what will I tell Nell if I had her goodsister and then lost her? Nevermind facing Stoneheart. So they wait, although Arya mutters under her breath, and Ned fidgets, until finally a knight hails them, driving his mount up the hillside. It’s Robert Paege; Dana brightens at the sight of him; she quite likes Robert and his unusually chipper disposition, especially compared to the brooding northmen she’s often surrounded by. “His Grace and Lord Karstark require your presence,” he says lightly, as if inviting them to a moonlit trip on a pleasure barge. 

There must be at least a hundred men dead on the ground outside Raventree. Dana is used to letting her gaze slide smoothly over the corpses by now, to look but not really see. It’s for the best. She knows the human toll of war, she doesn’t need to torture herself by examining every corpse. That’s what Nell would do, walk the battlefield, inspect the casualties. Dana supposes it’s the Bolton blood. She may be a Flint of the Finger, but she doesn’t have the stomach for it. Ned looks very queasy as his fine white horse picks its way around the dead, and Arya stares straight ahead at the looming walls of Raventree Hall, growing larger and larger before them. The survivors and the surrendered have been gathered inside.

When Dana dismounts inside the godswood, the largest she has yet to see in the Riverlands, the first thing she sees is the weirwood. Dead, it is, and grotesque, like a giant skeleton left to wither, exposed to the elements. All gnarled and white and bare, except for the ravens. She’s more disturbed by the ravens then she was by the dead soldiers outside. There’s just so many of them. It must be multiple murders- there’s got to be hundreds, and all grouped together like that, they might as well be one giant black bird, with a thousand eyes and a thousand sharp beaks and talons and a thousand pairs of wings.

How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have?, isn’t that how the song goes, for the Targaryen bastard whose mother was a Blackwood? How many eyes, how many eyes? Oh, a thousand eyes and one. With skin snow white and a heart night black, his work is never done. She’d always thought it was an incredibly stupid song. What was so frightening about a very pale, skinny husk of a man with an odd birthmark? Now she is reconsidering. 

As Robert escorts her and Arya past the rows and rows of men who’ve thrown down their arms and yielded, now all kneeling, Dana glances around furtively, and takes in the almost amusing sight of Lord Tytos and his brood staring down Lord Jonos. Or it would be, if not for the look on Jonos Bracken’s face. Dana doubts it is due to a sudden terror of the Blackwoods. In between the assembled members of House Blackwood and Lord Jonos and his captured men lies the long, twisted shadow of the dead weirwood and its ravens, and King Stoneheart sits at the base, his helm removed so he can better clean his blade. Dana listens to the soft sounds of the rag on the metal; Robb’s head is bent in focus, as if the rest of them were not there, waiting. She looks for Grey Wind then, and sees him come circling around the massive width of the trunk.

He spots her and Arya, and his ears prick, but he does not leave his position just a few feet from the king among the large roots. They are always together at times like this, Dana thinks, and her stomach churns. Why couldn’t these things ever be resolved simply? But that is the talk of a child, she knows. Nothing is ever so simple, not when oaths were made and broken, not when there are blood debts and ancient grudges and all this other nonsense men like to worship as gods. 

So many people she knows, Dana thinks, they claim to be devoted to either the old gods or the Seven, but their real idol is not a weirwood tree or some statue, it’s either their ego, or their legacy, or their pride. That’s what they kneel down and pray to. They’re not looking for peace, or salvation, or mercy. They’re looking for justification. The Blackwoods and Brackens have interwed hundreds of times, and still each generation finds some feeble excuse to hate one another. 

Tytos Blackwood, in truth, reminds her of old Rickard Karstark, at least in appearance, although his shoulders are far narrower and his beard is much more closely cropped. Robert has brought her and Arya to Harry Karstark’s side; she looks quickly at him to see if he’s noticed any similarity, but his face is blank and smooth under his own beard and sideburns. She turns away before he can notice her staring.

Besides, Rickard Karstark would have never dressed so lavishly; Tytos’ armor is deep scarlet with intricate silver detailing, likely meant to call to mind a weirwood tree, and his cloak is a thousand raven’s feathers sewn tightly together, gleaming in the moonlight. His hair is greying and his nose is impressively hooked, but he cuts an imposing sight nonetheless, although he and all his household seem a bit thin and wan. His wife stands just as proudly at his side; Dana has never seen the woman before, but identifies her as Lady Ella Blackwood, born a Butterwell, nonetheless. If her time at Hollow Hill has been good for anything, it has been for brushing up on her knowledge of family trees, for the smallfolk could rattle off with shocking accuracy who had wed who, and sired who, and when, and where, and how many children, and who kept a mistress, and how many bastards-

The Blackwoods have six sons and one daughter. One son is a prisoner of House Frey, Dana knows, the secondborn, Lucas. The youngest is rumored to have always been a very sickly child who is frequently bedbound; he is not outside with the rest now. Those who remain are the eldest son and heir, Brynden, who was named for the Blackfish and who looks to be about twenty, the thirdborn, Hoster, named for the former ruling lord, who although he looks to be no more than sixteen, towers over every other member of his family to an almost absurd extent, for they are already a family of tall, slender people, and then the fourth and fifth-born, Edmund and Alyn, who look as though they could be twins, twelve or thirteen, and then the little girl, holding one of her brother’s hands, Bethany, who is perhaps nine, if that. They all wear nearly identical glares. 

Jonos Bracken, in contrast to the almost gawky-proportioned Blackwoods, is shorter than Tytos by a head, but nearly twice as broad, and mostly with muscle, despite his age. If the Blackwoods are coldly glaring at the man who’s kept them captive in their own keep for months, then he is glowering and scowling right back at them, his brown hair wet with blood and a fresh scrape on his prominent forehead. He keeps his beard and mustache much wilder than the restrained Tytos, and his armor is much simpler, basic grey steel plate and mail. The rearing stallion engraved on it reminds her of the Ryswells, uncomfortably so. 

To his credit, Bracken is not cowering on his knees, although Dana would be in his position. In moonlight most men look at least a little strange, and so it masks the worst of Robb’s… she doesn’t know what to call it. He is hardly deformed. Physically, his features are much the same. He has the same hair, the same nose, the same ears and mouth, there is no grotesque scarring or gaping wounds visible when he is wearing his armor. The eyes are a decidedly different color, but no one could tell in this light. 

He stands up silently. Jonos Bracken turns his appeal towards him, his contempt for Tytos Blackwood palpable with every movement of his body. “Your Grace,” he says raggedly, impetuously. “I had no choice. You must see that. The Freys hold my daughters. Any father would have done the same. Had I known that you’d survived, had you come to us sooner-,”

“No,” says the Winter King. Dana has been in his presence for over a month now, and she can still count the number of sentences she has heard him speak on both hands. Sometimes he sounds not drunk, or bleary with sleep, but like a man who’s half forgotten the need for language at all. The Robb she knew was quick-witted, sharp with a retort and very capable of speaking off the top of his head without any prompting. He always made things sound sincere, and honest, and as if they could do the impossible if only they all put their egos aside and worked together. 

“You,” and his voice tears then, just shy of a growl, “you swore an oath. To me. To my-,” he hesitates, then continues jerkily, “to my rule. It did not end when Bolton put his sword in my chest.” Unconsciously, his mailed hand scrabbles for a moment at his armored chest. Dana wonders if the wound still pains him. Thoros’... whatever Thoros can do, be it witchcraft or something else, it preserved it, it didn't heal it.

“Your army was broken,” Jonos says, undeterred, scowling. “Your men were scattered. We had Lannisters pouring in from the West, men marching up from the capitol. What would you have had me do? Swear allegiance to a man I thought dead, to a cause destroyed?”

“The only thing you were thinking of was your own greed, Bracken,” Tytos snaps, although his wife tugs on his arm insistently, as if to silence him. “You waited a scarce few days before marching your men on my home- on my family! You say the Freys have your daughters hostage- they have my son, my boy Lucas! The lad is eighteen years of age and already twice the man you are.”

“My greed?” Jonos snarls back at him. “Don’t throw stones, Blackwood. Crossbow Ridge and Honeytree and all the other villages were my kin’s by all rights, but your grasping fool of a father stole them out from under my grieving mother-,”

“You lie as poorly as you fight,” Tytos sneers. “You had every opportunity to dispute the lands months ago, when we were gathered at Riverrun. Instead you bid your time and waited for a chance to turn traitor for the Lannisters-,”

“Turn traitor?” Jonos purples with fury. “My nephew and I fought alongside your sons at the Fords, while you were safely tucked away poring over your fool maps-,”

“Enough,” Harry Karstark steps forward, voice ringing out in a tone barely below a bellow. “You stand here squabbling over villages and abandoned holdfasts while in the presence of your king. A king you both swore your swords to, whose reign you promised to uphold, whose cause you committed yourselves and your kin to. Lord Blackwood has kept that promise, and refused to yield, even when his son’s life was threatened. Lord Bracken has not, and what’s more, has actively made war against those loyal to His Grace.”

“I yielded tonight,” Bracken protests, “I commanded my men to throw down their weapons, we went peaceably into this keep-,”

“You had no choice,” Blackwood dismisses furiously. “You could have at the very least committed to your own treachery, instead of this cowardice-,”

“I defended my lands against the Mountain when he still roamed,” Bracken shouts. Dana would look for Sandor Clegane to see his reaction, but she’s not stupid enough. “Do not name me a coward, Blackwood! You do not know the price we paid then! My own natural son was killed, my daughter defiled-,”

“Your supposed natural son was your brother’s whelp, not yours- Your Grace, he lies as easily as he breathes, even now he tries to wheedle his way out of justice-,”

Grey Wind growls for a long, chilling stretch, deep in his throat, and they all go silent once more, breathing harshly, breath misting in the cold night air.

“We had word from your beloved nephew weeks ago,” says Harry Karstark gruffly. “He gave your position up freely, Bracken, and he’s prepared to surrender your castle back into His Grace’s faith. He doesn’t share your penchant for making war with neighbors. He’d rather serve your steel to the Freys. And he will.”

Jonos pales, but quickly recovers enough to say, “Then I accept this. Hendry’s a reasonable man. Take me hostage to the rest of my household’s good behavior, take my men with you- I will gladly fight for you once more, Your Grace, even in chains,” he blusters. “You’ve accepted far worse back into the fold- why, you had the Hound fighting for you tonight!”

“Clegane never pledged to me and then broke his word,” Robb says. “Your men will fight for us. Under your nephew’s command. We will free your daughters if they still live. Have you any words for them?”

“On your knees,” Karstark tells him brusquely, and Dana feels a swooping, plummeting sensation from her chest to her belly. Arya glances up at her. 

“Don’t look,” she wants to say, but she can’t find the words. She’s seen men executed before, men she knew, Nell’s own uncle among them. But not like this. Then it was expected, demanded, even. 

“No,” says Bracken slowly, comprehending, “no- Your Grace! Your Grace, I had no choice, I thought you lost, the war lost-,”

Lady Ella is gesturing for a maid to take little Bethany back indoors, quickly, but the rest of her children do not move, although they have varying expressions of satisfaction, disgust, and fear on their long faces. 

Dana notes the look on Tytos Blackwood’s face- he was expecting to see Bracken humiliated, punished, and humbled, yes, but not this, not right now, not in his own godswood-

“I was lost,” King Stoneheart acknowledges, gripping the pommel of his sword and raising it up as Harry Karstark and Daryn Hornwood use their combined muscle to force a struggling Jonos Bracken to his knees. The blade is glinting in the moonlight, and the ravens are starting to screech, either in protest or encouragement, Dana can’t be sure. She grabs Arya and tries to turn her around to face her instead, but the girl wriggles out of her grip, taking a tentative step forward, a keen sort of almost yearning on her pale face. “But no longer.” 

There are words he’s supposed to say, rituals to follow, a certain way to go about an execution, but- Grey Wind prowls forward, snarling mouth curled open to reveal his teeth, and the sword slashes down in one clean strike, and Bracken crumples, a red river gushing down his dirty armor from his opened throat, and the direwolf is lapping it up greedily before his corpse can even fully topple over to the ground. 

Dana watches the blood spread and sink across the barren soil until it reaches the tip of the weirwood roots, and feels her dinner start to creep back up her throat. One raven takes flight, then another, and suddenly they are all in the air overheard, screaming and shrieking, and even the Blackwoods duck their heads and cry out when the massive flock of birds blots out even the crescent moon, like black leeches on snow, gobbling up the only remaining light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The general goth aesthetics of Raventree were too much to pass up. How could any self-respecting member of House Stark resist the allure?
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. Big map shit-show. So basically, the map I have been using in reference for this fic is the massive topographical map of Westeros linked on the Wiki of Ice and Fire, which shows all major locations and the general geography from beyond the Wall to Dorne. HOWEVER specific parts of the wiki use the maps from The World of Ice and Fire book which came out in 2014 (and which a lot of stuff has been retconned from via Fire & Blood but that's besides the point). Anyways, there are two different locations for Raventree Hall in contention here. I am using the location that is noted on the big topographical map, *not* the map of the Riverlands from The World of Ice and Fire. So in this fic, Raventree Hall is located southeast of Riverrun and the Inn of the Kneeling Man, and in between Stone Hedge and Harrenhal. I know most people couldn't care less, but just so we're clear and no one's like 'what, are we teleporting across the Red Fork now?' 
> 
> 2\. This chapter takes place like three weeks-ish after Dana's last POV, and over a week after Nell's last POV. Both smaller sieges have now been broken. Hendry Bracken (who Nell married Tyta Frey off to) sold out his uncle's position and re-turned (haha) the Brackens back to Team Stark. Obviously the Blackwoods are pretty smug at the moment, but the majority of the people present for this godswood meeting did not actually expect Jonos to be executed right off the bat like that, so there is a general aura of 'what the fuck just happened'.
> 
> 3\. Arya is canonically very good at math! I dislike it when fics portray her as dismissive of learning or reading or anything that doesn't involve weapons- she's a smart kid! She would 100% be a Mathlete! She has warmed up to Dana some, although poor Ned Dayne is still on her Shit List after the Ashara debacle. Sandor has recovered from his injuries and we will see more of him in the future, as Dana is not the sort to actively seek out a Clegane. Her will to survive is too strong haha. 
> 
> 4\. The current reasons for this generation's Blackwood versus Bracken feud are never actually explained in any detail in current canon beyond them fighting over some villages/towns on the border between their lands, so sorry if the animosity between Tytos and Jonos felt stilted. We never actually see either in canon besides through Jaime's POV so there wasn't a ton to work with. Showing this execution was not really intended to be a 'feel good' or satisfying moment, since Jonos Bracken is hardly one of this fic's established antagonists. Everyone's aware that Jonos Bracken very abruptly turned and declared loyalty to the Iron Throne again, but so have the vast majority of the river lords and ladies, even if they are working against the Lannisters behind the scenes. So this was a less of a 'hell yeah, don't fuck with the Starks!' moment and more of an opportunity to show how risen!Robb is operating; it's less about Jonos specifically and more about this new Robb's consuming hunger for revenge- the one thing he and Grey Wind still seem to be in sync about, as Dana notes. 
> 
> 5\. I am going to be doing a lot of traveling next week and my internet connection may be spotty. I am going to try my best to still update on Tuesday and Friday, but in case that does not happen, I wanted to give people some explanation ahead of time, as I've never missed an update for this fic before and I know people are used to the regular schedule. Thank you all for your patience with this fic and your regular feedback in the comments.


	52. Donella XL

300 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell has taken full advantage of Marbrand’s insistence on assuming guardianship of herself and Catelyn, and for the three short weeks she has been at the siege, has contained herself to the Lannister and Marbrand camps, not giving much, if any, thought to the Freys in the Whispering Wood above the Red Fork. Beyond, of course, wishing Jason Mallister and his men and perhaps the Greatjon as well might suddenly appear on the horizon and come screeching down the hillside in a flurry of swords, spears, and horses. Today she sits primly in the small boat Wendel Frey, one of Addam’s newer squire, is slowly rowing across the thin stretch of river, panting every few minutes with the effort. 

As part of the betrothal agreement, Wendel and Waltyr, who are both Arwyn and Shirei’s brothers, have gone to squire for Marbrand and Daven Lannister respectively. The youngest boy, Elmar, the one they agreed to betroth to Arya so long ago, went north with the Freys accompanying her father. Nell wonders at that; a boy who might have made his life at Winterfell alongside a Stark princess may come to know the North all the same, but in a wholly different way. She does not think he will live long enough to know it very well. 

Perhaps in some sense it is a shame. Arwyn’s brothers are children, barely more than little boys. Nell might still hold grudges against those who were once her ladies, her friends, for the betrayal, but she is a mother herself nonetheless. She is not so clouded with rage and bitterness to think that a small boy of ten had anything to do with his kin’s treachery. But the North will not see it that way. 

Wendel, called Wen by his elder sister, is a reedy, freckled thing with the pointed Frey features and small mouth and nose they all mostly possess. He’s not an ugly lad, nor is he a very handsome one. He watches Addam Marbrand as if in the presence of a god, and stares after Daven Lannister with open admiration for his ferocity and vows of vengeance. The idea of being guarded by this child might be almost amusing, but did she not take Jory Mormont as a sworn shield once upon a time, and her a maiden of only fifteen? Had Jory lived, she would be sixteen by now. 

The Freys never found her body; Nell hopes it washed all the way out to sea. Jory loved the sea, loved to swim and sail, was infatuated with a Tully and loathed Greyjoys, as is good and proper for a maid of Bear Island. Nell knows now she should have never accepted the girl’s oath of loyalty, coerced by Maege or not. She should have ordered Jory back to Bear Island, where she would be safe, with her little sister Lyanna and her niece and nephew. Now she is dead, and for what? 

“The current’s not strong,” Nell tells him shortly. “If you need to rest, let the boat list a while.”

But the boy is fourteen and disinclined to taking orders from a hostage; he keeps rowing, the fledgling muscles in his skinny back and arms heaving, and Nell watches the bank draw closer and closer. She is not visiting the Frey camp on a lark, or to mock Black Walder or Ryman, who are still infuriated that Marbrand swept up their prisoners from under their ferrety noses. “Couldn’t you-,” he pants, as they reach the shallows, “have sent- a raven message?”

She does not bother to dignify that with a response, instead waiting impatiently for him to clamber out into the water to help her to dry land. Once she waded without hesitation through a thigh-deep stream to lead Bran’s pony, but she was just a girl then and Bran is dead and the wolfswood full of corpses. Why should she soil her skirts for the sake of Freys and Lannisters? If Marbrand wants a docile little doll that he can use to feel like the great heroic knight of old, so be it. There is something to be said for waiting for a man to take off his armor and settle down beside you, so you can better examine where to slide in the knife. 

Wendel is not a very tall boy and only reaches his shoulder, so the sight of him helping her out of the boat is no doubt comical; he flushes bright pink as several cousins taking a piss downstream begin to laugh and jeer. “Marbrand has you playing handmaiden to widows now, does he?” one of them calls, and the boy jerks his head in that direction as if to shout back a retort, or more likely, tell them to go fuck themselves, but glances at Nell and changes his mind abruptly. He likely fears she will report straight back to Marbrand if he behaves in a manner that is anywhere approaching uncouth or belligerent with her. At the same time, Marbrand likely suspects she fears the same. With the threat of either of them informing on the other for anything remotely improper or disloyal, he has very little to worry about, doesn’t he?

At least, he likely thinks so.

Nell follows Wendel up the slope and across a series of small plank bridges and walkways towards the wooded groves. Everynight, this ground begins to freeze slick and hard, but every morning the frost melts away, reducing it to mud once more. Yet soon enough, the day will come when the ground stays frozen, and then these men will start to worry. The foraging is growing scarcer and scarcer by the day, and although plenty of supplies were brought from Casterly Rock and King’s Landing, Nell knows the men have gone through their rations quicker than expected and that Daven and Marbrand are beginning to grow concerned. Surely the capitol cannot afford to send more supply trains this way with winter encroaching, and the Rock and Lannisport are too far. 

Sometimes Nell likes to indulge in a pleasant sort of daydream in which she strolls through the eerily abandoned siege camps with Lysara gurgling happily in her arms, looking down upon the emaciated corpses and skeletons of starved men, blanketed with a thick layer of snow. Sometimes she even imagines Grey Wind is with her, tearing frozen meat off of cracked ribs and femurs. It’s been so long since she saw snow. She never thought she would be able to say such a thing, after a childhood of summer snows and even the occasional blizzard, but here she is. The Riverlands was beautiful, rich and green and blue when they arrived. Now it is grey and brown and shriveling up to die.   
She is unsurprised to see Merrett Frey riding down towards them as they near the camp. Fat Walda must take after her mother, for Nell has truly never met a stupider man in her life. Ryman Frey and Black Walder are no paragons of intellect themselves, but they do have a certain scheming cleverness to them at times. As far as she is aware, Merrett’s sole redeeming quality is that he produced more children for House Frey. He’s not even a very capable warrior; plenty of fat, aging men are still strong as an ox, but he is not one of them.

“Are you stupid, boy?” he sneers down at Wendel. “By whose leave are you bringing her back here? Marbrand’s? Mallister and his men are camped at Fairmarket, and you think this wise?”

Wendel rolls his eyes, unintimidated in the least. “Fairmarket’s a ten day’s ride for a dozen riders, nevermind a fighting force. What do you think they plan to do, Muttonhead? Fly here?”

Merrett scowls and makes as if to dismount from his horse to knock some respect into his far younger half-brother, but Wendel is already moving on with a boy’s quick pace. Nell gives the man a scornful look, then follows. Tensions are far higher here, north of the Red Fork, than they are south of it. Jason Mallister has supposedly brought nearly his entire fighting force of able men down from Seagard, knowing the Freys at the Twins cannot launch another siege and cannot take the risk of following them. Last she heard there were rumors he had fifteen hundred men, and his numbers might have swollen from Bloodborn’s company, unless Aegon Frey has hung back to try to get a ransom from the Twins for Raymund and Walder Rivers.

She purposefully follows Wendel towards the centermost pavilion, ignoring the stares directed their way. These Freys must think her half-mad or plotting some devilry to be back at their camp seemingly of her own free will, but Nell has a particular purpose in mind, conveyed to her by Benfrey, of all people. While Arwyn, Zia, and Fair Walda were ostensibly brought down as lady companions for herself and Catelyn, everyone knows the Freys’ real purpose is to court more western marriages with them. Yet they do not make their camp in the same tent as Nell and Catelyn; the Freys would never hear of leaving their maidens alone for the night amongst lions. No, the bride to be and her cousins share a tent here instead, and every night instead of some errant Lannister or Marbrand man slipping inside to try his luck, Black Walder makes an appearance instead. 

Nell does not count this as a mark of forgiveness; she barely trusts Fair Walda and can never look at Arwyn and Zia without suspicion again. But there is a line all the same, and they were once women under her protection. And her hate for Black Walder is so consuming that she is willing to come and make some claim to them once more, if only because she cannot stand the thought of the man enjoying unwilling ‘rewards’ a single night further. She tells herself it is cold pragmatism; the more time he spends around Fair Walda or the others, the more chances for someone to slip up or something to spill out. She’s simply trimming up loose ends. Still, there’s more fire fueling her than frost as she stalks ahead of Wendel into the pavilion. 

Zia spots her first, and comes rushing over in her typical hurried fashion, nearly tripping over a pile of firewood, eyes wide. “Has something happened?” she demands breathlessly, looking from Nell to Wendel. Unconsciously, her fingers are worrying at a slight tear in one of her sleeves. 

“No,” says Nell, more calmly than she feels. “Fetch me Ser Ryman, will you? I’ve a mind to speak with him.” In the meanwhile, she orders Wendel to order a passing page to find her some wine, and settles down on a wooden bench in the cold shade. It’s odd looking at Riverrun from this angle, but no more disheartening or tense, she supposes, than seeing it from the other side of the river. Sometimes she wonders if Ser Brynden is out there with a spyglass on the ramparts, looking back. The Freys must be terribly irked they haven’t got her or Catelyn up on a gallows by now for him to take a look at.

Ryman makes his officious appearance some fifteen minutes later, when Nell is beginning to debate the merits of coming over here at all. She may very well be stirring up unnecessary trouble for herself. What happens to the Frey women behind closed doors is far from her concern. In fact, this is likely her own weakness. If she were truly courageous and strong, she would be committed only to her own escape. She wouldn’t be wasting time fussing about over whether or not Black Walder is crawling into bed beside his cousins or nieces. She should be thankful he’s not made any attempts to crawl into hers.

When he finally arrivals, Nell is staring at the bottom of her cup. She sees little point in wasting anymore time. “I want the women with me,” she tells Ryman with the petulant edge of a woman used to being indulged in after much nagging and whining. “My sole feminine company most days is my goodmother, Ser, and she is greatly bereft after her losses. You can hardly expect me to spend my days surrounded by knights and common soldiers.”

“The women come over to your side often enough these days,” Ryman snorts, unmoved. “Were you thinking of beginning a knitting circle, my lady?”

Nell stares back into his beady little eyes. “Perhaps,” she says flatly. “There is precious little else to do but handicraft when one is confined to a siege camp. Come now, Ser. How can you intend to make proper marriages with suitable men for them without my aid?”

“Your aid, aye?” He is indulging her, she sees, so utterly convinced of her complete vulnerability and ineffectiveness- the only time these Freys ever feared her was when she was on horseback with bow in hand, nocking another arrow and screaming bloody murder. Now that she is just a quiet woman in a faded gown sitting before him demurely, he thinks her little more than a child and just as helpless. 

“Yes,” she says tartly. “My betrothed is one of their primary commanders. He grew up fighting alongside many of these men whose favor you seek to court. Exactly how do you propose to get it with your women isolated over here, left to their own devices? Shall they begin sending smoke signals to attract attention?”

He scoffs at her, but Nell presses onward. “I have it on reasonable authority that these men might also prefer maidens for brides,” she says in a slightly lower tone. “And it would seem Frey women do not keep their virtue for very long when in the company of your son.”

Ryman’s look darkens and for a moment she thinks he is debating whether or not it is worth chancing Marbrand’s ire to strike her. But it passes as quickly as it came. “The nattering of women is no concern of mine,” he says dismissively, but she can tell from his eyes that he is infuriated, and not just with her. Surely it must sting at his ego just a little. Yes, these Freys are all related, and easy to conflate and combine in one’s head, but Black Walder is still his son, and all fathers, regardless of their hearts, are quick to anger when they feel threatened by their own seed, even indirectly. 

She gets no promises, of course, but she thinks he will send them over nonetheless, likely fearing what kind of foul ‘rumors’ she might be spreading about his own kin to the Lannisters. And he is correct in that; Nell and Catelyn have both done what she thinks an admirable job in smearing the name Frey at every opportunity. The westermen are already inclined to think poorly of them; men like Marbrand willingly reap the rewards of broken guest right, treachery, and murder, but that does not mean they will not also willingly speak of how repulsive they have found, especially when in their cups. “It was vilely done,” Addam Marbrand might say, eying her sympathetically as she picks daintily at her supper, “and I am sorry for you, my lady. Stark was a traitor and a rebel, but even the worst of men deserve a cleaner death than that.” 

Even the worst of men, of course. It has been something of an adjustment to see, or even pretend to see, Robb and his men through these western lords’ eyes. He was a child propped up by bitter old men, they think, who willfully wreaked havoc and flung about his brute force until he was put down. They speak of him as though he were a mad dog; a purebred one, no doubt, no common mutt like the Mountain, but a beast nonetheless, who was culled before he could grow much bigger or stronger. A great shame that he did not devote himself to the defense of their true king, who even now has been replaced by a child. Had Lysara… had her daughter remained with her, had it ever been possible… she could have been like Tommen Baratheon someday, a child on a throne with only a mother to guide her. 

Nell seldom dreams as of late, but she does wake silently weeping sometimes, reaching for a babe this is not there. She misses even the inane, grueling parts of motherhood, the parts she could not wait to be over and done with. When Lysara was born all she wanted was for her to grow up quickly so Nell could recover and give Robb the son she thought they all deserved. She would keep her daughter as a child forever and a day, if that would bring her back. But it will not. Nell tries not to think on it, and Catelyn is careful to never mention her, extending the same courtesy Nell had always given her in regards to Bran and Rickon. And Sansa. And Arya.

Fair Walda, Arwyn, and Zia make Nell and Catelyn’s tent their permanent residence for the time being a day later, crossing the Red Fork by a small boat with one trunk of clothes and other goods for all three of them. Nell does not think one could call any of them ‘relieved’ to move from the rat’s nest to the lion’s den, but neither do any of them seem particularly heartbroken to leave their kin behind, either. If Arwyn is initially intimidated by Daven’s overwhelming presence, always barking or shouting orders at his squires and servants, always cursing under his breath or laughing loudly, she makes a valiant effort of not showing it, and when questioned intensely by Zia, professes Daven to be very much a gentler man when on their chaperoned walks. 

“I told him I could play the harp, and he said he would be greatly pleased if I might play a song for him at our wedding,” she says neutrally, and Nell does not miss the flicker of unease on her face when she meets her gaze. These women may have pledged their renewed loyalty to her, may claim they will do whatever they can to assist her and Catelyn’s escape, but in any other circumstances, Daven Lannister would be a very fine match for Arwyn, far finer than she could ever expect otherwise. He is a much older than her and from a lesser branch of the Lannisters, but he is still a Lannister, and before the war the name carried some sort of begrudging acknowledgment, if not respect, in the Riverlands. 

The Starks and the Lannisters hardly originated the concept of two great houses loathing one another. Some years ago the Tyrells began to hate the Martells with a passion when the Viper met their heir in a joust which ended with him crippled, the Martells have been burning with outrage against the Lannisters for the deaths of Princess Elia and her children for years, and at the time of the Conquest, the Starks and the Arryns were at one another’s throats at every turn, even more so when forced to wed Torrhen’s sole daughter to the Arryn heir, who was then murdered by his own brother. Nell knows it does her little good to spend all her days ruminating on how vile and evil she finds Lannister blood.

Some treacherous part of her, she will even admit, finds Genna Lannister’s company, if not particularly joyous, then at least not the long-suffering indignity that it could be. Were she kin with the woman, had none of this happened, Nell would likely find her quite humorous and entertainingly sharp-witted. Barbrey and her might have gotten along very well indeed. She cannot even hate little Ty, Genna’s treasured grandson, named for the grandfather Nell used to lose sleep over regularly. The boy is spoilt and conceited but he is just that. A boy. Like Wendel Frey and many others. 

Yet she hates them all the same, blindly and indiscriminately and seethingly, when Fair Walda corners her while bathing to tell her that the Lannisters are sending Arya Stark north to wed into House Bolton. “No,” says Nell, torn between screaming and laughing aloud. “Arya- you are sure you heard it was Arya? Not- they could not have found Sansa, or-,”

“It was Arya they said,” Fair Walda wrinkles her pert nose, then adds, “I thought she was the dead one for sure, but if they say they have her-,”

“They can’t have her. They would have been using her like Sansa against us a year ago if that were the case,” Nell argues, as the bathwater quickly turns cold around her. She stands up with a splash, scooping up her worn robe. “No. It is either a wild rumor, or yet another lie. Perhaps they found some girl they think could pass for her. But it is a fool’s errand. The northmen know Arya Stark. They know what a child of Ned Stark and Catelyn Tully looks like. They will never believe such a thing.”

Fair Walda shrugs; it hardly matters to her. “She was the ugly one, wasn’t she? I used to tease Elmar about it. Always whinging about his princess, his precious princess,” her voice goes high and wheedling, and then she huffs. “Better if she’s dead. The ugly ones have it easier, truly they do. At least men are quick about it then.” She smiles thinly at Nell, who feels a brief pang of something, before it is replaced by simmering anxiety. 

“Don’t breathe a word of this to Catelyn. Walda, swear it. It would- it would do no good for her to hear such a thing.” Nell does not even want to think about it herself. It could be nothing. It could all be lies. But if they believe they need Arya, or ‘an’ Arya Stark, what does that mean for her own daughter? Is she ill? Dead? Do they mean to dispose of her shortly? They can’t. No. It just has to be another clumsy attempt at bonding House Stark to House Bolton in some twisted little union. A wedding between an ostensibly flowered girl and a grown man like Ramsay has more power to it than a ceremony in name only between two infants. Perhaps Fat Walda has lost her babe. Perhaps she is the grieving mother, not Nell. Perhaps- No. She won’t think on it anymore. Lysara is still alive. She must be. She has to be, or none of this means anything. 

“Fine,” says Walda flippantly, then adds, “But I want to dine with you and Marbrand tonight, then. I can’t stand another supper of listening to Zia talk with her mouth full and Arwyn silently mooning over Lannister. You ought to slap some sense into her. A man like that will come at her like a bear once the bedding’s begun, for all his pretty words now. I know the sort.”

I’m sure you do, Nell thinks, but is not stupid enough to say it. The Frey women may be wary of her, but she is equally aware that giving them unnecessary offense could see this whole scheme go up in flames. They are balancing on the head of a needle. She doesn’t dare make eye contact with Kirth Vance or his brother Hugo. The last thing she needs is for anyone to take notice that she seems to always be keeping within shouting distance of the Vances during the day and begin to suspect something is afoot. 

When the window of opportunity arrives, it won’t remain open for very long. Perwyn should ideally be treating with the Blackfish late into the evening, but she won’t have much forewarning that he has gone to parley at all, and between then and the gates opening she and Catelyn will have to be ready.

She’s promised them safety; Zia and Arwyn and Fair Walda, told them she would see them spared the worst of any reprisal, that their loyalty would not be forgotten. But words or wind, and if it came down to escaping or seeing them safe, Nell knows intrinsically what she would choose. She refuses to feel guilty about it. She is simply doing what is necessary to survive, same as they were when she came to the Twins and they knew. 

They knew, she reminds herself continuously. They had no choice, but what choice does she have now? Sometimes you must make your own. They knew, how can she ever forgive them, how can she forget any of it, they took her husband and her baby away, and hate is nothing something one can logically slice into and dole out in fair proportions. That’s not how it works. She is so angry, all the time, and she has nothing to do with all that anger except sit on it, and smile. It feels like sitting on hot coals. It feels like they are under her skin, burning. 

Sometimes her face flushes and she looks at a man like Addam Marbrand from behind his back and wonders if she could take her carving knife for her meat and bury it behind his ear. She wonders if that brief moment of glory might make everything and anything worth it. She would saw away until his copper hair turned red and any fleeting resemblance between him and Robb was mutilated, utterly destroyed and mangled, until she felt he was not a man at all, just an empty sack of meat and bone.

Other times she looks at him and curses the relief she feels that he is just a man, and one who believes himself to be inherently good, and not some vicious beast or brute drooling at the thought of having her to himself. She should feel nothing. She should feel nothing at all. The absence of hatred could be sympathy, and she cannot afford sympathy, not when it could stand between her and freedom if it comes down to it. She has to be ready to hack and maim and kill whatever blocks her path forward, like felling an old dead tree. She’s killed before, she knows she can be strong enough, but she does not have her daughter and sometimes she is just so tired and spent that it is easier to just nod and play along, lulled into the dull routine of it all.

She awakens two days after speaking with Walda to find the camp abuzz with news. After the brief initial reaction of alarm and the flare of excitement that this could be it, she finds that Ryman unexpectedly relented a few hours before dawn and permitted Perwyn to make an attempt to treat with Riverrun. He was admitted while Nell and many others were still sleeping. He has not yet emerged. “How many hours has it been?” Catelyn demands of the maid helping them both to dress. It is her brooch, after all, that Perwyn carried with him into Riverrun, handed over weeks ago, a token of regard that the Blackfish must, gods willing, see as a sign of good faith in this one Frey. 

“At least five, m’lady,” the girl answers softly, and no sooner has Nell gotten her boots on then there is a great commotion from outside. She bursts out of the tent to find Daven Lannister a short ways away triumphantly holding a scrap of parchment, addressing some of the gathered men.

“Tully surrenders the castle at dusk,” he booms in that distinctive growling voice of his. “We’ve done our waiting, and now we reap our bounty!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for this being up later than usual. In case you didn't see my note from Friday, I am traveling a lot this week and don't always have time to sit down in front of a computer. I am going to try my best to update this Friday as well, but it may be delayed until next Tuesday. 
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. The Lannisters and Freys camped outside Riverrun are not aware that the Siege of Raventree has abruptly come to an end. 
> 
> 2\. Again highlighting some of the 'innocents' at hand beyond just the women; Nell recognizes that Wendel and Tywin Frey are both just boys and struggles to reconcile her overall combination of anger, guilt, numbness, etc. As she states, it's very hard to make sure blame is properly assigned in one's head, and while she's trying to keep some sort of rational logic here, it's not very easy when she's lost both her husband and child in such short order.
> 
> 3\. By the same token, Nell states she can never forgive the Frey women regardless, yet at the same time does not want to see them unnecessarily hurt, even by their own family members such as Black Walder.
> 
> 4\. Poor Merrett just can't get any respect, even from a 14 year old half-brother.
> 
> 5\. "Why does this story need the Arya-Jeyne Poole fake-out? Is Lysara dead?" No, I am not killing the main character's child 'off screen' for shock value, that's not how this fic rolls. At the same time, Westeros has high infant mortality, which has been referenced in this fic before. If Lysara dies either of disease, mishap, etc, on the way to the Dreadfort or Winterfell, Roose's already tenuous situation up there is even more tenuous, as they have absolutely no one to use as a hostage to the rest of the houses' good behavior. I'm not claiming wedding even a fake Arya to the likes of Ramsay was a great idea even in canon, but we'll just see how things play out here. Nell, Dana, Jeyne Poole, and Beth Cassel all spent some time together on the outskirts of the Stark family while in Winterfell, and Jeyne and Beth were good friends for most of their childhoods together. There is a thematic reason as to why I am keeping all these women/girls in the story, even if only on the periphery at the moment. I also did not like the thought of Jeyne Poole spending the rest of her life rotting in a brothel in King's Landing, completely abandoned by the narrative and forgotten by everyone else in the story, although I'm hardly claiming marriage into House Bolton is the safer option.
> 
> 6\. Perwyn has finally gotten his chance to unleash his powers of persuasion on Brynden Tully and convince him that abandoning the castle in the short term with the chance of helping lead a revived rebellion against the Lannister occupation is ultimately better than dying during the soon-to-get-ugly siege. We'll see how that goes. Next chapter will likely be divided between Nell and Dana's POV.


	53. Dana VIII

300 AC - STONE HEDGE

Dana has been in and out of so many castles and holdfasts and inns by now that they all tend to blend together into one jumbled mash of grey stones and high watchtowers and tepid moats. What affixes Stone Hedge in her mind is not any particular piece of architecture but rather the lack of it. Stone Hedge was always bigger than Riverrun, but still little more than half the size of Raventree Hall, and that was before the Mountain came and burned it. So where it once imposed itself upon the hilly landscape, it now languishes. Any attempts to seriously begin to reconstruct before winter came were cut short by the Freys’ treachery. 

So now there is little more than two outer walls left to the keep, and a simple stone holdfast with two strong towers. Anything wood burned, and all they have managed to swiftly rebuild out of necessity has been some makeshift stables and a gatehouse. They say there was once a bustling little village outside its stout walls. When they rode through Dana saw nothing but several scattered shacks and other hastily erected shelters to ward out the cold. The village green is nothing but dried mud and dead brush. There is a mass grave closer to the River Road, with at least fifty small wood and stone markers. 

The remainder of Stone Hedge’s population that was not murdered, dragged off to Harrenhal, forcibly conscripted, starved, killed by disease, or sent fleeing twwatched them ride in with open disgust. Apparently Tytos Blackwood lent very little, if any, aid to these people in the direct aftermath of the Mountain’s assault. They have not forgotten it, nor have they forgiven it, and the cold faces staring up at them grew ever colder at the sight of Blackwood banners, and most retreated entirely when they sighted a few Karstark banners. 

These people do not care, Dana has come to realize, about whether or not the Freys broke guest right or if Robb was a great king or if Jonos Bracken was a greedy fool or if Tytos Blackwood is a close-fisted bastard. They do not care who rules the North, and they do not care who sits the Iron Throne. Something- someone like Stoneheart, like Robb, that might terrify them into submission, and the sight of Harry Karstark, the picture of the stern Northern warrior, might keep them from rioting, but that doesn’t mean they respect them, or love them, anymore than they would have loved Tywin or Jaime Lannister had they come riding through. It makes no difference to them. They are all monsters, only different breeds. 

And she knows it is not fair- one cannot compare the crimes of the Kingslayer or his father to the unflinching loyalty of say, Harry Karstark or Daryn Hornwood, but that’s not something the common people have time to debate. All they know is that winter is nearly here, and every time they think the war might well and truly be ended, another wound begins to bleed. It’s never been fair in the slightest for them and their kin, so why should they extend the same courtesy? A lord can have their hand cut off for striking back at him when he cuts down their son or rapes their daughter. 

There is an awful lump in her throat when she looks at those people, because she can contend that her life has not been easy either- not as a Flint, not as a woman, not as Nell’s friend- but her suffering seems to scarcely weigh more than a feather against theirs. Yes, her father is dead, and yes, Marianne is gone, but she still has her mother and her sisters, still has her home. Even if she never sees any of them again, at least she can say she has not lost it all. 

Even if it often feels that way.

She tries to focus on what she does have instead. She is safe here, or as safe as one can be when they are a five day’s march from Riverrun. Should outriders come from Riverrun, they will have to kill them as quickly and quietly as possible, for if rumors of Blackwoods roaming outside their sinister looking castle once more are not already circulating, they will be soon. But for the time being, they are safe here, and even if Addam Marbrand or Daven Lannister were to have word of the siege of Raventree having been been unexpectedly broken, they are not going to rouse their own army and abandon their own siege at the moment. 

So she is safe for now and she has a warm, dry place to sleep and was given fresh clothes by one of the maids, although they are women’s, which means she is back in a gown once more, some steward’s daughter’s hand-me-down. Not that Dana cares; she was never one to fuss much over her looks, which have been many times pronounced as ‘tolerable’. She has Arya, who seems to have brightened somewhat with their success at Raventree and their close proximity to Riverrun, combined with the fact that neither the Blackwoods nor the Brackens are aware of her identity or her sex, which means she can still run around as she likes. 

Hoster Blackwood seems to have won her over, rambling bookish boy that he is, and between him and Ned Dayne, Dana can barely get a word in edgewise. All the way here, all she heard about was how Stone Hedge was where the Ironborn starved Lothar Bracken to death in a crow cage, and how Stone Hedge was where Daemon Targaryen commanded the Blacks in the Riverlands campaign during the Dance, and how Stone Hedge was where Aegor Rivers first learned to wield his bitter steel. 

Apparently some local families claim to be of vague Targaryen descent through them, proudly arguing that either the Rogue Prince or Bittersteel took their great-great-great grandmothers to bed and sired dragonseeds on them. Dana is not really sure whether it still counts as dragonseed when the man sowing the seed is only half Targaryen, but Hoster’s enthusiastic accounts of local history were disturbed by his younger brothers’ teasing anyways. She senses he is the sort of boy who at seventeen is still far more child than man and who would be happily recollecting about the many falls of Harrenhal on his way to the gallows. He and Alesander Frey might get on very well. Sander could put all his stories to music. On the other hand, all it takes is a look from the other Sandor, and Hos Blackwood suddenly becomes much more reticent. 

Dana supposes the Hound is still good for something besides killing, after all.

The worst of it, though, was when they returned Jonos Bracken’s body to his wife. Some men named it a kindness, arguing that the king would have been well within his right to simply leave the man’s rotting head high up above Raventree’s gatehouse, but Dana doesn’t think Brother Bloodyhands brought back the body as a sort of tempering of his earlier mercilessness. She just doesn’t think he really cares. What is a corpse, really, to a man who has already been one? The Winter King knows the dead far too well to feel much for any of them, and there are no gentle words when the wrapped body is laid out on a stone slab before Lucinda Bracken. 

The wailing does not disturb Dana; she’s heard plenty of that before. It is the daughters. There are just the younger three of them, with Barbara and Jayne held captive. The eldest of those three, Catelyn, was named for the mother of the man who slew her father. Something about that makes Dana feel very sick. Catelyn is thirteen and struggling to keep a straight face, her arms locked woodenly around her sobbing mother. Bess, who looks to be around ten, has her face buried in her hands and has turned away, trembling and dry heaving as though she might vomit. And the very youngest, Alysanne, who shares a name with Aly Mormont and Dana’s own sister, is perhaps six or seven, and takes a few steps towards the corpse to pull the wrappings away from the face. 

The sight of that little girl standing there, staring with blank, shocked curiosity at her father’s ruined neck snaps something small and brittle inside Dana’s chest. It is the innocent fascination of it all, before the reality sets in, that this strange pale, foul-smelling thing is not some scarecrow or figurine but in fact was a real, living person, was her father, her father who likely loved her, who perhaps set her on his knee once in a blue moon, as Dana’s did her, who perhaps told her stories, or let her stick her fingers in his beard, or who set her on her first horse. 

And perhaps he did none of those things and ruled the household like a tyrant and mistreated his wife or children and drank too much or was never there but it doesn’t stop her eyes from burning with unshed tears. “Don’t cry,” Arya hisses, tugging insistently on her elbow, and although she sounds angry Dana can see a brief flash of panic on her young face, a long-held fear that being seen to cry at the wrong time, or the wrong place, might lead to something much worse, that any sign of weakness can and will be exploited, that women caught crying over things they ought not be upset about often pay dearly for it. 

Dana rubs her bristly, tangled hair instead; there’s something soothing in the matted knots of it, that this is a small problem which can soon be remedied. What she does not want to admit is that she is a poor replacement for a mother or sister, no matter how many times she brushes Arya Stark’s short hair or makes her take a bath. She can tell herself she is doing all she can as much as she likes, but what kind of life is this for a child? If she had any real nerves, she’d insist Arya be sent somewhere safe and isolated, somewhere she could truly be a child and begin to recover from all she has been through. But there’s nowhere safe left, and Dana worries that Arya has not been in a child in anything but body for some time now.

With Lady Lucinda grieving her husband and her daughters wisely locking themselves in their quarters rather than come face to face with any more soldiers or wolves, it seems to Dana that Hendry Bracken and Tyta Frey are the ones ruling Stone Hedge in all but name, organizing where the men will make their camp and offering their king the use of the largest apartments. Dana has no idea what he might do in those rooms, all alone save for Grey Wind’s occasional presence. She doesn’t really want to think about it much. 

Tyta the Maid is very much no longer a maiden; she looks to be about seven or eight months with child under her faded gowns, and is surprisingly welcoming of Dana, as if marriage had given her a jolt of confidence. Either that or the potential prospect of Hendry being named Lord of Stone Hedge; by rights it should go to Barbara, but should she be killed by the Freys or married into their family, the decision might be made to have Jonos’ leal nephew inherit instead. If that does happen, then Tyta’s child might be a ruling lord in his own right. 

She gives Dana a new pair of boots, telling her they used to be Harry River’s, but he never much got the chance to wear them, being killed a scant three weeks after the cobbler had finished them. Tyta is tall and dark-haired and although she was slender as a reed before her pregnancy, now Dana sometimes enters a room and for a split second is startled to see her sitting by the fire or in the light of a window, thinking it might be Nell. She wonders if Robb sees the same resemblance or not, but he is rarely seen walking about the castle by the light of day. It is as not it was when he was at Riverrun. He goes out at night, though. 

She can always tell because of the ruckus in the stables; Robb Stark was an excellent rider and good with horses, able to gentle a mount with a few soft words and firm pats. King Stoneheart is loathed by beasts of burden about as much as a bear would be, if it tried to clamber onto their backs. Dana was there at Hollow Hill, when he first tried to sit a horse again. He could barely swing stiffly into the saddle before it was screaming and rearing as if he’d pressed a hot poker to it, and the Hound started roaring for someone to get him off the bloody horse before it threw him. Truly, Dana suspects Clegane was more concerned for the animal than the man. She’s seen him with his own mount, the great black stallion Arya says is called Stranger. Dana had always thought Roddy to be a willful, wild mount, but Stranger is the sort of horse that if Dana saw him come charging across a field with a loose saddle, she thinks she’d start running in the other direction.

But Clegane treats that horse as though it were his own child, and Stranger tolerates him well for such a big man with a loud voice and habit of spitting and cursing. Horses are usually such nervous things. She suspects he was the first man to not try to beat the stallion into submission. It’s funny, that. Even the meanest of her uncles, the sort of men who might backhand their wife without so much as blinking, oh, they were sweet as could be with their favored dogs or horses, all of them. Her father once joked that it was because the animals never nagged or spoke out of turn. Dana thinks it is because there’s no expectation or demand of kindness and compassion from an animal. But Stranger isn’t in the new stables; he and his rider are outside the ruined castle walls. Hendry Bracken might have sent his uncle to his death, unwittingly or not, but even he will not tolerate a Clegane under what remains of the roof. 

“If it’s a boy, Robb,” Tyta tells her, regarding her unborn child. “And if it’s a girl, Nella.” Pregnancy seems to sap the life from some women; Dana never saw her own mother pregnant, but she remembers her sisters speaking of how wan and tired she always was with Dana, beset with aches and pains and swollen feet. With others, they seem to flourish. Nell carried Lysara quite well, at least up until the labor, and that was a brutal thing; Dana can still smell the blood under her nose if she concentrates. Long, too. She’d given silent thanks for Nell’s wideset hips then, for a slighter, frailer girl might have lost the babe and her own life, it was so slow to crown. 

Tyta is livened by pregnancy and by life at Stone Hedge, it would seem, despite the miserable, resentful villagers and the blackened ruins. Still, it must seem lovely compared to the Twins, Dana supposes. Marianne always spoke enviously of how grand Wayfarer’s Rest seemed to the Twins, despite it being half the size. For the women, the Crossing was always very small indeed; they couldn’t go gallivanting off to pledge themselves in service to some great lord or king the way men like Oly could. There are high spots of color in Tyta’s sallow cheeks and she somehow seems to move quicker pregnant than she ever did a maid. Mayhaps it’s that she’s no longer being continuously harassed and scrutinized by brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews as to why she’s not wed already. 

They often claim there must be something wrong with a girl turned twenty who remains without a marriage, but Dana’s mother always snapped that mothers and fathers would have their daughters around a little longer were they not so quick to see a girl wedded and bedded at sixteen with a babe on the way. Alys Norrey was never a crier; a crier would not have lasted long in a marriage with the likes of Artos Flint, but she did weep at Aly and Jenny’s weddings both, Dana recalls. Aly was wed when Dana was nine, Jenny when Dana was twelve. Aly married a Condon, Jenny a Slate. Both were brutal for Mother; the Condons are pledged to House Cerwyn, and the Slates hold Blackpool across the Saltspear. Dana can count the number of times she has seen them since they were wed on both hands. Perhaps six or seven? No more than once every other year or so. Both her sisters are shy of thirty, and have five children betwixt them. Tyta Bracken only just turned thirty, and is expecting her first.

Dana used to think of what it would be like to have children. Some girlish part of her even looked forward to it; not the process of making them, nor the grueling pregnancies or labors, but the idea of having something so tiny and dependent on her that might love her endlessly seemed very appealing when she was a child. But that should be why ladies have lapdogs or cats, not children. It wouldn’t be fair of her to expect complete adoration and obedience from anyone, let alone her own child. But it is still- she would be lying if she said some part of her did not use to look at Nell and Robb, who so clearly loved one another months and months before either would ever admit it, or now at Tyta and Bracken, who love one another and are more importantly, genuinely friendly towards one another- and not feel intense envy. 

She wants that. Of course she does. She resigned herself to never having it, and then came Marianne, and all Dana wanted was to spend every moment of every waking hour in her company. Marianne made everything feel exciting and new again, made Dana hurry to dress in the morning and will herself to sleep faster at night. They could pass hours walking about the godswood, endless laps like guards on patrol, and it would only seem like minutes. She may have never wanted a husband, but surely that doesn’t mean she must swear off companionship and loyalty and enduring love as well? Surely she could… she has these little thoughts sometimes, or she used, to anyways, back at Riverrun, thinking of how someday the war would be over, and they would all go back to the North, but she- she might be able to stay with Marianne, and settle someplace in the Riverlands. 

Women are not often granted lands for their service, but surely… she knows she could have convinced Nell to convince Robb that… it would not have to be anything grand. They could swear to any lord or lady it pleased, if only they could have a small farm or holdfast on their lands, and they could have a stone cottage and raise animals and have a big sprawling garden full of Marianne’s favorite wildflowers, and the vegetables that grew so easily down here, and it would never be too cold or too hot in this temperate climate, and everything would be green and blue and beautiful. They could have taken in some orphans, from the war, even opened an inn or a brewery, and raised them up properly, just two aging spinsters doing their part. Dana scoffs at herself now; what sort of delusional daydream has she concocted there? 

But when she lies awake at night and cringes to hear Grey Wind padding down the corridor outside, like a man pacing when he can’t sleep, that’s what she thinks about. A silly little farm and a garden and pigs and goats and Marianne in some straw hat, shouting for her about some magic little ring of mushrooms she found on the ground- “Bad luck if you break it, good luck if you leave an offering in the middle!” she’d holler back to Dana, beaming happily. “Go cut a slice of pie for the grumkins!” And that Marianne is about as real as grumkins, and the gods don’t care about her dreams or mushroom rings or straw hats. 

“Which would you prefer,” she asks Tyta while helping her finish off a blanket for the baby; her husband’s cousins are obviously not available to help with the needlework, and while Dana was never as fond of sitting still with a needle and thread in hand as Nell was, some part of her has missed this, even if it is all temporary. “A boy or a girl?” By this time next week things will be decided. They are only waiting on word from Stone Mill, and then they are going to divide back into smaller groups and march. Dana thinks it best to, at this point, just keep one’s eyes straight ahead. 

What is the sense in looking back? It will come down to Riverrun once again, just as it did at the Whispering Wood. They could have lost the war once and for all there, had Jaime Lannister suspected an ambush, or refused to be lured out of his siege camp, or had he succeeded in slaughtering Robb and most of his battle guard. It would have ended then and there, and they would be looking at a very different chain of events. Nell would have never had a child. Robb would never have been a king. Arya might still be in King’s Landing. 

Tyta considers, biting down on her lip the way Arya does when thinking hard. “A girl,” she confesses. “I always wanted a little sister when I was small. I was my mother’s last child. She passed when I was but one. I had my sister Morya, but she was only a year older. We were almost twins; we couldn’t much baby each other. Hendry wants a boy, I think, to start, but that’s all men for you,” she shrugs lightly. “As long as they come out kicking and wailing, I don’t care. Poor Morya, she’s but one-and-thirty and they say she’ll never have another. Three sons, all healthy, but she always wanted her girl. All women deserve a girl, don’t you think? Something all your own. They send your boys away, but the girls stay a good long while,” she hums awkwardly under her breath and then smooths out the embroidered blanket across her lap. 

“We’ll begin my confinement after you’re all on your way, I think. Hendry’s going with them too. I was hateful about it with him last night-,” she winces, from a baby kick or from the memory, Dana doesn’t know. “Sometimes I think I wed too old. Stuck in my ways, I am. They mostly let me be at the Twins. Lonely, you know, but it’s a sort of routine all the same, isn’t it? Hendry was the first man who was ever sweet to me even after he found out my dowry was nothing grand. And he kept sweet, even after he tumbled me in bed,” she doesn’t blush, but states it as a frank matter of fact. 

“I should apologize, but it’s terribly hard sometimes, with these men. You just look at them and want to scream, even when you love them. Jonos would have had his head off if he found out what he was scheming. I was so afraid for him. And me and the babe. They can’t put a woman with child to death, but the waiting would be much worse,” she rambles, then finally flusters. “I’m sorry. You couldn’t care less, could you? I’m just so starved for conversation. The women are all locked away and I don’t like the look of some of these men.”

“Neither do I,” says Dana, “but Karstark and His Grace keep them in line.”

“Karstark’s a funny one,” Tyta muses. “Isn’t he? He keeps so close to King Robb, it’s as if he’s worried he might vanish on him.”

Dana wants to say that Harry Karstark probably realizes that right now the only hope of keeping these motley men in working order is by uniting them through a sort of communal awe and fear and reverence of a dead man brought back from the grave, or a dying man miraculously healed, whatever they choose to believe. Many of the rivermen have converted to follow R’hllor, and a few of the northerners have as well. None of the lords, fortunately- that would start an entirely different sort of mess- but that’s only because many of them choose to believe that Robb was brought back by some sort of divine power, only the old gods, not the Lord of Light. 

Dana still believes in her gods, even when she hates them with every fiber of her being, but she’s not convinced this was their work. The old gods were never the sort to revive what was withered and hollow. They never coaxed life to flourish in the midst of winter. They were never agents of change, they were the opposite. When you prayed to them, it was your hope that things would go on as they always had and that everything would follow a familiar, soothing pattern. Winter, spring, summer, autumn. Dawn, midday, dusk, night. You didn’t ask for a dramatic change, you begged for consistent purpose. 

What purpose would they have in creating Stoneheart? Why would they keep the wound weeping black blood through the scabs, why would they make blue eyes dull grey, why would they cause a man to reject mead and food and the warmth of a fire and instead set him to wander at night, silent as a ghost? Revenge, Ben and Daryn would say defiantly, revenge. It’s what we our owed, it’s our due, we have always asked our gods to bring us vengeance, we have always cried out for blood from the weirwoods, that’s why we used to feed it to them. Justice, Arya would call it. It’s only right and fair, to a child’s mind, that what was cruelly taken be given back with all haste, like a stolen toy forcibly returned to the rightful owner. 

Dana is not so sure. Why would the gods work through Thoros of Myr? The furthest north he’s ever been was Pyke, of all places. They are said to be weakened in the Riverlands. If they could bring Robb back along the Green Fork, why could they not heal Bran’s legs, or save Winterfell from Theon? But if it is not the old gods, then it is either this Red God, who claims to be the one and only savior of men, a great light in the darkness, or it is magic. Magic isn’t real, not in the way gods are. At least, it ought not to be. Magic should only be real, Dana thinks, if there were still giants and unicorns and Children of the Forest roaming the earth, and dragons soaring in the skies. Well, she’s never seen a giant, or a unicorn, or a wee Forest Child, and she very much doubts she will ever see a dragon. 

But she has seen wargs. At night, Arya whines and cries in her sleep, and twitches and shakes, and once her eyelids fluttered to reveal that her eyes had rolled fully back into the sockets. Dana wanted to scream, but instead covered her mouth with a sweaty palm. Arya’s mentioned that she dreams of Nymeria often enough. Dana doesn’t think she dreams ‘of’ Nymeria. No more than she thinks Grey Wind’s gaze is entirely wolfish. She could never say it aloud. Wargs were hardly ever beloved, even in the North. It is not some proud bit of heritage people point to and smile about. All the wargs in the stories were monsters and villains. Sympathetic at times, pitied often, triumphant occasionally, but monsters all the same. So if now she travels in the company of monsters, both the old and the new, ones who carry great swords and ones who pick at their nails, ones who speak softly to their horses and ones who eat their meat raw off the bone, what does that make her, exactly? 

Harry Karstark sends for her late in the evening on their fifth day at Stone Hedge. He has taken over the lord’s solar. The one where the Mountain once raped Jayne Bracken and might as well have yanked out her tongue in his fist. The room makes Dana’s skin crawl, despite the fire crackling in the hearth. One of the windows is still broken, the rugs are rolled up and piled in the corner, and there are old blood stains on the desk. It feels evil, and vile, and wretched. The bookshelves are oddly barren. She supposes the Mountain’s men tore them from the shelves and burned them, too. She wraps an arm automatically around Arya, who shakes it off but does not entirely pull away.

“As you know,” says Harrion, who looks exhausted, deep lines set into his young face and shadows under his pale blue-grey eyes, “we are waiting for the fire to be lit at High Heart.” High Heart is so very high, of course, that an outrider at Stone Hedge who rides to the summit to the west of them, a few hours away, can just make out its tip, and in the dead of night would surely see a great bonfire lit there. “That will be the signal from Stone Mill to proceed. Then we’ll send a few men to the Kneeling Man to meet with Mallisters’ outriders.”

“Three waves,” says Arya, like an obedient student; she is begrudgingly fond of Harry, and he her. Dana sees nothing wrong with it, even if she does not entirely trust Karstark herself. He is a little too eager to please for a man whose father was put to death by the dead king he claims to serve so fiercely. 

He smiles shortly at Arya, like a satisfied tutor. “Aye. The bulk of the Brotherhood’s men will come in from the southwest; they’re closest. When they hit first, with any luck Marbrand and Lannister will simply think it a last ditch effort to bleed the siege camps, and turn all their attention to rooting the outlaws out and destroying them once and for all. They’ll want revenge; the Brotherhood’s been abducting and killing their men for months, and stealing their supplies as well. A day or two later we’ll hit them from the east; they’ll panic when they realize the Brackens and Blackwoods are united under Stark and Karstark banners, and then Mallister will come down to smash them from the north.” He frowns. “I wanted the Greatjon down here; he’d see you safe enough, but he stayed back with Bloodborn to talk hostages and ransom with Freys,” he scowls. “Pointless. They’ll drag it out for weeks or try for another ambush.”

Dana would rather the Greatjon be coming down as well, but she can’t blame the man when his firstborn son and heir is still held. Doubtless he feels tremendous guilt about escaping when Smalljon was captured. The Umbers are notoriously proud and pigheaded when it comes to their own blood. “If you want them all down here, announce that we hold Arya Stark. Send a raven to Sevenstreams; send them to all the river and northern houses.”

“No,” says Harry Karstark. “The instant it becomes common knowledge that we have Robb’s heir, it puts her in grave danger. You think I trust every single soldier among us? Every single knight? Arya is a great strength to us- proof that House Stark can be rebuilt, that the North can recover- and a great weakness.”

“Lysara is Robb’s heir,” Nell corrects under her breath, but there is little point in arguing it. They can’t even be sure of whether or not Lysara is being held with Nell or somewhere else. Arya is here, present and healthy and most importantly, eleven years old, not an infant. She is not so far off from her flowering, or her majority. Depending on who she wed, multiple northern houses could try to claim Winterfell and the title of king or warden through her someday. But Dana cannot consider that, because that would mean… 

“I am not!” Arya bursts out. “Just because you won’t let me go to war- I can fight better than any of your real squires,” she snaps, “I beat Ned Dayne today, and both Blackwoods-,”

“Did I say weak with a sword?” Harry snaps back, and they could almost be brother and sister squabbling. “Be quiet. You are a great weakness because you are a skinny little ragdoll of a girl who could be flung over someone’s shoulder and carried off to gods knows where to try to force us to surrender or retreat. Too many know your true identity already. I counseled His Grace to take Clegane’s head when he was brought to us. That would have been the time to do it.”

“Some would mark it dishonorable to execute a man so delirious with fever he could not even stand or speak,” Dana mutters.

“Some would mark it dishonorable to butcher women and children in the name of House Lannister, but here we are,” Harry snipes coldly. “He pledged his loyalty, and he stays with us because he is still a powerful fighter and a good source of information on how the westermen tend to command and position their men- but I am not blind. He joined us for coin. He’s a sellsword, and he will be selling that sword until the day he dies, all to the highest bidder.”

“He said he tried to help Sansa in King’s Landing,” Arya mumbles, looking away.

“That may be,” says Harry, “but he is with us now because we are his best option after he deserted the Lannisters in their great hour of need. He knows his life is forfeit if he rides anywhere near the Westerlands or the capitol. Don’t mistake desperation for loyalty.”

Dana gives him a hard look at that; but Harry does not flinch. “I didn’t bring you in here to discuss battle plans and Clegane’s honor,” he continues curtly. “When we ride for Riverrun, you are not to step foot out of Robert Paege’s line of sight. Should things turn for the worse, he will take you both to the Kneeling Man. From there, to the bay. You’ll be left with enough coin to buy out a boat and get up to Seagard.”

“And then what?” Arya demands. “We just hide there forever?” Her voice cracks. “What about the Freys?”

“If we fail, then gods willing we manage to take at least two thousand Freys with us,” says Harry. “It’s not a perfect solution. But at least you would be well away from Harrenhal, Darry, or Tarly’s men. The Mallisters might be able to smuggle you back into the North.”

“That sounds promising,” Dana is very aware that her sarcastic bite sounds very much like her easily irritated cousin. 

Harry Karstark is beginning to look as though he regrets telling them this together; he’s outnumbered and clearly not used to women glowering at him from across a desk. Arya is flushing with outrage. “You said I was to stay with Robb now! Why is he sending me away again? Where is he?” She wipes at her runny nose and all but stomps a foot in rage. “I- I want to see Robb!”

“He’s out hunting,” says Harry, with the barest hint of a glance towards the broken window, where the cold wind whistles on the jagged glass.

“He’s hunting?” Dana says in disbelief. “With what? I saw Grey Wind not an hour past.”

“He doesn’t need a wolf to hunt anymore,” says Harry in a low, tense voice. “Or a horse. He comes and goes as he pleases. A king need not answer to us.”

“No,” snaps Dana, “only to you, is that it? Tell me, Harrion- how much does Robb decide, and how much do you? Was it you who told him that taking Bracken’s head would be wise? Like you counseled him to take the Hound’s?”

“Arya, leave us,” says Harry swiftly, but Arya shakes her head, glaring.

“Answer me,” Dana says, the anger bubbling out of her nose and ears and mouth.

He looks at her with an incredulous edge. “I am lord of the Karhold. I don’t answer to a Flint maid who by all accounts ought to have been wed twice over by now.”

“And by all accounts, you ought to have been dead twice over by now,” she retorts, and it might have truly escalated into something very nasty there, but for the furious knocking at the door.

“Ned, not now-,” Harry begins, but the door is already opening.

“They said it couldn’t wait,” Ned Dayne says apologetically, as Alesander Frey and Jeyne Heddle stride past him. Well, Jeyne strides. Alesander does his usual lope, the strutting prowl every bard worth his strings has picked up. Dana has never known a man so bedraggled and worn to look quite so satisfied with himself. 

“Edd, out,” Harry immediately switches his entire mode of address, and Arya shoots both Alesander and Jeyne a suspicious look before stalking out past a confused Ned, fists clenched. “Dana, you go as well-,”

“No,” says Alesander, and Dana shoots him a grateful look, “begging your pardons, my lord Harry, but I think she’s going to want to hear this.”

The door shuts behind them, although Dana is sure Ned and Arya are both eavesdropping.

“The Blackfish has surrendered,” Jeyne says flatly. “News of it is flying down the river road.”

Karstark stares. So does Dana.

“No,” says Harry. “That- that can’t be right. By all reports the man had food and supplies enough to last him well through the first year of winter, after he evicted all the smallfolk from the castle. Why would he surrender now? Are you certain they hold Riverrun?”

“Well, unless he’s suddenly elected to begin flying a gold lion above the gates, I don’t see what else it could mean,” Alesander drawls. He looks around. “Where’s His Grace?”

Dana opens her mouth, only to hear the metallic sputter of the gates opening outside. “Coming,” she says, wishing she didn’t sound half so afraid. She does not want to be here when Stoneheart hears of this. “But then the siege, it’s over?”

“Oh, not in the least,” says Alesander. “Well, their sieging’s done, from what I’ve heard, but the camps, they’re all still there. No signs of packing it in. Bit odd, don’t you think? What are they waiting for? No river lords slinking back in disgrace to their estates? No moves to confront the Mallisters at Fairmarket?”

“They’re going to celebrate,” Jeyne draws the last word out as if it were bile.

“Oh,” says Dana, suddenly. “Oh-,”

“A nice little wedding to usher in the end of autumn,” Sander Frey, for all his Braavosi looks, still has the same smile as his grandfather. It is very disconcerting on a much younger, friendlier man. “We know how much my kin enjoys a good feast. But that’s not the only reason they’re staying put for now.”

“They haven’t got the Blackfish,” Jeyne says pointedly. “He’s gone.”

“Gone where?” Harry demands. “Where in the hells could he-,”

“He’s a fish, isn’t he?” How Dana has missed that humorless snort of Long Jeyne’s. “Downstream. Stone Mill. Tom sent Lem to meet us. Says he’s got a fine plan for your battle. Do you want to hear it or not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like a fool, I thought I could cover much more ground with this chapter and divide it into two sections: the first Dana, the second Nell. That didn't work out right when I realized I was looking to hit 12 thousand words in a single chapter, so I had to split it. On the plus side, this made the chapter solely focused on Dana, which is good because I've finally found my groove in writing from her POV. I wanted this chapter to focus a bit more on her specifically, which is why we hear more about her mother and sisters.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. 'What happened in this chapter? TLDR.' Basically two separate plans are clashing here. Due to Nell's scheming, Perwyn has counselled the Blackfish to surrender Riverrun while allowing him to escape. Nell had no idea that Robb/Harry Karstark/Jason Mallister/the Brotherhood were simultaneously trying to enact their own plan, and vice versa. So everyone in Dana's POV are completely baffled and infuriated as to why this siege that has been going on for a solid three months would out of the blue be lifted. FORTUNATELY for them, Lannister, Marbrand, Frey and co. are not packing things up right away and instead seem intent on ending the fall season with a bang, aka the promised wedding of Arwyn Frey and Daven Lannister. On top of that, the Freys are not at all eager to head back up and confront the Mallister force at Fairmarket.
> 
> 2\. Continuing from there, we also see that the Bracken women and the people of Stone Hedge are not in the least bit thrilled to see the Stark/Blackwood/Karstark combo arrive at their gates. Dana is I think someone who inherently feels a good deal of sympathy for the 'common people' and who likes to think of herself as not being so far removed from them as many of her noble peers, even for example say, Nell. She recognizes that these people really do not care about personal betrayals or political agendas and really just want to be left the hell alone to prepare for the winter. She also realizes that as righteous as she wants to feel that the Stark cause is, it's not as if everyone involved in 100% morally irreproachable and of pure intentions. She has a very hard time reconciling the fact that they now, for example, have a man like Sandor Clegane on their team. Sure, Sandor is not known for the great atrocities that his dead brother was, but Dana does not exactly see him as 'the good brother' either and really internally vents a lot of rage/frustration she feels towards her father/uncles against him.
> 
> 3\. Dana's dreams of a happy country life with Marianne obviously do not reflect the current reality she lives in, in which that sort of lifestyle for two noblewomen is rare. She knows it would have been such a long-shot to ever be able to achieve such a thing, given the current war times and the approaching and likely to be devastating winter, but she couldn't help but fantasize about it regardless, which is very reflective of her character. 
> 
> 4\. "What's up with Harry Karstark and Robb? Is Dana correct in her suspicions, or just scapegoating Harry because Stoneheart terrifies her and she feels helpless?" Well, that would be telling, right? Dana fluctuates between being relieved that someone seemingly quite competent is taking the reigns, and being very suspicious of Harry's reasons for stepping up to the plate and assuming the role of Robb's right-hand-man, especially when it's really not clear which decisions are Robb's alone and which are Harry's influence. She knows Harry is at least in some part terrified of what Robb has become, like everyone else, but she also thinks he's fairly politically savvy and very capable of hiding things behind a mask of 'I'm just an honorable Northern lord who would die for House Stark without question'. We also literally don't see Robb in this chapter, which is very much intentional. Dana is very unsettled by the fact that he's literally just off roaming about the woods in the dead of night by himself 'hunting' without a horse or Grey Wind. As am I. As are we all. 
> 
> 5\. Next chapter is Nell, we'll see the inside of Riverrun for the first time in a long time, and a lot of stuff is going to go wrong. (And some stuff will go terribly right.) It'll be fun. Finally, thank you all for your patience with me and sorry about the skipped update on Friday, but I'm glad we're back in the swing of things now!


	54. Donella XLI

300 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell first came to Riverrun on a glorious late summer day, when the hills and little valleys were emerald green and all the brooks and streams babbled curiously to each other and as far as the eye could see everything was thronged with mist, like a lacy veil over the landscape. The sun had shone brightly overhead and the breeze was warm and tender. She had not spared it much thought then; it was the furthest south she’d ever been, but they’d just won Riverrun back from the Kingslayer and they’d just had word that Eddard Stark was dead and she’d been fretting over whether or not she might be with child. Everything had been new and startling and uncertain but there’d be an undeniable allure there all the same, in spite of her unease, her fears and worries. 

She’d been new to marriage and barely even begun to rule and although she’d been horrified of doing something wrong, she had Robb and he had her and things had not seemed so dire after all, once they were safely tucked away inside Riverrun, the only castle she has ever come to know half as well as she does the Dreadfort or Winterfell. They’d crowned them not a day later, in the godswood she would go on to spend so much of her time in, and she’d been afraid and angry and also proud. 

Yes, some part of her had been proud all the same. Born a great lady and raised up a queen less than two moons into marriage to a Stark. Her husband had been the pride of them all, the boy conqueror who’d sent the westermen fleeing in terror. Whether or not she’d deserved it, she’d felt pride and honor all the same, as silly as it had seemed to stand there with a crown of weirwood leaves, holding Robb’s hands like they were being wed all over again.

Well, there is no crown atop her head any longer. She has no idea what happened to the iron and bronze crown Robb had made for her; it is either lost out in the woods somewhere, or secreted away in some chest in the Twins, if it hasn’t been sold already, or melted down into a different piece of jewelry. It used to give her such headaches and bother, but she wishes she had it now. She wishes she had many things now. Her crown. Robb. Dana. Jory. Her daughter. Her horse. What she will not complain about is the weather; the rain and wind came swooping back in no sooner had the gates of Riverrun been raised. 

And the rising waters carried the Blackfish away, just as planned. Nell doesn’t know where he’s gone, but more importantly, neither do the Freys or Lannisters, and Perwyn managed to evade suspicion for the blow Brynden Tully dealt him; he’s lucky his nose isn’t broken. The Blackfish likely enjoyed that, Nell thinks, regardless of what role Perwyn played back at the Twins. At least no one is raising the alarm over a northern conspiracy.

When she returns to Riverrun under triumphant red and gold banners, not Stark grey and white, they are not greeted with idyllic sunshine and mist and warm breeze. No, it is a dark, foggy, freezing night that the castle is ‘reclaimed’, and the bad weather shows no signs of leaving, even after several days. The fog is thick and cloying; visibility is ruined, and she knows the siege camps haven’t sent out any men since, worried they might lose their way and freeze to death come nightfall. It rains on and off, sleeting viciously against the permanently damp sandstone walls, pounding on the roof, and the wind rattles every wind until it is bolted shut. She is happy for it for twofold reasons; it will make any escape much harder to track and give pursuit to, and she wants to take it for some sort of sign that nature itself is against this new rule. 

Like it or not, the Lannisters have won, at least here. They hold what it more or less the capitol of the Riverlands, even if it no great city or massive fortress. They bar the way north through the Neck. They command the Crossing and hold Darry through the Freys. They have some claim on Harrenhal through Flement Brax. And they guard Maidenpool through Randyll Tarly. Brotherhood and its tenacious outlaws, northern survivors roaming the woods, treachery and infighting among the Freys though there may be, the reality is that the siege accomplished exactly what it wanted, even if they don’t have Brynden Tully as a prisoner. Marbrand was irritated, and Black Walder incensed, but it is not as if they don’t have Catelyn and Edmure Tully for prisoners. This is hardly any great loss for them. 

And mayhaps that is for the best, that things have gone so easily for them, that despite the Mallisters camped at Fairmarket they are content to wait them out, not roused from their comfortable position here, from their entrenched camps and their new little castle all their own where they can hold a proper court and command from. Because that means they will let their guard down, and they will not be expecting it. Plans change. She saw quite quickly that slipping off while the gates were being opened was not going to end well. Things were moving too swiftly, the men were on guard and ready for anything, and their were too many eyes on her and Catelyn, waiting to see their reaction to this new blow. 

Better to bide their time a little while longer, and what better to wait for then a great feast? No one has ever accused a Lannister of being cheap about festivities, after all. Nell helped Catelyn host them once; now they are the great guests of honor. The Freys have insisted that this marriage betwixt Daven and Arwyn be formalized now, immediately, without delay, because they are afraid the Lannisters will pack up all their men and horses and march back south, not north, and leave the Freys with a paltry force with which to confront the Mallisters and fend off broken men and bandits and inspire fear in the other river lords. The Freys worry they may be left to an unpleasantly drawn-out fate of death by a thousand cuts if the lions retreat to their dens, especially with winter so near. They expect the white raven from the Citadel any day now. Once the snows begin, no one is going anywhere. 

So Marbrand and Lannister and Frey, they all want this wedding over and done with, so they can rally the men all the better once they’ve some decent food and a good night’s sleep, charge out to slaughter Jason Mallister and his rebels, pack Nell and Catelyn off west, and call it all a good day. Some of these men speak about returning to the capitol for the winter, others speak longingly of Casterly Rock or Lannisport. Genna Lannister, meanwhile, struts about Riverrun the way a kitchen cat might after catching an especially fat rat, proudly displaying her kill. She insists on a tour of the keep and since Catelyn has been all but mute since she first saw lions flying where once were trout, it falls upon Nell to do so. At least it is just Genna, and not her insufferably limpid husband as well.

Nell doesn’t know how a woman as sharp-tongued as Genna Lannister has not strangled him in his sleep yet. Then again, she’s heard the occasional drunken jape that Emmon’s been a cuckold since the age of one-and-twenty, when he took Genna, who was all of fourteen, to wife. They say her sons don’t have much of the Frey look to them. Nell disagrees. Cleos Frey looked far more Frey than Lannister when he came to those deliver terms from King’s Landing all those months ago, with his stringy brown hair, thin face, slight build, and small chin, and her second son Lyonel is blonde haired and green-eyed, aye, but undeniably resembles Emmon Frey as well, being barely any taller than his short mother. 

She can’t remember what Tion looked like. She only ever saw his corpse. The dead boys, she thinks, they might as well have been faceless, because she can’t recall. Should it worry her? She remembers what Rickard Karstark and Rickard Ryswell looked like headless, she can still hear their final words, but she doesn’t remember the boys. They were naked and wet from the rain and they laid on the floor she is now walking across with Genna. Your son was naked, she thinks, they killed him in his sleep, did you know? He didn’t have time to be afraid. How old was he? Fifteen? You were wed at his age and he is dead. 

Emmon and Genna’s youngest child, Red Walder, is newly fourteen, she recalls her mentioning, and a page at Casterly Rock. Genna does not expect to see him again until the winter has come and gone. He may be a man grown by then. In his absence she dotes on her grandson, the boy they all call Ty, Cleos’ eldest. He does look more Lannister, Tywin Frey, better looking than his dead father by far, and perhaps that is why Genna is so fond of him. 

“Willem is a page at Ashemark, you know,” Genna comments to her casually as they walk along the open corridor facing the godswood, outside the feasting hall where Daven and Arwyn’s marriage will soon be celebrated in full southern splendor. “His mother is a Darry. I’ll tell you a secret,” she smiles almost bitterly, although even when her smiles are not happy Genna still shows all her teeth, “I would have rathered that for a keep. Very quiet and pleasant, Darry is. Tucked away south of the Trident’s mouth. And we had a better claim to it by far. But Em would not be dissuaded,” she sighs, peering out into the grey godswood, rendered almost impenetrable by fog. “Though I suppose one ought not to complain over their spoils. I must sound very ungrateful.” 

_You do_ , Nell wants to say, but instead she inquires, “How old is Willem?” 

“Oh, ten- very bothersome age, if you ask me. Most boys are insufferable at ten. I should know, I’ve raised four of them. Chatters on and on- he got that from his mother, Cleos was always a mousy little thing. Good friends with my Walder, but it’s best they be kept separate. You send boys off to ward together, they grow too dependent. Like two vines all twisted up. Then one of them takes an injury or gets his head lopped off, and the other doesn’t know what to do with himself. Jaime and Addam were like that, when they were young,” she muses, settling down with a grown onto a low stone bench. “But Jaime needed it. Gods know Tyrion was never going to be his playmate. And Addam was always mature for his age. I suppose he’d have to be, all those bloody sisters.”

The very least thing Nell wants to discuss with Genna Lannister is the relationship between the Lannister brothers, but then Genna says, “Your betrothed’s quite proud of himself, you know. What with Jaime coming up from the city- he’ll be shocked to arrive to find things already settled. Mayhaps Daven can be persuaded to leave a few Mallisters left alive for him to tussle with.”

Nell stares at her. “The- Ser Jaime is coming here?”

“Oh, not for some time, no need to get yourself all worked up,” Genna says dryly, as if expecting Nell to start wailing or drop into a dead faint. “We had the raven a few days past, poor bedraggled thing. Like or not he and Cersei have had some squabble and now she’s sent him running to stifle his sorrows on the battlefield. After all, we hardly expected to win the castle so suddenly, and at the rate we’ve been losing men to desertion or outlaws,” she wrinkles her nose. “Addam would never admit it, poor man, but he’d have been very put-out if Jaime would have had to come clean this up for him. It’s not easy, I suppose, having grown up alongside a man like my nephew. Men like Jaime- glory tends to attach itself to them. Rather hard to shake it off.” 

Seeing the repulsed look on Nell’s face, she laughs loudly and adds, “Well, glory and infamy. He must wish he’d been there that day in the Kingswood, fighting the Brotherhood. He could have earned his spurs for riding to battle against the Smiling Knight, the way Jaime did. Instead he got them three years later, helping put out a fire down at the docks in Lannisport. Noble, of course, but hardly the stuff of legends. They don’t sing songs about singed sailors. This is Addam’s glory,” she says thoughtfully. “I can’t think of many more deserving.”

“Ser Addam has been very considerate of myself and Lady Catelyn,” Nell says, biting the inside of her cheek.

“He takes after his mother,” Genna replies. “Gods knows Damon Marbrand’s still got a hellish temper, old as he is. Married twice, outlived them both. You’ll want to mind your tongue around him, but you don’t seem to have much trouble minding it, do you?”

“When I was a child my mother told me idle chatter was the enemy of good sense,” Nell replies coldly.

“How very Northern of her,” Genna sniffs. “Humor me. I’m an old woman with no daughters and once this wedding business is through, far too much free time. Perhaps you could give me some suggestions for a wife for Ty. Gods know he’ll need a sensible one.”

“I would have thought you’d simply select another Frey,” Nell will allow herself this one barb, “Seeing as House Lannister is already abed with the lot of them.” 

For a moment Genna simply arches a pale eyebrow at her, then laughs again, ringing out into the fog. “You’ll excuse my frankness, dear girl. I’m dreadfully pleased we’ve won the war but I will admit I would have enjoyed seeing you in your prime. I imagine the Starks simply didn’t know what to do with you.”

“The Starks are more cunning than you allow,” Nell says curtly. 

“I was at Harrenhal watching Rhaegar Targaryen start a war when you were just a babe in arms, girl,” Genna holds out a hand just beginning to spot with age impatiently, and Nell reluctantly helps her up. “I know all about Starks and cunning. And men’s weakness for women, no matter their loyalties,” she adds sharply. “I pray you’ll not discount my advice on account of my name. You and Catelyn Tully are both children to me, young enough to be my daughter and granddaughter. Do not ruin the rest of your lives for the sake of pride in dead men, no matter how dear they were to you. You will go on to rule other households, have more children. Whether you love or loathe the father of those children doesn’t matter. Do not make yourself a victim of honor, that’s what I say. Addam’s a man many girls would kill to wed, and Ashemark is an old and noble seat.”

“And the Banefort?” Nell challenges, as Genna has spent considerably less time extolling the virtues of Lord Quenten as she has Ser Addam. “Is that such a prize for my goodmother, whose children have been slaughtered, whose home has been conquered-,”

“The Banefort is no Riverrun,” Genna’s green-eyed gaze flicks around the pinkish walls. “But if she could learn to love Winterfell, it cannot be such a trial. Would you have me lie? No, Quenten Banefort is no gallant charmer nor war hero, and he’s tried to back out of the betrothal a dozen times. But he’s been widowed for six years now, and his children need a mother. Mayhaps it will be some comfort to her, to be needed. Children have no concern for politics or war. She might find peace there, by the sea.”

“The children of the Riverlands learned to concern themselves with war,” Nell says quietly, “when your brother sent the Mountain and Lorch to put their homes to the torch and rape their mothers in front of them.”

“Tywin’s methods have never been gentle,” Genna purses her lips. “But we must all agree that they were seldom ineffective.”

Have other children, Nell thinks, later, when she is back in her old rooms, the same rooms she gave birth to Lysara to, the same rooms where she and Robb made love to one another and cradled their daughter in their arms and looked out at the stars and sat with Grey Wind before the hearth and spoke of family and war and the future. Perhaps it is different for a woman Genna’s age. But she could have a dozen more children and none would replace Lysara. It is not just a hole in her, it is a ragged wound that screams whenever she moves. Catelyn was right, the stabbing pain never entirely goes away. There’s been no word of Bolton or Frey movements in the Neck. It would be best for the North if they were all wiped out by the crannogmen. But her daughter is among them and the likes of Howland Reed has never laid eyes on her. I gave her Mother’s hair, she thinks, she has to be alright, it kept me safe for so long, it will do the same for her. That little braid had shielded her from Ramsay and wildlings and childbirth and Freys. It has to count for something, it does. It has to still be worth something, some small fragment of a life left behind. 

Fair Walda comes to her and Catelyn the night before the wedding, which is to be held the first day of the fourth month of the new year. “Arwyn’s worried,” she announces as soon as the door is shut behind her. They have considerably more privacy here, although of course there are still guards posted in the corridor, but at least there are stone walls between them, and not thin tent flaps. The men and women are once again divided now that they are settled into a proper household once more, and Nell has seen very little of Marbrand or Daven or thankfully, the likes of Ryman or Black Walder since they entered Riverrun. “About the wedding.”

Nell exchanges a guarded look with Catelyn. “She has no need to worry,” Catelyn finally says. “No one seeks to harm her or Daven. All we require is for you to keep the men distracted and well-sated with food and spirits.”

“I have no intention of fighting my way out of here,” Nell says wryly, trying for a jape.

Fair Walda’s lips quirk up slightly, but Nell can see the unease in her eyes. No. They cannot afford doubts now. She needs them on her side. She doesn’t care what lie she has to spin to keep them trapped in this web. Surely Walda knows it’s too late to back out now. She has been spying on Black Walder and her other kinsmen for two months now. Were they to find out, they might not kill her on the spot, but it certainly wouldn’t end well for her. She could be packed off to marriage to some obscure hedge knight, or the Silent Sisters, or worse. 

“Once we are free,” she says in a low, insistent tone, “we will raise up our men and go north. You see how bad the weather is already.” As if on cue, thunder rumbles outside. “I want my daughter. I want to go home.”

Walda looks between the two of them, then gives a small nod. “Alright. But don’t blame me if she’s cringing and flinching through the wedding. She hoped she’d have a longer betrothal. She only turned five-and-ten last month, you know. Even though I told her how lucky she was. Daven’s hardly bright, but at least he’s fine to look at,” she tosses her long blonde hair over her shoulder and departs with her usual flouncing, but her posture remains taut and tense.

“If it comes down to it,” Catelyn says in a voice barely above a whisper, when she is gone, “we must harden our hearts to the possibility that there will be bloodshed.” She is sitting so close to Nell on the bed, but her gaze is very far away indeed. They sleep together most nights, and Nell listens to her moan and cry in her sleep, calling for children who will never come running to her side again. My girls, my boys. Robb, come back. Arya, wait. Sansa, where are you? Bran, I’m coming. Rickon, don’t go. Nell knows her goodmother is not mad, but she will be soon if this continues. This was her childhood home, Riverrun, and now it is overrun with monsters. The only thing she is living for is the slim chance of seeing her grandchild again, of seeing her uncle and brother again. 

“Yes,” the words come out strong and smooth, but she does not feel strong or smooth. “We must. I did what I could for them, when I could. I won’t hesitate. Don’t worry.” Nell has thought about it before. Thoughts of vengeance or retribution aside, she is not a little girl, and she knows that there is a chance things will go very, very badly for the Freys, sooner or later. It may be the Lannisters’ doing, it may be the Brotherhood with Banners’ doing, it may be Harry Karstark’s doing. But she must come to terms with the fact that these things are rarely neat and tidy. If she has to choose between her freedom and putting innocent lives in danger, she knows what must be done. If she has to choose between her own life and Walda’s, or Arwyn’s, or Zia’s… 

Well, it’s not really a matter of choosing. She has a child who needs her. She cannot leave Lysara alone in this world. She cannot leave her babe in the mouth of a ravenous beast. Who or what must be cut down to get to her does not matter, so long as Nell reaches her at last. Robb had to think like this, when he was going to war, had to accept that there would be casualties, that innocent people would suffer and die, that he could not give everyone the justice they deserved, and now she must do the same. It’s not cruelty, it’s pragmatism. 

There are some other advantages to being back at Riverrun, at least. Many of the original household’s servants still remain, and it makes it considerably easier to get messages across, to communicate information quickly and without immediate fear of some guard bursting in or Genna Lannister getting wind of it. Most of these people may be displaced by the time winter comes, as their survival and their positions depend on winning their new lord and lady’s favor, but for the time being the same men and women who would smile at Lysara when Nell walked past with her burbling in her arms now spare meaningful glances and slip scraps of parchment under dishes when they bring in meals. 

The bedding, it’s agreed upon. The best time to slip away will be the bedding, when many of the men will be very drunk, the feasting hall will be full of groups of people coming and going, and no one will pay any mind to people dashing up and down flights of stairs, laughing and shouting for the bride and groom. Riverrun is a small, triangular keep. Nell could walk briskly from one corner of it to the opposite in less than ten minutes. She knows the locations of all three gates, and she knows every nook and corner one could slip into to avoid detection. There’s boats clogging the waterway. They just need to shoot out into the river in one, carried by the floodwaters, and they could be halfway down the Red Fork before anyone took notice. So long as they stay calm and keep their wits about them, it could work. Catelyn got out of Renly’s siege camp with Brienne of Tarth in the wake of a bloody assassination, for gods’ sakes. Surely they can manage this during a wedding feast. 

Nell’s wardrobe has been rather severely impacted by recent events, but she runs a hand longingly over the blue-and-red gown for a moment before forcing herself to be practical here. She needs to wear something she will be able to move swiftly and quietly in, and her most comfortable, simple shoes as well. But she also can’t look suspiciously underdressed at a wedding. It’s not as if the Freys had her paraded about barefoot in rags like a kitchen wench. Genna would have had a conniption and Marbrand would have been appalled. She can’t wear Stark colors either. That would be a bit too overt. Nor can she dress in red. That would be laughable; civility aside her contempt for the Lannisters is well known. 

Instead she wears a very lightweight gown of dark, brooding forest green that she last wore two years ago for Arya’s ninth nameday celebration, in what seems like another lifetime. Before she wed Robb, before the Lannisters ever came to Winterfell, before there was any thought of war or murder or betrayal. When her primary concern was seducing a sheepish boy of four-and-ten and winning over his coddled siblings and their overgrown wolf pups. She’s shocked it even still fits, but it will blend in well, especially once she’s outside, and while she’s going to be cold regardless, at least it’s not going to weigh her down much. It looks a bit awkward in the mirror; too tight in the chest and hips now, but it’s not so ill-fitting that it will be that noticeable, and the lighting will be dim anyways. 

Nell has worn her hair up in a widow’s braid for three months now, and winds the braid into a familiar bun at the back of her neck, fingers sliding over the glossy weight of it. She adds a mother-of-pearl comb that was a wedding gift, slides on the amber Dustin ring, and looks at herself in the looking glass. She looks old and tired and tense, except for the stressed spots of color in her cheeks. Nell slides her tongue across her chapped lips, then sits and waits for her goodmother to finish dressing. 

Catelyn wears a dark grey just a shade shy of black. Nell has not seen her in bright colors since that brief period of time when the mourning period for her husband had ended and Robb still lived. She watches Catelyn finger a fresh strand of silvery grey in her auburn hair. “Would that it had all fallen out in the night,” Catelyn says, more to herself than Nell. “It is nothing but a sorry reminder.”

“You look lovely,” Nell tells her, and Catelyn gives her a look and then a bitter laugh that after a moment, Nell shares. She can’t help it. Her nerves are too twisted and gnarled. She feels like she wants to scream but she can’t, so it keeps bouncing around in her chest, pattering in between her ribs. 

She’s been to so many weddings at this point that none of this morning’s events seem very unusual or special. There’s lot of nervous tittering and whispering, murmurs and stares, tired yawns and complaints about how long the ceremony is going to be. Arwyn is there, of course, with a rather sadly small amount of handmaidens, as it’s just Fair Walda and young Zia, really. Beyond Nell, Catelyn, and Genna, there are no other women present aside from servants. None of the river lords there as ‘guests’ brought their wives or daughters along, for obvious reasons. Nell tries to make eye contact with all of them, even the men who avoid her stare, or turn away, or who scowl at her as if she asked for any of this. Charlton. Erenford. Goodbrook. Lychester. Piper. Roote. Smallwood. Vance of Atranta. Vance of Wayfarer’s Rest. Their men are still outside, she reminds herself. If they see that I need their help, they will give aid. They must. They must know this is their last chance to do something, anything. 

Arwyn does make a pretty bride, albeit the youngest Nell has ever seen wed. She looks quite a bit like Roslin did on her wedding day; their gowns are even similar; airy, simple constructions of Myrish lace and eggshell ivory silk. The bride is shivering when she enters the sept on Perwyn’s arm, either from damp cold lingering heavy in the air, or from her own nerves, and continues to shiver through the ceremony until Daven cloaks her in an aged, tremendously bulky looking cloak of Lannister scarlet, which almost bows the poor girl. He mutters something to her as he does it, though, and it must have been a jest of some sort, because Arwyn seems to stop shaking so and even smiles shyly at him before they kiss. His long blonde hair and beard has been trimmed, although not entirely shaven, Nell can tell, and she imagines Genna had something to do with that-

“We could hardly have the girl looking as though she were marrying a great big yellow dog, could we?” Genna sniffs as the prayers finish. Nell notices Ryman Frey chuckling with Manfryd Yew as they leave the sept, gesturing to Zia, who is oblivious, tossing dried flower petals at her flinching cousin while Walda rolls her eyes. She has some idea of what he is the discussing. The Yews are an old and respected line in the westerlands, claiming heritage from the First Men, like much of the North, but they are still only landed knights, not afforded the title of lord. All the same, Manfryd Yew is old enough to girlish Zia’s father. At the same time, Daven is seven-and-twenty to Arwyn’s five-and-ten. Marbrand is eleven years older than Nell. Genna wed Emmon when he was one-and-twenty and she but four-and-ten, as she is fond of recollecting.

“Hold off on the rum and brandy until after the third course,” Addam Marbrand is telling the steward as they enter the feasting hall to scattered cheers and brief applause. “I don’t want hammers in their heads come morn, not after that singer’s warning.”

Nell almost stops walking for an instant, stumbling into Catelyn, who reaches out to steady her, for Robb said almost the same thing on the day of Edmure and Roslin’s wedding. Then that is forgotten- “Ser,” she calls out, hastening forward to keep pace with Marbrand, who looks pleasantly surprised at her willingly seeking him out in public, “did I hear we have singers tonight? Proper musicians? When did they come, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Oh, a day or so past,” Marbrand says dismissively. “Some Tom of Sevenstreams… Sevens, some of the men call him. As known for his wenching as his music, apparently. He came with one of the Freys- they’ve got a singer amongst them, some Alesander? Pleasant enough man. Lady Genna liked the look of him and his troupe. They brought lute and drums and harps, and a few women to sing and dance as well. The men will be pleased- better than cockfights or racing piglets,” he snorts. “And they gave us fair warning,” he adds, his tone sobering abruptly. “The Brotherhood’s plotting an attack from Stone Mill, or so the smallfolk say. They couldn’t say if the Blackfish was among them, but I’d wager he was. It’s a fool’s errand. I’ve put out warnings and told the men to the southwest to be on guard.”

“How large is this Brotherhood, truly?” Nell tries to sound concerned, rather than at all eager or pleased.

He arches a reddish eyebrow. “No larger than your average motley group of thieves and murderers, I’d imagine. Perhaps a few hundred at most? They’ll be dealt with soon enough, and the winter will finish off the rest. These men are only brave when the weather’s fair and there’s grubs to dig out of the ground. They’ll be throwing down their swords to cut firewood as soon as the frost starts to settle.” His voice is brimming with confidence and experience, easy assurance from years of putting down peasant rebellions and bringing outlaws to justice. Nell knows she’d feel comforted, if that’s what she was seeking. It’s not.

She doesn’t want comfort. And she doesn’t want the fogs and winds to blow away. If winter came howling in tonight, she would not complain.

It is only once they’ve all taken their seats and a few modest speeches are being given in honor of the bride and groom that Catelyn leans over to her and murmurs, “I know one of the singers.”

Catelyn glances towards the far end of the room, where the musicians are busily setting up their things for the night, removing cloaks and sopping wet boots and gloves, tuning whining instruments. “Tom of Sevenstreams? He’s a bit of a local legend, is he?”

“No,” Catelyn says sharply. “One of the girls.”

Nell looks where she is looking, and picks out the tallest girl of the lot, a willowy weed of a young woman with a long face, long limbs, and long hair. She looks similar enough to Dacey Mormont that it hurts her heart, but she’s obviously not Northern. “You know her? Who is she?”

“I’ve never spoken to her, but I’ve seen her before, and I know her people,” Catelyn mutters. “She’s a Heddle of the Crossroads. I knew her aunt Masha when I was just a girl myself.”

“Did she sing then?” Nell doesn’t see how this matters at all. So the girl’s fallen on hard times and taken up with a group of troubadours. What of it?

“No,” says Catelyn. “She never sang.”

The first course is brought out then, and Nell doesn’t speak much to anyone after that, too busy filling her stomach. She has not eaten this well in weeks, and Riverrun’s cooks are a considerable improvement over the Twins, and if she is about to be on the run, she had best fill her belly now, so she isn’t wishing she had later. The soup scalds her throat and burns her chest, but she doesn’t mind; it feels good to be burned, to feel her blood run hot and savage. Catelyn has applied herself to the meal with similar spirit, and Nell is glad; her goodmother is verging on gaunt, she seldom eats like this. She takes a cup of wine so as not to look odd, but refuses any brandy or mead. 

“Only sixteen courses,” Genna is chastising her husband a few places down the table, “one would have thought your purse-strings would be a bit looser now that we have our keep- Ty, stop that this instant! One does not gulp down their stew like a starved farm boy! Really, child, use a napkin-,”

Daven is offering Arwyn some of his pie. She flushes bright pink and takes a few tentative bites off his fork, then nods when he enthusiastically inquires if it’s to her liking. “Here, Wyn, give him some of your venison,” Walda commands as if she were the great guest of honor at this feast, all the while ignoring Black Walder’s increasingly frustrated attempts to make conversation with her. Zia is happily chattering away to Wendel and Waltyr, regaling them with some exaggerated tale of a childhood mishap, laughing so hard she is choking on her beer. An unsmiling as always Quenten Banefort leans over and clouts her hard in the back to get her to stop coughing, then turns away when she cheerily thanks him. 

Outside the windows, Nell watches the clouded sky turn dark with night, and watches, and waits. Hugo and Kirth Vance are careful to always position themselves near an exit, and stay within her line of sight. Perwyn is seated on the other side of her, and Benfrey is at the far end of the table, locked in conversation with Ruttiger. Nell is pleased when the demands for dancing music begin, if only because that means the feast is progressing as expected. She expects at least one man will ask her to dance, and so leans back slightly in her seat, only to see a harried looking squire dart in through a side door, making his way with all haste to Marbrand’s side. He leans down and imparts some whispered message; Marbrand’s easy smile falls off his face, and he stands quickly. Nell’s stomach drops.

Marbrand flags down Ryman, who shouts for Black Walder, and the three men converge in a shadowed corner. Daven is oblivious to this, pulling a hesitant Arwyn from her seat as easily as a farmer might lead a lamb, and making for the center of the room as the musicians start to play a familiar wedding tune. Nell keeps her gaze trained on Marbrand, Ryman, and Black Walder, only to see what looks like a vicious disagreement break out. Marbrand steps back, snapping something, as if to tell them to figure it out themselves, and folds his arms across his chest. Black Walder rounds on his father, and their voices rise, but she can’t hear it over the music. Finally, Ryman leaves the hall, glaring at his son, who is already striding back to his seat.

Marbrand watches him closely, then makes his way back over as well. Nell stands suddenly, almost upsetting her empty cup, and folds her hands in front of her. “Ser?” She sounds uncertain and young. “Is everything alright? Is it- is it the Brotherhood?”

“No,” says Marbrand sharply. “The Mallisters. The fog is less to the north- they’re moving. They’ll be here by dawn.” Taking the look on her face for stunned fear, he is quick to reassure her. “It likely won’t even come to a siege. We far outnumber them and we command the better ground. In a sense I am glad for it. We can get this over with. They say Jason Mallister is not unreasonable. Ryman will send men to treat with him. If we can settle it peaceably-,”

“Oh, you must,” Nell says. “I- I saw Patrek die, it was… he was a good man, and a son any man could be proud of. The Freys must make amends for it. It was dishonorably done.”

“A great many things have been dishonorably done in these lands,” he remarks, but his look softens the longer he looks at her, as if taking in a pleasing portrait. He is attracted to her. She has known it for some time now, and has never felt particularly threatened by it, and she does not think he means it to intimidate or cow her into submission, but all of a sudden she is glad, so terribly glad, that the wedding they celebrated today was Arwyn’s, not hers. “For all this talk of dishonor, would you do me the honor of dancing with me, my lady?”

“Would it be proper?” Nell averts her gaze as is expected, the reluctant widow who must be tempted back into the public eye. “I… I confess I had never thought to celebrate anything alongside Lannisters.”

“You need not fear these river lords,” Marbrand tells her firmly. “I will not tolerate any slander against you, my lady. You need not be censured for sharing a dance with your intended. No one who knows you could ever imagine to call you disloyal or two-faced.”

He does not know her at all, of course, but he thinks he does. She supposes she is very simple in his view. Not in mind, but in character. All women likely are to him, be they highborn or lowborn. They lead simple lives, have simple dreams of romance and chivalry, harbor the simple desire to be protected and instructed by men like him. A man like Black Walder, he hates women, for whatever his reasons may be. He names them all whores and snakes, hissing and spitting at him when he crushes them under his heel. A man like Addam Marbrand, why, he likes most women, and they him. He names them innocents and victims, glasshouse flowers and pretty ornaments awarded to the worthy for their good deeds and virtue. 

“Besides,” he says in his charming manner, “I am not a Lannister, am I?”

 _You are not_ , she thinks, _but you eat at their table and keep their words all the same._

She takes his hand and lets him escort her out onto the floor. He’s light on his feet and a good dancer, not too aggressive nor too passive a partner. He leads her very well- too well, by her liking. She feels like a filly being put through her paces in front of an admiring audience. The torchlight brings out the golden brown in his hair. He keeps up the conversation too, without stammering or losing a breath. He tells her of Ashemark, high up in the foothills of the mountains where the air is thin but pure. It is minuscule compared to Casterly Rock, but what castle isn’t? It is sandstone, much like Riverrun, although its shape is more square than triangle. 

It once hosted a Targaryen princess and her dragon. It took the Young Wolf six days and six nights to take it in battle. When he came in with all his men, those bristling savage northerners, his sisters stood their ground and refused to bow or scrape at the insolent boy’s feet. His eldest sister spit at them, in fact. Marbrand has four; two elder, from his father’s first marriage to a Broome, and two younger, from his father’s second marriage to a Crakehall. Drusella and Elissa are both married but widowed, and have since returned to their father’s house. Hanna is just four years younger than him and recently gave birth to her second child, a boy named for their father. Shiera is only a year younger than Nell, the baby of the family, betrothed but yet unwed after a spate of illnesses. 

“She’s always been delicate,” he recounts, “but she’s never let that stop her from anything she set her mind to. Truly, I think her near as learned as our maester. She will be a credit to Alyn Stackspear, when he takes her to wife. Seven know he’s not one for much reading and writing,” he chuckles.

He loves them, that’s clear enough. He loves his home and he loves his father and his sisters and his nieces and nephews. “You will come to like it, I think,” he tells her after they’ve danced three songs and she’s pleaded exhaustion. “It cannot be so different from the northern landscape, certainly not once we see snow. That will be something. The last time I saw winter I was still half a boy.”

“Bed them!” a drunken Frey is shouting towards the singers as Nell reclaims her seat. “Bed them!” She’s sweating, and not just from the dancing. Catelyn is careful not to look directly at her, but is slowly extricating herself from stilted conversation with Quenten Banefort all the same. He leaves to relieve himself, and Nell holds her breath until Marbrand moves over to speak with Daven, presumably as to whether or not he does, in fact, want to be bed. Daven is drunk, that much is clear, but not so drunk as to be out of his wits, he spares a look to Arwyn, as if seeking the approval of a girl half his age. _What can she say_ , Nell thinks coldly, _no? No, I don’t wish to be bed, I want to eat some more cake first? You go on ahead, dear husband?_

Arwyn waffles, looking to Walda for help, and Walda narrows her eyes at her. Then Arwyn nods quickly, ducking her head, and Daven, seemingly appeased by this show of agreement, looks to Genna. Genna Lannister is not one to refrain from drinking either, it would seem, although several cups of peach brandy have not dulled her eyes or slurred her speech yet, and in response, she stands and raises her cup to the hall, which slowly quiets as if she were their queen. “Well, my lords?” she calls out loud and clear. “Shall we put my nephew to bed?”

It is nothing like the terrifying roar that went up at the Twins when hundreds screamed their approval, but the men are mostly wine-wasted and happy just to be indoors, out of the cold, going to sleep in a featherbed tonight and not on the wet ground or in a moldy cot, and they stomp their feet and cry out their response, and Tom of Sevenstreams launches into “The Queen Took Off Her Sandal, The King Took Off His Crown”. They’ve played that at every wedding Nell has ever been to, be it northern or southern.

“ _The queen, she was a spry young thing, and seldom did she frown!_ ”

“ _The king, he gave a lover’s sigh, when he took off his crown!_ ”

“ _Her sandal’s stays were loosened, her skirts rode up her knees!_ ”

“ _He shrugged off cape from shoulders broad, and oh, but she was pleased!_ ”

Nell steels herself, smiles too broadly as if she’d over-indulged with all the rest, is glad for how red her face is from all the dancing, and grabs hold of Catelyn’s arm, letting herself stumble slightly. “Come, let’s bed them, let’s!” Genna Lannister turns to inspect her, as Catelyn flushes and plays the part of the put-upon older woman well, steadying Nell as she stands up with her. 

“These young girls are all alike these days,” Genna declares with a satisfied look. “They could be happy to dance in a pigsty once they were in their cups. No offense intended, of course, my lady Stark.”

“We’ll bed your nephew, then her,” Catelyn says simply, and with that they join the small group of women, largely squealing servant girls tearing Daven’s cloak from him, while Arwyn is borne away by the men, Marbrand and Black Walder among them, as well as several less enthused river lords. They go out separate doors, but come into the same wide hallway; the men are faster and are already in the stairwell. Nell goes along with the women, listening to the sounds of the music fade, and then, as they near the stairs, watches as Walda leans down and declares, “My lord, is that Casterly Rock itself in your breeches?”

The resounding screech of amusement that goes up is deafening. Daven Lannister swats her away as he might a fly, laughing all the same, and as they round the corner Nell stops playing the tipsy maid, straightens, grabs hold of Catelyn’s cold hand, and very quickly pivots, and goes in a different direction instead, heading not upstairs but out onto the walkway alongside the godswood. Even if they are caught now, they can just say they needed some air. “Don’t look back, don’t run,” Catelyn says under her breath as they move. “Don’t look back- if someone comes up to us, we must speak and set them at ease. If we run now, we’ll be caught, just keep walking-,”

Nell has gone this way before. She walked this way with Jory on the night Jaime Lannister tried to escape and killed several men. Soon they will be within sight of the water gate. They walk under an archway and through the roiling fog, clouding torchlight and men’s vision alike, and then Kirth Vance comes rushing out to greet them. “Hugo’s already at the portcullis,” he says abruptly, face drawn in the darkness. “There were three guards, two of them ours. The other’s been handled. We don’t need to raise it all the way, just enough for the boat. Be ready to keep your heads down, there’s cloaks stowed away.”

It’s happening. She can scarcely believe it’s happening. There’s no cry of alarm from behind them, no sound of running feet, Daven is too drunk to notice they are gone, Marbrand and Black Walder will be confused as to if they even left the hall in the first place, Genna suspects nothing-

They come to the top of the steps leading down to the gate, and Kirth raises a hand in greeting to his brother, standing and waiting at the bottom, then stops. “Hugo?” His voice is lost on the stiff wind pushing at their hair and clothes. The figure comes quickly up the steps, a hand on his sword, and only then does Nell see it is not Hugo Vance at all, but Quenten Banefort. The men are years apart in age but have similar builds, and now as Kirth asks in a voice straining to maintain its composure, “My lord, where is my brother?”, Banefort says grimly-

“Dead in the water, you little fool. Like all traitors.”

“No,” says Catelyn hoarsely, “my lord, you misunderstand, we were just-,”

“Just plotting your escape?” Banefort is perhaps just shy of forty, his face lined and craggy, hairline receding, but still tall and strong. “I thought to take a walk after the privy to see if I could see those damned outlaws struggling through the fog upriver. Instead I see murder and treachery. Lucen was one of mine, the guard your brother just killed, before I slew him,” he tells a speechless Kirth. “He deserved better than to be knifed in the back in the dark.” Banefort draws his sword. “You deserve far worse. Stand aside,” he says curtly to Catelyn and Nell, “and perhaps you need not be punished harshly for this… mishap.”

“Kill him,” Nell says to Kirth, without even making eye contact. “Quietly.” Her blood is pounding in her ears but her mind is blessedly blank. Had she a blade on her, she could slit Banefort’s throat and feel nothing, she thinks. Nothing but contentment. So it’s come to this. That’s alright. Part of her’s almost missed it, seeing men die, at least the ones who deserved it. Kirth blocks Banefort’s first blow, but is forced back a step by the sheer strength of it; he stumbles into a barrel, almost slips on the wet stones. Catelyn forcibly steadies him with a shove, scrabbles at his belt briefly, and draws back. 

Steel clashes again, Nell looks around desperately, waiting for all hell to come bearing down on them, and then Kirth momentarily gains the upper hand, slashes at Banefort’s shoulder, a shallow but stinging cut, and as he jumps back, cursing, Catelyn takes one stride forward and slams something into the small of his unprotected back. At first Nell just thinks she’s pummeled him, but then he moans and falls to his knees, and she sees Kirth’s dagger sticking out. “Roll him,” Catelyn snaps, as Kirth gapes, and then as the three of them clamber to the ground to push the corpse over into the water-

A cry goes up from the watchtower, men on the walls shout, and a familiar voice calls out. “Lady Donella! Lady Catelyn!” 

“Fuck,” Kirth snarls, “it’s Marbrand.”

“I noticed,” Nell hisses, and looks around desperately. “Run back to the godswood, go to the left and under the maester’s bridge, he won’t see you. Wait for us there, we’ll regroup.”

“We have to go now-,”

“We’re not going to get the fucking gate open with the Brotherhood riding up on the siege camps, are we!” She looks at Catelyn. “Alesander- Alesander Frey wasn’t at the Twins that night, was he?”

“No,” says Catelyn faintly.

“And a Heddle is with them? Kirth, take the knife, go, he’s not going to hurt two unarmed women!”

Kirth goes, cursing. Nell stands up, her hands wet with blood. “SER ADDAM!” she screams. “Come quick, help!”

Addam Marbrand arrives on the scene with half a dozen men, swords drawn. His eyes widen at the sight of Nell and Catelyn’s disheveled appearances and Banefort’s corpse. “What happened here?” he demands. “Why are you outside-,”

“We heard someone calling for help,” Nell babbles, hoping her desperation is taken for blind panic. “And then we found Lord Quenten- someone’s stabbed him, we were trying to see where he was hurt, but he- he-,’

“He’s gone,” Catelyn says dully, rubbing her bloody hands on her skirt. “Whoever did this-,”

“Whoever did this is as good as dead,” Marbrand snaps. “We’ve got fighting in the camps. Come inside, quickly. I want everyone accounted for before I send any men out in boats.”

They’re all but marched back towards the hall when the second cry goes up. “Gods damn it,” Marbrand cries out, “what is it now-,”

Enemies to the east as well, apparently, breaking out of the fog and streaming down from the river road. “I want the walls fully manned, bring out every guard from the barracks and every man of rank from the feasting hall,” Marbrand is barking orders as they re-enter the room. The musicians are still playing, but it falters to a confused din as people come streaming in and out. The men and women have returned from the bedding, other men are snatching their swords and shields from the walls, and Genna Lannister greets them with an appalled exclamation. 

“Whose blood is this?” she demands. “Emmon, pull up a chair- or fetch a page, quickly now- Are you hurt?” she asks of Marbrand, before turning to Nell and Catelyn. “I thought you were going with the bedding!”

“We were,” Catelyn says shakily, “but then someone was screaming- Ser Addam says we are under attack.”

“Contained to the camps,” Marbrand corrects swiftly, at the momentary flash of fear on Genna’s face. “It’s the damned fog- I’m going out with fifty men within the hour, once we’ve done a head count- I want to know exactly where everyone in this bloody castle is before we do anything else- Banefort’s dead-,”

“Keep your voice down,” Emmon Frey hisses, as Lords Lychester and Smallwood are within hearing distance, staring. 

“Sit down,” Genna says insistently, pulling Catelyn into a chair and handing a handkerchief to Nell, who dabs ineffectively at the bloodstains on her gown. “Riverrun can surely last another siege, if it comes to that. Addam, take your men, bar these doors, and fetch Daven, if he’s not already snoring himself to sleep. The last thing we need is a panic. I’ll tell the musicians to play something to settle our nerves.”

She bustles off in the direction of the players, and Nell locks eyes with Zia, who is staring in horror at the blood, and Walda, who is looking from her to Black Walder. Black Walder, who is giving her a very hard look. His mouth twists, and he moves across the hall towards Perwyn, who is standing a few yards away, holding one of the doors open for a few maidservants to hurry in. No, Nell thinks, he suspects- Benfrey moves to intercept him, hands moving as he tries to reason with his uncle, who shoves him aside. “Marbrand!” Black Walder barks, just as the musicians start to play again. “I want words with you-,”

“I should have kept the knife,” Catelyn is telling Nell through her teeth. “If they bar the doors-,”

Nell glances down the length of the hall towards the musicians. They’ve been toasted and cheered on throughout the night, but now they are curiously stone faced. Tom of Sevenstreams plucks at his harp, but Alesander Frey has vanished. The Heddle girl has pushed up her sleeves and braided back her hair. “Finally,” Genna announces in exasperation as she begins to sing. “It took them long enough- you’d think I’d asked for some mourning dirge!”

“ _And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low_?” Masha Heddle’s niece has a fine enough voice, albeit nothing spectacular. At first Nell almost doesn’t recognize the lyrics of this song, but there is something on the girl’s long face, some fierce sort of yearning, that makes it impossible to look away. “ _Only a cat of a different coat, that’s all the truth I know._ ” 

She is not singing this song the way it should be sung, Nell thinks, as it sinks in. She does know this song. Oh, she does. She’s last heard it played by a singer at Winterfell, the night they hosted Robert and Cersei and all the rest. They played it to honor the queen and her kin, and how they’d sat and smiled, the vain queen and the arrogant knight and the clever halfman. Their children had gaily sung along. “ _In a coat of gold or a coat of red, a lion still has claws_ -,”

Nell is aware of some movement just of her vision. Perwyn has his back to the wall and is arguing fiercely, Benfrey at his side. Marbrand swears in frustration, and Black Walder draws a knife. Zia shies away, grabbing Fair Walda’s hand. “My lords!” Genna rounds on their direction. “Take it outside, if you insist on behaving like drunken louts-,” she cuts herself off when her husband grabs her by the arm, murmuring something to her. Nell watches as all the color drains from her face.

“Tell them to stop playing,” Ty Frey has come around the table, mouth still stained red from the cordial he was drinking. His voice has gone high and frightened. “Do you hear that? Tell them to stop-,”

Nell hears it. Someone has opened one of the gates outside. 

“ _And mine are long and sharp, my lord_ ,” the long-faced Heddle girl sings, with a ringing note of mockery and cold fury intermingled, “ _as long and sharp as yours_.”

There’s a single beat of a drum, and then a throwing knife comes flying from Tom Sevens’ hand to bury itself in the shoulder of Manfryd Yew, who staggers into the table with a scream. Then a woman screams. Then another. Catelyn stands up, toppling the chair Genna set out for her. Nell looks at the table nearest her, and picks up a heavy porcelain platter. Without much thought, as Marbrand begins to shout and chairs and benches fall to the floor as people scatter, she smashes the platter across the back of Emmon Frey’s head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, if anyone knows how to throw a party, it's got to be these folks.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. Next chapter is still a Nell POV, don't worry, we're just getting to the good stuff. And by 'good' stuff I mean 'very upsetting but necessary for the plot' stuff. I went back and forth over how to long to make this chapter, where to mark the stopping point, and overall, I think it was good to cut it here and then resume the uh... fun festivities on Tuesday. 
> 
> 2\. "What happened in this chapter?" Nell gave Genna a tour of Riverrun, Genna gave Nell some motherly advice, Nell and Catelyn gave the Frey girls some misleading reassurances, Daven gave Arwyn his hand in marriage, Addam gave Nell a dance, Catelyn gave Quenten a knife in the back, and Jeyne Heddle gave the Lannisters one hell of a cover song. 
> 
> 3\. I apologize for the chaotic pace of this chapter. The moral of the story is 'there is no such thing as a perfect escape. Or a perfect murder. Or a perfect wedding reception.' It would have been a little anti-climatic if Nell and Cat just slipped out the backdoor just in time for their would-be rescuers to pull up outside. 
> 
> 4\. "Was it really necessary to shove that stupid song in there?" Okay, no, but was it necessary for Tywin to hang Jeyne's beloved aunt Masha in front of her horrified family and burn her village to the ground? Let Jeyne have this! (I've become a House Heddle stan while writing this story, I'm sorry.)


	55. Donella XLII

300 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell has never been in a battle before. She has been present for the foreboding beginning of battles, has peered down from horseback or on a parapet at the fighting below, has listened to the distant scream of men and horses while safely tucked away in some tower room. She’s picked her way across battlefields before, in the aftermath, has seen the corpses and the birds and dogs and people scavenging them, has smelt them too, has watched the wind and rain deduce them to carcasses, indistinguishable from any dead deer or cattle lying in the dirt. She’s seen what must be thousands of men go into battle and seen thousands of them come back out, some laughing and bragging, others silent and drawn, a few reduced to tears or confused fury, and some of them, of course, never came back at all. 

But that was the general rhythm of it. When she learned about war as a girl, it was with the expectation that if she were to ever live through such times, she would be safely secluded during it, waiting expectantly upon her husbands and sons, comforting herself with prayer and needlework, and organizing the household to prepare to take in the wounded or lost once the fighting was done. “You are very privileged,” Sara once told her frankly. “You were born into the breed of women men go to war for, not the ones they trample underfoot while making war.” And Nell had more or less come to understand that, even before she ever wed Robb. She understood that she was special, lucky. 

That while yes, noblewomen were sometimes the casualties of war, for a woman of her standing to ever be in direct danger or left so vulnerable would be very rare. Her father would protect her while she was a maid, and after she wed her husband would protect her, and when he too grew old her sons would protect her. When a woman such as herself was killed, it was a cause for great upset and mourning. Look how they wept and prayed for poor Lyanna, who had been cut down by some Dornish fever, and not a greatsword. Women like her were not taken as camp followers or war trophies. They were precious. She was precious. She was of House Bolton. No man would ever dare lay a hand on her with ill intent… unless he was her own similarly privileged kin. 

And she had never thought much on it. The likelihood of another civil war, with all the Targaryens killed or exiled into poverty, with the King Robert of her childhood still spoken about as a great beast of a man who could fight off a dozen knights at once with his warhammer in one hand and a flagon of ale in the other, seemed very slim. Besides, even during the Rebellion, no fighting had ever taken place in the North, safeguarded as they were by the Neck. So she had grown from girl to woman with the expectation, for the first seventeen or so years or her life, that she would never see any real fighting or battles, even from afar, would never feel threatened in her own castle, and the only violent deaths she would be witness to would be the occasional grim execution, quickly carried out and quickly forgotten about the next day.

So this is battle, she thinks, as Emmon Frey crumples to a heap on the floor, and Genna shrieks more in shock than fear or anger, and a crossbow bolt buries itself deep in Addam Marbrand’s shield. It’s been a very long time. “What are you doing?” Zia wails, although it’s not clear who she’s referring to. Catelyn lunges for the nearest carving knife on the table; Black Walder glimpses this and shoves Benfrey aside, lunging similarly for her goodmother’s veiled heir, but is tackled to the floor by Benfrey, while Perwyn draws his own sword and summarily kills two of Marbrand’s stunned men. The doors are not locked or barred; people are running and screaming outside, but Nell can hear the wave of men pouring into Riverrun from the gate that someone- and she has some ideas as to who- opened mere minutes ago. The fighting in the siege camps, it would seem, has moved much faster than Marbrand anticipated. 

To his credit, when faced with this unfolding chaos- musicians turned assassins, furniture and dishes scattered across the floor, causing men to trip and stumble even as they go for their weapons, people pushing past each other and shoving and screaming, Addam Marbrand remains steadfast, and if he was shocked to see Nell break a platter over Emmon Frey’s head, and if he is shocked now to see Catelyn slamming her newfound knife down through the hand of a Frey man, pinning it to the table as he screams and curses, he does not show much of it. “Secure the gate,” Nell hears him distantly shout, dividing his dozen or so immediate guards in half; one half struggle to make their way outdoors, the other half advance on Tom’s troupe.

And perhaps the brief massacre in the great hall of Riverrun, where Nell would sit a throne beside Robb and hold court, would be just that, a brief massacre- the element of surprise only lasts so long, and Tom’s men (and few women) were never going to hold off trained soldiers for long with a few crossbows, throwing knives, swords, and two maces- but instead of politely scattering, many of the riverlords go for their own blades and shields, hung up on the walls, thronging the room. Marbrand looks relieved for a few perilous seconds, obviously expecting these men to obediently fall in with his own men, to shout for their retainers and guards to give aid and stop this madness, and then he realizes-

His mouth moves, a speechless warning that was always going to come too late, and then Smallwood thrusts his axe deep into the side of the nearest Lannister man, and Lychester smashes the edge of his shield into a Frey’s face, sending teeth flying with a gruesome crunching noise, and any hope of quickly stifling the fighting inside the inner keep immediately falls away. Men fall on each other indiscriminately, much the way they did when Nell’s own guard was attacked outside the Twins, only this is not on horseback in the woods, in the dark. They are in a well-lit hall with clearly defined parameters and while many of these men are drunk, Nell quickly sees that even drunk few and far between of them are truly helpless. It is a mad jumble of house colors and clashing shields and toppled tables and chairs and benches.

A Roote is driving a spear deep into a Prester’s throat. A Brax is sawing at a Piper’s shoulder. A Goodbrook is smashing a flagon of mead into the back of a Crakehall’s head. Few if any of these men are in armor beyond a thin mail shirt, most of them still have access to some sort of weapon, and all of them are paying the price for it. Nell stands there dumbly after her initial success with Emmon for a few moments, very literally unsure of what to do with herself, because she did not come this far only to pick up some fallen dagger, screech a battle cry, and then immediately get herself killed with a stray blow, and then Catelyn jerks her back into motion, her fingers coiled around Nell’s upper arm like iron, a truly bruising mother’s grip. “We need to get outside,” she pants, a fresh spray of blood speckled across her throat, and Nell nods mutely, clambers over a table fallen onto its side, and scans the floor for anything that can be used to defend herself with. She pries a blood-soaked roundel out of a dying man’s tight grasp, ignoring his moans, and purposefully not checking to see what house he belongs to, and keeps a fresh death grip on it as she and Catelyn try to skirt their way around the fighting towards the nearest exit. 

They don’t make it that far unimpeded; there’s a strangled scream nearby, and Nell turns to see Black Walder pulling his sword out of Benfrey’s chest. Perwyn is slumped on the floor nearby, dazed and blinking slowly in shock, his nose gushing blood down his chin and neck. Zia is huddled under a nearby table, clutching Waltyr’s arm. She can’t make out Genna or Ty Frey. Black Walder is screaming something at them, but it’s far too loud to hear what he’s saying, and still in the grips of this cold, slick shock, Nell doesn’t think it matters much anyway. Catelyn is frantically trying to drag away a bench draped in two heavy corpses blocking the doorway; they don’t stand a chance of climbing over anything in these gowns. “Help me!”

Nell hastens to assist her, but her hands are wet with sweat and blood, and she’s getting more splinters faster than they are making good progress when Black Walder advances on them. Nell knows he does not mean to recapture either of them. He’s going to kill them. “You stupid whores,” she can finally hear him now, “after all we’ve done for you-,”

Nell hurls an empty bowl at him and is shocked at her good aim; it collides with his shoulder; he stumbles back with a curse. Catelyn screams wordlessly, months of pent up fury pouring out, and heaves up one of the dead man’s shields, staggering under the weight of it. Nell doesn’t need to be told to help again; she darts over to her side, helping her lift it. “One,” says Catelyn raggedly, “get your footing-,” Nell spreads her legs as much as the skirt of her dress will be allowed for, squares her shoulders- “two-,”

“I should have hanged you both as soon as we brought you here,” Black Walder snarls, “but no, Marbrand insisted- so eager to feast on Robb Stark’s leftovers, was he-,”

“Three,” Nell mutters, and they dash forward. The shield bears the brunt of Black Walder’s first sword stike, forces him backward a pace before they lose their momentum, and then he pivots, drives his shoulder into the wood of it, and Nell actually hears it splinter before she’s thrown back, losing her grip on it; Catelyn falls to the floor, the shield clattering down beside her while Nell staggers over broken dishes, crunching underfoot. Now they’re separated; now they’re reduced to mere women again; she sees the triumph in his look, and Nell tightens her grip on the roundel again, and throws herself with a scream at his back as he moves to bring his sword done on her prone goodmother. 

He’s a tall, muscled man, but she’s no lightweight herself, and with her hanging on him, kicking and screaming and clawing at his unprotected head and face, she buys a few moments, enough time for Catelyn to weakly roll over, coughing, and struggle to her feet. “Gut him!” Nell calls out breathlessly as Walder heaves underneath her, struggling to throw her off him, but she’s hooked one arm around his neck and the other hand is scratching at his eyes, at least until he catches it and wrenches down hard. Her shoulder screams in protest, she gasps in pain, and he slams all his weight backwards into the wall, sending her sliding down it to the floor with a muffled scream. He whirls and kicks her, hard, in the stomach, and she can’t breath, can’t think, it hurts so badly, and then drags her up by the hair as she moans, struggling to inhale properly.

Again, he is screaming in her face, spittle peppering her scalp, but she can’t hear any of it. He shoves her into Catelyn, they both stumble back in a jumble of fabric and limbs, and Nell’s fingers reach for a roundel that is no longer there, she dropped it when he slammed her into the wall, he’s between her and it, she can’t get to it, she can’t-

“MURDERER!” Catelyn is screaming, as Nell’s vision blurs briefly. “MURDERER!” She sounds like another woman entirely, her voice raw and cracking with rage. Black Walder’s sword scores a cut down the side of her face and she wrenches back with a shout.

“Did you like that,” he’s jeering, “Poor Cat Stark, all her babies dead and rotting- cunt! You fucking- it’s his sword, you bitch! Your little cunt of a son you called a king! It’s his sword,” he bellows, “and I’m going to-,”

An arrow punches through his arm, a perfect skewer into the thick meat of his wrist, and he drops the sword. Nell can finally breath again, she staggers up, looking around blindly, and sees the Heddle girl, the singer, walking down the length of one of the few tables still standing up, kicking aside dishes and cutlery and pitchers, bow in hand. Tom Sevens is fighting beside her on the floor, bashing back anyone who tries to clamber up to knock her down from her vantage point with his axe. Nell locks eyes with this girl, and the Heddle briefly dips her head to her, then pivots in place and sends another arrow into the crowd. Black Walder is still upright, gasping in pain and clutching his wrist, his sword- Robb’s sword, on the floor. 

Catelyn crawls for it, but he slams his booted foot down hard on her hand; she screams in pain as he grinds it underfoot, and Nell sees him reaching with his good arm for the dagger in his belt. “Fuck you!” she gasps out, snatches up the abandoned shield again, and rams it into his chest, hoping to snap a rib or two. That forces him to take the pressure off Catelyn’s hand to keep his balance; he grabs onto the other end of the shield with his good hand, and for a moment it is wedged between him and Nell, both of them screaming and spitting on opposite ends of four feet of oak, until his weight wins out and sends her sprawling once more. She hears the blade of the sword grinding along the floor, and then something brushes past her-

“Walda,” Black Walder chokes out, seeing who has it. Walda must have been crawling along the edge of the room, Nell thinks, to go unnoticed like this, then saw her chance and took it. She holds Robb’s sword awkwardly, both hands on the hilt, the point still braced against the floor, looking between Catelyn, cradling her hand to her chest and fighting back cries of pain, and Nell, bruised and breathless and on her hands and knees, and Black Walder, his right arm still gushing blood. He holds out a hand to her; Nell knows he is likely slow and awkward with his left, but Robb’s sword was never a greatsword; he fought with a shield in one hand, his sword in the other, and he was a good four or five inches shorter than Black Walder. This man will be able to easily wield it one-hand, and kill both of them in an instant. 

“Walda, give the sword to me,” Walder sounds completely different, as if another man entirely had taken over, fighting back a snarl from what must be hellish pain in his wounded arm. “Come on, there’s a good girl. I’ll keep you safe. We’ll go- we can go right now, sweetling.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” Walda says hoarsely, barely audible over the din of the fighting and killing all around them. Nell can distantly hear Marbrand still shouting. “We’re losing.”

“No,” says Black Walder in an attempt at comfort, shaking his head, sweat trickling down his red face. “No, not yet. My horse is just outside. Give me the sword, and we’ll go. I’ll take you away from here. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To be safe? With me? Don’t be foolish, Walda. Help me. I just want to protect you. You know that’s all I want.”

Walda does not immediately hand over the sword, but nor does she take it and run, or immediately rebuke him. Nell feels her spine prickling. “Don’t listen to him, Walda,” Catelyn says very quietly. “You know he’s lying to you again.”

“I can’t protect you if you side with rebels, Walda. No one can protect you then if you betray our vows to the King,” Walder says, the way one might speak to a small child about to drop an expensive vase. “Just give me the blade.” He shuffles towards her, wincing, obviously wary of charging her and scaring her off. “Come on. I’ve always kept you safe. My sweet girl. You were always so clever. I know you.”

“Is that why you told me you’d marry me,” Walda says thickly, voice choked with what is either deep grief or deep rage. “Is that why? Because I’m so clever and sweet? You promised me half a hundred times you’d take me away from the Twins. You said you’d win us lands and a castle and I’d be your lady wife. Then you said you’d inherit, and I could be Lady Frey, and you my lord husband.” Her voice rises. “I was so stupid. I was three-and-ten! I was a child, and you-,”

“I loved you,” he is still reaching for her, “don’t be stupid, Walda, you know it was because I loved you. I loved you from the moment I saw what a beauty-,”

“I WASN’T A BEAUTY!” Walda screeches. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP- I was little,” she sniffs, and adjusts her grip on the sword, bracing herself in order to lift it up. “I was only three-and-ten, and you were crawling into bed with me-,”

This is not the snide, would-be-sophisticated girl Nell knows, cunning, sly Walda with her sharp tongue and her sour looks and her ugly, mean little smiles. This is a child, snotting and sniffling, her long blonde hair a matted mess, her pretty gown covered in stains and frayed at the sleeves and hem, struggling to keep her grip on a dead man’s sword. 

“Give me the sword,” Walder drops the disturbing paternal warmth from his tone. “Now, Walda. I don’t want to hurt you-,”

“Too late,” Walda rasps, and with a strength that must be borne from sheer nerves, raises the sword ever higher and then thrusts it forward as Black Walder lunges towards her. The blade disappears into his lower belly, just above his groin, and he tries to back out of the thrust too late. Robb’s sword slides back out again, bright red, and Walder moans and wails, stumbling to one knee. Walda steps back, all the blood draining from her face, her grip slackening, and for a moment Nell thinks she might rush to his side and hold him, but then she just stops.

“Come on,” she says, and between the three of them, they manage to clear the path to the nearest doorway, just as three Swyft men come charging towards them. 

No one needs to shout to run; they already are. Walda shoves Robb’s blood-soaked sword into Nell’s arms, and clutching it like a doll to her chest, the three of them rush out into the much cooler corridor looping around the outside of the great hall, the Swyft men in pursuit. They pass multiple other groups fighting- Nell hears a distant scream that sounds like Genna Lannister, and then, with a brief jolt of recognition, sees a white sun on some man’s chest as he pulls his sword out of a corpse-

“SUN OF WINTER!” she screams at him frantically, and he looks up, sees them fleeing, and immediately makes for the Swyft men with a yell. Nell doesn’t know if he knows who she is or if he recognized Catelyn or not, nor does she care. What matters is that their pursuers are now forced to defend themselves against northern blades. This cannot just be the Brotherhood attacking Riverrun and breaking up the siege. Harry Karstark must have come, he must have-

“Godswood,” Catelyn says, breaking her out of her thoughts, “that’s where Kirth is-,”

“Hells no,” Walda spits out, “they’re fighting there too! I’m going to find Arwyn. If you want to live-,”

“I am not going to deliver myself into Daven Lannister’s hands,” Nell retorts. “Go where you please. If you find her, get yourselves somewhere safe and barricade the doors and windows. We’ll find you when this is over.”

“Do we want to be found?” Walda asks incredulously, but does not linger to debate; she takes off running for the nearest staircase, lifting her skirts. 

Nell finds herself retracing her steps from earlier, feeling as though she were running through a nightmare- or is it a dream? Isn’t this what she wanted? Some grand rescue? A fight, a defiant final stand, anything at all beyond silent submission to what seemed like a miserable fate? But she never wanted to see Riverrun like this. Her sole consolation is that she does not smell anything burning; if they can reclaim the castle without damaging it- is that not what Genna Lannister and her husband wanted? A laugh coils up in her throat, waiting to burble out like bile, but now they are fleeing deep into the gardens, the fog billowing around them like sheets on a laundry line, and she keeps hold of Robb’s sword with one arm, Catelyn’s uninjured hand with the other. 

Walda was right; more fighting has spilled out over into the gardens, and the walls high above them are full of shouts and cries, but the violence is more spread out here and the fog cloaks their approach. Catelyn picks a familiar path across the wet ground, and rain pelts down on their heads; Nell is shivering from the cold and wet before long, teeth chattering as her fingers start to go stiff and numb, and her toes squelch in her sodden boots. “To the redwoods,” Catelyn says shakily, “Lysa and I used to- to hide there as girls when we were playing with… with…”

A howl cuts sharp and harsh through the fog and the black of the night. They both freeze in place. It’s impossible to place it as it echoes around, bouncing through the fog, but surely it has to be close. Then again, that same deep primal note of rage. Nell has not heard that howl in months, but how could she forget it? She turns slowly to stare at Catelyn, whose mouth has fallen open. “GREY WIND!” she screams suddenly, and Nell flinches at the sheer volume of it, ringing out into the darkness. “GREY WIND, WE’RE HERE! COME TO ME!”

“Wait,” says Nell, “wait- they’ll hear you-,”

Catelyn jerks away from her and looks around wildly, as if waiting for a looming shadow to appear. 

“Catelyn, wait,” Nell hisses, “don’t-,”

The howl rings out again. “He’s here,” Catelyn says in sobbing relief that could be mistaken for terror if Nell did know her as she does, “He’s here, he came back-,”

Nell for an instant isn’t sure if she’s still referring to the wolf, but-

Another howl, closer. Catelyn turns suddenly, peering through the fog, then cries out and takes off with unexpected speed. “No,” Nell shouts after her, “WAIT!” but the older woman is already gone. Her heart pounds unsteadily in her chest. If- if Grey Wind is here, then- “Catelyn!” she calls again, jogging in the direction she estimates her goodmother went, although it is hard to see more than a few feet in front of her face now, “where are you- fuck!” She trips over a log and almost lands awkwardly on her ankle, managing to right herself at the last instant.

She should be relieved, she should be screaming bloody murder, begging Grey Wind to come find her, but the fog has warped the howls into something else that sounds more human than it ought to, and it shames her so, but she is afraid. She is terrified. She could be brave when she was clinging to Black Walder’s back trying to scratch his eyes out, but now she is out here alone in the dark and cold and the wind is tearing at her and she keeps seeing things in the fog out of the corner of her eye. It feels like one of her dreams. Is she hoping to see her Mother come riding out of the mist? Or afraid to? 

“No,” she says under her breath, “no, no-,”

When she catches sight of a wall she feels momentarily relieved. If she can use the wall as her boundary and go around the edge of the godswood, maybe she’ll be able to orient herself. Maybe the fog is less thick in some patches. Nell puts a bloody palm against the mossy exterior, and works her way around the wall, ducking down low whenever she hears running feet, either overhead or in the godswood itself, for a few minutes standing just behind a massive elm tree when she hears men’s voices nearby. It’s too dangerous. She can’t risk calling out to the wrong men and getting herself killed. If Catelyn ran straight into any of them-

When she does recognize where she is, she sees that she is just below the quarters that used to be Catelyn’s while at Riverrun, which look out into the heart of the wood. She recognizes that angular window overhead, the carved fish adorning it. The doors leading out onto the small balcony have been flung wide open, curtains rippling in the wind. Nell is gazing up at them as though they were ghosts when she stumbles over something. More accurately, someone. It is perhaps a twelve foot drop, Nell thinks, from the balcony to the ground. Survivable, if one was careful about how they fell. Arwyn lies crumpled on her side on the ground, still clad in her wedding gown, feet bare and cut up from broken glass. Nell is not sure if she was thrown or jumped down. 

“Arwyn,” she says, setting down Robb’s sword to feel at her limp form. “Arwyn, wake up, Arwyn- can you hear me?” The girl’s eyes are half open and glassy. One of her arms is clearly broken. There is a deep slash splitting open the side of her neck and cutting down into her collarbone. She’s still warm, but her hands are very cold and wet with blood when Nell feels at them. “Arwyn, look at me, can you- it’s Nell, it’s Donella, what happened?”

She is making little mewling noises, Arwyn, like a kitten. Nell braces her arms around Arwyn’s slight frame and strains to try to lift her, but her limp head just sags against Nell’s chest. Only then does she see the dark, dark stain spread across middle of her gown. Nell fumbles with the gauzy material, trying to inspect the wound, only to have Arwyn’s hands weakly bat her away. She’s trying to say something, but Nell can’t hear. “You’ll be alright,” Nell lies, “just breathe, look at me- Arwyn, who did this? Did- did Daven hurt you?”

Arwyn closes her eyes in response, and will not open them again. 

Nell sits there and holds her for a moment longer, listening to another howl, unbelieving. “Come on,” she snaps. “No. No- Arwyn! Wake up. You have to- I can help you, you just need to stand up, come on, open your eyes-,” But she is only dead weight. Nell slowly extricates herself from under the girl, stands up shakily, and glances back up at the balcony. There’s the sound of glass crunching and a soldier comes out onto it, looking around. He’s in Ryswell colors. He looks down at Nell, and the corpse at her feet, and Nell looks up at him, and neither of them says a word. 

“What are you doing?” she finally calls up to him, wretchedly. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” he says, in answer to her second question, and then to her first, “Killing Freys.”

Daven Lannister did not hurt Arwyn and heave her still breathing body over the balcony and down onto the cold, wet ground below, Nell knows. She knows. Her eyes sting, and she sucks in a breath. “Stay there,” says the soldier.

She picks Robb’s sword up and keeps walking, one foot in front of the other.

The howls get closer, and Nell calls out for Catelyn again, but is only met with faint screams and the wind. “Donella!” someone calls, close, too close, and she freezes, the voice muffled by the fog. “Where are you?” It sounds like a man. She is still standing there, stock still and hating herself for it, unable to stop holding Arwyn’s dying form in her mind, when Addam Marbrand comes out of the fog.

He stops at the sight of her, cover in blood and wine and food and dirt, soaked with the rain, clutching a sword to her chest, weeping. She is weeping, she realizes now. It is not just rainwater. She’s crying, like a stupid child. Crying like this was one of her dreams. He does not look well either. He has a cut along his scalp, dried blood running again with the rain, he walks stiffly, as if he’d fallen hard a few times, and he’s lost his shield. They said Robb lost his shield before he died. She heard them laughing about it sometimes. He was waist deep in the water and he didn’t have his shield.

“Are you alright?” he asks, and she just looks at him.

“Stop,” she says. He must know. Surely he must know by now who and what she is. He must. He cannot go on believing-

“Tell me this was not all your doing,” Marbrand says, and to her dull shock he sounds genuinely wounded, he does, although still on guard; he has his sword drawn, and makes no attempt to sheathe it or hasten to her side, although she is clearly injured. How chivalrous is he now? “Tell me you did not know about this. Donella.” 

He thinks to rebuke her, she thinks faintly, for this? As if she owed him anything. As if any part of her had ever belonged to him, had ever been indebted to him. She can still hear Black Walder, so enraged that they could ‘repay’ them like this. She says nothing. The howl sounds again. She licks her lips. 

“I want to believe you didn’t,” says Marbrand. “But I think we both know better. You’re not a little girl, Donella.”

“Don’t say my name,” she finally responds, tonelessly. She sounds like her father. Not angry or frightened or desperate or pleading. Just… present. And indifferent about it. “You don’t have the right. No. You don’t.”

“Is that Black Walder’s sword?” Addam adjusts his stance slightly, firmly refusing to move. She could run. She should try to run. She might be able to get away, he’s clearly injured, how fast can a man of thirty run-

“It’s my husband’s.”

“You don’t have a husband,” he snaps. “All these people- innocent lives sacrificed for the sake of your own pride. Are you proud? Of this slaughter?”

“Don’t presume to tell me about slaughter,” she says, and she can’t help but smile, awfully, at him. “Don’t pretend you are so unfamiliar with it.”

“I offered you goodwill and respect,” he says hoarsely. “I was kind to you, when I need not have been-,”

“I didn’t want your kindness,” she snarls. “I want my husband back.”

“Then will it sober you to hear some criminal is wearing his helm?” Marbrand retorts.

Nell stares at him. “Who?”

“Drop the sword,” he says. “Now. I cannot pretend this will end well for you, but I’d rather you didn’t die by my hand.” Oh yes. She can see the similarity to the Kingslayer now.

“Why not?” she mocks. “It’s the closest you’d ever get to fucking me.”

He recoils from her foul language and her ugly sneer. She can see the disgust on his face, as though the pretty young maiden turned into a hag before his very eyes. “Put down the sword,” he repeats himself. He is taking no chances, not assuming he could readily disarm her, likely suspecting some hidden dagger or other weapon tucked up her sleeve. 

“Does it sting?” she asks him. “That I was not the great prize you were promised? Let’s not pretend, Ser, like you said. I would not have been a credit to you and your house.”

“You did not have to be this, either. You’re young,” he takes a step forward, and he looks older, haggard, in the dark, a man past his prime, not the handsome lordling. “You could have gone on to a much gentler life.”

“Gentle, aye?” she chokes out. Another howl, and Marbrand stops, looks around, wary. “Tell me how gentle it would be, to rip me away from my child and into your bed, so I could squirm under you while you fucked a few sons into me! So I could rot on some godsforsaken hill in the Westerlands, knowing all the while that you and yours had taken everything from me!”

“I did not order the Freys’ betrayal. I did not kill your husband.”

“No,” she says blearily, wiping at her eyes. “You didn’t. You only came to me and smiled and asked for a dance, as if you had nothing to do with the rest.” She loosens her grip on the sword, if only so she can hold it properly, by the pommel. She’s never held a sword before. It’s heavy. But she feels heavier. 

Addam looks at her incredulously. “Don’t do this,” he says. He sounds tired. “Enough.”

She lunges forward. He easily dodges her first haphazard thrust, parries her second instinctively, and as soon as they cross blades she realizes he is going to win, and it is not going to be much of a fight. She’s weighed down by a soaking wet dress, shoes slipping in the mud, he has at least six inches in height on her at least seven stone in muscle. Either he is going to quickly disarm her, or if he is just going to kill her. She grits her teeth and moves again, trying to get past his sword to lash at him, any part of him, but he forces her back several stumbling steps with ease. 

“Yield,” he says, and now’s he finally speaking to her like he would a man, not a woman. “Yield, now.”

She screams instead, and not out of terror. Robb’s sword clashes against his a second time, the splinters in her hand burn, every muscle aches. “Yield,” he says, she grunts and loses her grip on the sword, dropping it, and then there is another howl, only this time it is not just an echo, it is here. 

Marbrand is there one instant, bearing down on her, and flung to the ground the next, as a great beast- as a great wolf- as a direwolf tears and savages at his left arm. He yells out once, Nell screams, “Grey Wind!”, and the wolf stops as if pierced to the heart, and turns and looks at her, the way a man might, not an animal. Her heart seizes inside her. “Grey Wind,” she sobs aloud, and he lets go of Marbrand’s arm, coming right up to her, as Addam rolls over onto his belly, panting and moaning.

Nell buries herself in the thick fur of his coat, traces the familiar shape of his snout and muzzle, kisses him between his great gold eyes. “You came back,” she half sobs, half laughs, hysterical, and then she looks up in time to see Marbrand rising up bravely behind the wolf, sword in hand, and she shouts out in panic. Grey Wind turns with a snarl that makes her shake, jaws snapping, but Marbrand evades the wolf’s lunge just as hoofbeats echo nearby. Nell turns, on edge, reaching for Grey Wind’s pelt, and sees the wolf helm and the head of the horse come out of the mist first, followed by the rest of the horse and rider. 

What had Marbrand said? A common criminal, wearing Robb’s helm? But that is not Robb’s helm. Robb never wore a helm like that. Grey Wind already made him far too recognizable on the battlefield. He needed to stand out less, not more. His armor was never ornate or gilded, his cloak was identical to any other man fighting under the banner of House Stark. From a distance on horseback he was indistinguishable from the rest, which was good for a man who refused to command from the rear. “Grey Wind,” she rasps again, and the wolf whines in response but keeps his gaze locked on Marbrand, who is now trapped between beast and rider.

The horse keeps up a hard gallop towards them, and Nell casts a frantic look to Robb’s sword, which one of Grey Wind’s great paws is resting on, trapping it against the earth. “Move,” she tells the wolf, shoving her weight against him, but he will not budge. “Grey Wind, no-,”

The horse is frantic up close, drooling and foaming at the mouth and nostrils from being pushed far too hard, bleeding from the spurs, and shows no signs of stopping as it barrels towards them. Nell backs up instinctively, wondering if the rider has lost control of his mount or is simply mad, and watches as he swings out of the saddle and plummets to the ground. He lands in a rough crouch, averting a bad fall at the last moment. He should still be winded and in shock from something like that, but he rises almost immediately and moves towards them.

“Do you command this beast?” Marbrand shouts at him, shrugging off what must be agony in his wounded arm, still holding his own sword with one hand. He’s bleeding badly, and his face is white as the moon, somewhere above them all, shrouded in clouds. 

Wolf Helm says nothing, only keeps moving. Grey Wind stays where he is, between Nell and Addam Marbrand, snarling lowly. Nell wants that sword back. She has no guarantee of safety with this man, whoever he is. Again she pushes at the direwolf’s weight, again he will not budge, and Marbrand chances a step towards her, then stops when Grey Wind bears his teeth.

Wolf Helm is close now. Nell’s rage has faded into a mixture of fear and fascination. She should tell Addam Marbrand to run, she thinks. He’s badly wounded. He is not going to win this fight. He is not her enemy, not truly. She should. She does not. Marbrand seems to steel himself, he adjusts his stance, readies his sword, and holds his ground. “You bear a dead house’s sigil,” he says. “Do you claim to fight for them, or are you one of the Brotherhood’s cravens, looting corpses?”

In response, Wolf Helm raises his own sword, and meets Marbrand’s first strike with a fury. They clash once, twice, thrice and then Marbrand staggers, nearly dropping to a knee but rising, and Nell’s heart in her throat, throbbing, and Grey Wind howls once more, a short warning note. Addam Marbrand turns back to look at her as if in disbelief that it could end like this, and Wolf Helm takes off his already broken and maimed arm with a hard swing. Marbrand goes down on both knees then with a strangled sort of yell, and collapses onto to ground, still alive but bleeding out. Nell feels nothing, and that is the worst sensation she could feel right now. She feels empty, like a scarecrow with nothing in her but loose straw.

This man could kill her next and she would still feel nothing.

“We have to find Catelyn,” she whispers to Grey Wind, and then Wolf Helm is there, staring at her, and Grey Wind, to her shock moves back, forcing her to step back as well, shielded by his massive frame. He must be nearly as big as a fully grown bear by now. His size astounds her. He seems too big to be real. She roots her wet hands in his fur, holds onto him. He’ll protect her now. He must. She so badly wants to be protected. She doesn’t want to be strong any longer. She just wants to be weak and hold him. 

Wolf Helm picks up Robb’s sword, turns it over in his hand as though unsure of what it is. 

A spark of anger ignites anew in her chest. “That doesn’t belong to you,” she says. 

He looks at her. Marbrand is trembling on the ground, a pool of blood growing around him, still making faint sounds. Wolf Helm tosses the sword he took Marbrand’s arm off in to the ground without a care, grips Robb’s sword, turns back around, and plunges it into Addam’s upper back. There’s a faint sigh and then all is silent. Nell stares at this butchery. Her eyes feel hard and swollen. “That is my husband’s blade,” she says, in a louder voice. “You have no right to wield it. You can return it to me, or Grey Wind can fetch it from you.”

Grey Wind stiffens; she can feel his breathing quicken, as though in anticipation. She opens her mouth to speak again, and then the man takes off his helm. “Grey Wind, to me,” he says. The wolf hesitates, then slowly crosses through the blood and muck to him. Nell just stands there, uncomprehending, looking at a dead man’s face. He is staring impassively back at her. “You know,” he says. “You know me.”

No, she thinks, no, I don’t, I don’t, this isn’t real, it’s not real, it’s another one of my dreams, it’s not, you’re going to disappear, you’re not real, I’m not really here, I dreamed this all, I will wake up back in the bed with Catelyn on the morning of the wedding. This isn’t real, it’s not-

“I know you,” the corpse says. “I never forgot. Other things… but not you. Never you. You know me. You have to know me.” He sounds almost angry.

“I do,” she says, the words strange and bitter on her tongue. “I… I’ve known you.”

“Donella,” says the corpse. He blinks slowly, the rain running down his sallow, sunken cheeks. His hair is much darker wet, plastered to his scalp. He looks briefly around the foggy godswood, as shouts and yells still echo all around them. “I’ve known you,” he echoes her, then pauses, as if trying to recall something. He twists the bloody blade in the air, like turning a key in a lock, then seems to remember at last. “Nell,” he concludes. “I called you Nell. Here. We were here. Once. I put leaves and branches in your hair.”

“It was a crown,” she says, in a barely audible voice. “They crowned us here.”

“I killed men here too,” he sounds almost thoughtful, and then finally stops examining the sword and looks at her again. His eyes are not the right color, but he- he sounds so much like- “You were there. They bled on you.”

“Yes,” she whispers. 

“Whose blood is that?” he jerks his head at her gown; it is like watching a mummer’s puppet on a string. His movements are not correct, slightly off, as if he didn’t know his own body. 

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. 

He seems to accept that answer. “It’s better not to know,” the dead man she doesn’t want to know as well as she does reflects. “Sometimes it’s better if you forget. Did you forget me?”

Grey Wind is looking at her almost mournfully. 

“No,” says Nell. “I couldn’t if I tried.”

He smiles, and there is blood between his grey teeth and his grey lips and speckled across his grey face and a sheen in his grey eyes that ought to be blue but isn’t. He smiles and it is like seeing a beloved tapestry from the back, the pattern turned inside out or upside down. Familiar yet distorted. Remembered but not known. “To me,” he says, then seems to recall the right phrase. “Will you come to me? Nell?”

“You come to me,” she utters, and so he does.

Up close, he is too real. He smells like dead things rotting in the deepest part of the wood. He smells like wet leaves and old burrows and felled trees. He smells like wolf and leather and blood. She puts a hand on the cold armor of his chest. “It’s you,” she says. “It’s you. They killed you. They told me they killed you, I-,” she wants to say his name but she can’t. If she names him and then he disappears she will die. She will shrivel up and die right here. 

He tilts his head to hers, and she feels his forehead against her own. “They killed me,” he says, “and then I woke up. I woke up and all I remembered was you.”

She makes a sound that has no words or speech to it. He puts his bloody hand on the small of her back; she feels the impression of his handprint through her clothes, seared freezing cold into her spine. “Are you real?” she asks, eyes shut tight. 

She feels his fingers coil into a fist on her back, then relax again. “Yes,” he says. “Are you?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers, then admits, “Yes.”

She can feel his breath on her ear. “Good.” His other hand comes up to cup her neck, and she raises her chin and looks at him, blinking back tears. His eyes are clear and dry and grey as slate. When she presses her lips to his, they taste of copper and are as cold as clay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is familiar with the lyrics, the folk song "The Unquiet Grave" has been a massive inspiration for this fic from the start, especially the Abel Korzeniowski version from Penny Dreadful.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> 1\. I think a lot of this chapter speaks for itself so I will refrain from dissecting it as much as possible. I outlined multiple ways the flow of action could go, then decided it would be less confusing with just two real settings- first in the Great Hall as the feast turns into a massacre- second in the godswood, where Nell has spent so much time in this story. 
> 
> 2\. Many characters' fates were not specified in this chapter, as with other situations like this, we will learn more within the next few chapters about where everyone ended up. It was important in my view that we saw both the final moments of Black Walder and Addam Marbrand here.
> 
> 3\. I debated back and forth over how 'active' a participant to make Nell in the fighting. She is not a warrior, she will never 'be' a warrior in terms of picking up a sword or mace and leading a charge against the enemy in this fic, but she is capable of defending herself, even without a bow. I did not want Black Walder to be immediately and unrealistically killed off hence the more extended fight scene there. Similarly, when Nell crosses blades with Addam Marbrand, she does not believe she has any chance of defeating him, and is only doing so as a final act of defiance to the Lannister cause. 
> 
> 4\. It was also important for me to show that just as Nell is able to rally some nearby soldiers to help her and Catelyn escape into the godswood, very similar soldiers fighting for the same side are simultaneously killing an innocent young girl, Arwyn. In some senses this chapter is a very triumphant 'fuck you!' to the Freys and Lannisters and in some sense it is intended to be very bleak and depressing. "Killing Freys" indeed. 
> 
> 5\. In the last big action scene Nell was present for, she was fleeing on horseback from Freys with a baby. Here we see her fleeing on foot, carrying a sword like a baby, surrounded by imagery reminiscent of her nightmares of her mother and the other women. That's a very intentional parallel. It is important that we see Nell briefly surrender the sword to hold Arwyn while she dies, then abandon her body to pick up the sword again and keep moving.
> 
> 6\. Addam's last stand is intended to be a weird inversion of the stalwart hero versus the madwoman. In his view, Nell has just condoned and even participated in a needless massacre of many innocent people. In her view, this is the moment when the gloves finally come off and they both see each other for exactly what they really are, as Addam is forced to drop the chivalry and see her as a genuine threat and danger to him, however briefly.
> 
> 7\. Now that Nell and Robb have been reunited, we are going to be seeing a much more in depth look at King Stoneheart. In this very first outline of this fic, the existence of Stoneheart/Risen Robb was not revealed until the very last scene in this chapter. Obviously that had to be scrapped for practical reasons, but I hope it still felt like something of a shock or big moment, even though we all knew who it was way before Nell did.
> 
> 8\. Next chapter will be likely divided between a Nell and Dana POV.


	56. Donella XLII - Dana IX

300 AC - INSIDE RIVERRUN

Nell passes the next few hours in a strange sort of haze, even as the fog around her dissipates with the dawn. She thinks she could have been led, meek as a lamb, anywhere or to anyone in that time period, because she cannot think of anything outside the minuscule world that is suddenly her and Robb and Grey Wind. It’s not that she wants to avoid all thought of the battle, of their losses, of what enemies may still lurk outside or inside Riverrun, it is only that when she tries to think outside herself and her immediate situation, her head begins to pound and her heart races. So instead she doesn’t. She keeps one freezing hand rooted in Grey Wind’s thick, wet fur, and the other hand tightly clasping Robb’s, when he at one point pulls away from her she lets out a cry like a child being separated from their mother.

Robb is impassive to this, and Nell understands this immediately, that whatever has happened to him, whatever or whoever he is now, will never softly hold her or whisper comforts in her ear again. It was a matter of appraisal, like looking at a hunting hound and knowing it would never sit gently on your lap and lick your plate clean. She doesn’t care at the moment because it is enough to see him standing there in front of her, and to feel his skin against hers, and to hear his voice, even if there is a constant wrenching hoarseness to his speech that was never there before, as if it is physically painful to force the words through his scarred and scabbed throat. When he does extricate his hand from hers, it is because Harrion Karstark has trotted up to them on his great grey beast of a stallion, and Nell just stares blankly at him when he stiffly greets her. 

She does not hear him asking, “Your Grace, are you hurt?” until he has said it the second time, and then she is cognizant of both Karstark’s and Robb’s eyes on her. One set blue grey, the other blue turned grey. Harry Karstark looks disturbingly like his father. They are standing near where his father died. Does he know that? Does he know she stood there while it happened? Nell cannot decide how to respond, and just looks at him mutely, incredulous, until Harry says, this time to Robb, “She’s in shock. She’ll freeze to death out here; her clothes are soaked through. We need to bring her indoors.”

Robb is silent for a moment, then inclines his head. 

“No,” Nell says then, in a very small voice that does not sound like her at all, because she can’t seem to make it any louder. No, she doesn’t want to go away from Robb, she just got him back, and no, she doesn’t want to go back inside, that’s where they- where they- she doesn’t want to go back in there and see. She doesn’t. But all her pains are creeping back in. Her hands are bruised and bloodied and ridden with splinters, her head is throbbing from where Black Walder pulled out some hair, her belly aches from being kicked, and her knees are both split open, not to mention all the other cuts and bruises. 

“We’ve secured the keep for now,” Karstark says briskly. “I’ll bring the queen to where Lady Catelyn is.”

That gets Nell’s sluggish attention. “You found her? I lost her- she heard Grey Wind howling and she ran off,” she tries to explain, tries not to sound like a weepy child, but the words do not come as smooth or neat as she’d like. “I was trying to find her, and then I-,” then she found Arwyn, “and then Marbrand found me,” she stammers the last bit, and hates herself for it. Why is she behaving like this? She’s not acting like a queen, she’s acting like a terrified little girl, cringing and stumbling over her words and avoiding eye contact. She looks at Robb, but his expression does not change, although his jaw tenses minutely.

Karstark pauses. “Did Marbrand attack you, Your Grace?”

“No,” Nell hates how doubtful she sounds, but all her memories of the past several hours have jumbled into one great heap of sounds and smells. 

“Where is he now?” Karstark asks slowly, as if speaking to a child.

“Dead,” Robb answers for her. 

If Karstark is surprised or pleased by this, he does not show it. Presently Robb puts his hands on Nell’s waist as he has done a thousand times before, and lifts her up into the saddle in front of Harry Karstark, who leans back slightly either out of respect for her, or because he doesn’t wish to be even more coated in blood, mud, and gore than he already is. Robb jerks his head at Karstark’s horse, and Grey Wind lopes over to the stallion’s side, causing it to shy away anxiously, only settled by a firm pat from Karstark. 

“Where are you going?” Nell asks Robb, and is pleased she did not cry out for him to come with her. She can’t act like a child. She survived this long without him, she can hardly expect him to always be with her from now on. He is still a king. 

He does not blink as he slides his helm back on, his face disappearing from view. “Hunting,” comes the muffled response. Harry Karstark expresses no surprise to this, either, only tells Robb he’d best gather some men and check the water wheel tower again, as like or not men may have tried to hide in it. 

Watching him walk off into the grey early light, feeling the familiar lulling motion of the saddle once more, a cry of something- grief, shock, frustration- almost worms its way out of her mouth, but what she does expel is a shaky laugh. “You can laugh,” Karstark informs her. “If you like. I would be.”

“Why are you helping us?” she asks between helpless, hysterical giggles. She doesn’t know why she’s laughing. She’s still waiting to wake up, she supposes. She’s also shaking, badly, all over, her teeth chattering between breathless chuckles. 

“I swore an oath,” he replies too quickly.

“So did I,” she confesses, still trembling and laughing, “the Freys made me sign all sort of things saying I would be loyal and- and not rise up in rebellion- and- and remain penitent.” That really sets her off; she laughs herself out of a voice, and then slumps back against his chest, still trembling. 

“Did they wed you?” he asks suddenly.

“Wh- what?” she stammers again, and then thinking about being wed, thinking about what if this was her wedding, to Marbrand, and then if Robb came out of the mist with Grey Wind during the bedding, sets her to laughing again, a shaky, wild sort of peal that rings out and causes Grey Wind to look up at them and whine. 

“Did they attempt to wed you again, to Marbrand, or a Lannister...” he repeats himself coldly.

“No,” she says, somehow even more amused by his blatant frustration with her hysterics. “They only betrothed me. M-Marbrand said I would c-come to l-like him,” she bites down on her tongue and feels blood well up. “I didn’t. You have to t-tell Robb I didn’t. I n-never would have…”

“I don’t think anyone is concerned about the chances of that,” Karstark mutters. They reach the godswood gate and he dismounts, then lifts her out of the saddle, which is good, because her knees are very weak all of a sudden. “Can you walk?”

Addam Marbrand is suddenly crawling through his own pool of blood again, his hacked off arm lying on the ground beside him, out of the corner of her eye, and she dry-heaves, choking up pink spittle. 

“Alright then,” Karstark says under his breath, and then calls out to someone else, and she doesn’t really recall what exactly happens after that, only Grey Wind licking at her bloody hands, the comforting warm rasp of his tongue. 

They can’t seem to find a servant to draw her a bath, so someone leaves her with a bucket of lukewarm water heated up over a hastily lit fire and some rags to clean herself. She’s stopped seizing with intermittent shivers and laughter by the time she’s gotten her ragged, filthy gown off and is sitting on the edge of the bed where Catelyn is fast asleep. Someone said she fainted when she saw Robb and Grey Wind from afar, and she’s been like this since. Nell is relieved to see that her goodmother’s injured fingers have been splinted and the cut on her face from Black Walder cleaned. She is left to catalogue her own injures, which she does, standing there naked and counting bruises and scrapes, before changing into the worn gown someone left out for, her some greyish blue dress that likely belonged to a serving girl, not a lady.

She massages her sore belly, squeezes two of the bigger, vicious splinters of wood from her palms, and loops a thin cloth bandage around her right hand, which is more split open than than her left. Her hair is not too matted or tangled, to her relief, but she runs through it with her sore fingers anyways, and being too tired to braid it properly, just ties it back from her face with Robb’s favor, which she’d been wearing around her wrist. She should show it to him, to prove she never forgot him, never lost faith- but of course she did. She thought he was dead. He was dead. Her father killed him. Nell cannot find it in her to believe that they would have lied about that, that they would have left it to chance. Roose ran him through. He would have made sure of it, her father. He has his careless moments, but not when it comes to killing. He would have considered it shoddy work to simply stab a man and leave him lying there, not bothering to ensure that he was really dead. 

Robb was dead. Now he is not. Either his wounds were miraculously healed, or something else is at work here. She doesn’t know what. She’s not sure she wants to. Perhaps it’s best not to consider it at all. She should just be grateful that she has him back, that he is still with her, that he remembers her. But she has to know, doesn’t she? She has to know what happened. Surely he must feel the same about her, must have been mad with worry and anger, must want to know every detail of her imprisonment. Her stomach twists again, and Catelyn sighs softly in her sleep. Nell glances over at her; the sun is almost all the way up now, and she rises to close the curtains. Her goodmother is sleeping better than she has in months. She looks more like the woman Nell first knew in her sleep, Ned Stark’s pretty wife, with her heart-shaped face, high, elegant cheekbones, and pristine eyebrows and lips. The worry and fear and heartbreak has temporarily melted away. 

There is a looking glass in the corner. Nell is afraid to check it. She is afraid she won’t see herself at all, and then she’ll wake up, and this will be over. It feels like a reverie. Reason has leaped away from her. If Robb could be dead and then breathe again, anything seems possible. Dana was always the superstitious one. Nell has always prided herself on her practicality. The gods are fickle. Men are not to be trusted. Stories are just warnings to keep children out of the woods after dark. And magic is not real, if it ever was. But what else would you call any of this? In the span of one night, her nightmare has become a dream. It feels too good to be true. There has to be a catch. That’s what her mother would say. This is not something the gods do, restoring lost loves and captured castles. There is always a price to pay for it.

She thinks of Arwyn, and wonders if they’ve already begun to pay it. Then she listens. After a night of screams and shouts and the clashing of steel, Riverrun has settled into an almost sleepy morning. She doesn’t hear any fighting or the sound of running feet. If there is still a battle being fought, it must be well outside the keep. And there is nothing she can do right now. She’s exhausted, her hair is still wet, and she’s likely under guard, if Harry Karstark has any sense. She certainly wouldn’t trust herself to be left to wander around after last night. 

After some hesitation, and ignoring the gnawing hunger in her gut- how can she be hungry again, after what’s happened? How can she ever eat another bite? She broke bread with people, and then watched their slaughter. The Freys may have sacrificed guest right first, but they made no moves during the wedding itself. They will remember this. Good, she thinks then, coldly, shoving the guilt aside. Why should she feel guilty? She didn’t command Arwyn’s death or any of her kin’s suffering. She was just trying to escape. She had no idea what was about to happen, and she likely would have escaped with minimal death and violence had the Brotherhood not chosen to attack right then and there. 

This does not rest on her shoulders. What of her promises? She gave them to those girls because she had no choice. What was she meant to do, tell them she would ‘try’ to spare them from the worst of it? There is no ‘trying’ in war. If they feel betrayed, they have no one to blame but themselves and their own house. Innocents always die in war. If anything, surely she should be commended for not being more bloodthirsty, for not wanting Walda and Zia and all the rest to suffer as she has suffered, to know what it is like to have family and friends ripped away from you, to watch good people die for nothing. 

But maybe they already have. And she is so tired. She is tired, and afraid to go to sleep in case this really is a dream, but she feels dizzy and sluggish. She’s so tired. She just wants to wake up and realize that all of this wasn’t real, that it was some fever dream. She wants to wake up to Robb in the bed beside her, whole and warm and mumbling in his sleep, and Lysara gurgling in her cradle by the window. She wants to hear Dana trying and failing to keep her voice down in the other room as she and Jory banter on about something. She wants it to be early autumn again, when the leaves outside were just beginning to change and the days were still warm and crisp. She misses the golden sunshine and the harvest moon overhead. 

She lays down on the bed beside Catelyn, not even bothering to crawl under the quilt, and is asleep the instant her head touches the unforgivingly soft pillow, after hours of tension and wracked nerves.

When she wakes, she can hear movement, and then she sits bolt upright in bed, terrified that everything has been reversed once again. But it is just Catelyn, and Grey Wind, and Harry Karstark and Daryn Hornwood. “Oh,” Nell says; they are gathered around a small wooden table by the fire, where Catelyn is taking hasty sips of thin broth from a bowl, as if she can barely stand to sit there and eat. She glances over and Nell, and her blue eyes widen, and then her expression crumples into a strange mixture of relief, sorrow, and joy. 

“He’s alive,” she says thickly. “Nell, he’s- Robb is here, he’s alright-,”

“I know,” says Nell, blearily standing up, smoothing down her less-than-seemly attire and pushing her hair behind her shoulders. “Daryn,” she says throatily; Daryn Hornwood has jumped up and in doing so, rattled the table and toppled his too-small chair, which he easily sets back up as though it belonged to a doll and all all but guides her into. 

“You need to eat and drink something,” he says frankly, “begging your pardon, my lady- Your Grace,” he corrects himself. 

Nell hardly cares at the moment; she takes a tentative sip of broth and regards Harry Karstark closely. He looks more at ease now that she’s not cackling and shivering like a lunatic, but his posture is still guarded and he keeps his sword in reach, propped against the hearth. “Where’s Robb?” she asks. “Grey Wind?”

Something scratches at the door. “Grey Wind was keeping watch for you all night,” Daryn says dryly, then glances at Karstark. “Robb is… surveying the damages.”

Nell stiffens at that, and Catelyn grips her hand tightly, comforting rather than warning for once. “Riverrun is still standing,” she says. “Two of the gates are damaged, but not beyond immediate repairs, and there was a small fire in the kitchens, but they put it out before it spread to the pantries. My uncle is organizing the prisoners and seeing to the wounded.”

“And the siege camps?” Nell asks, her head swimming. 

Daryn snorts, feeling at the side of his head where he is clearly missing an ear, replaced by shriveled scarring. “They were well prepared for the Brotherhood… if it had been the few hundred they were expecting. They got over a thousand, and then we hit them from the east not an hour later. The siege camps to the south of Riverrun are destroyed. The Freys to the north of us fled to try to get out of the path of the Mallisters, but Merrett Frey led them right into Lord Jason’s outriders, like the halfwit he is. They’re still fighting on the outskirts of the Whispering Wood, but it should be over by dusk.”

“Who’s dead?” She takes a quick sip of water, surprised by how cold and clean it is down her raw throat.

Daryn’s derisive look vanishes. “Bennard Flint and Ronnel Stout among ours. Hugo Vance. Theomar Smallwood and Lymond Lychester, but he was long past his prime and his heart gave out during the fighting in the hall. Little Lewys Piper, poor lad. Desmond Grell was killed while helping Sander Frey open the gates for us. Robin Ryger was thrown down from one of the walls during the fighting and broke his neck. Tom Sevenstreams and Perwyn Frey are both badly wounded.”

“They fought bravely when we needed them the most,” Catelyn says, “and their actions will be remembered far past today.”

Nell exhales. “Marbrand and Banefort are both dead. I laid out Emmon Frey- has anyone seen him?”

Karstark curls his lip. “Men of his size don’t generally get back up again after a blow like that. He’s with the rest of the corpses. Pity, we could have used him as a hostage. But we have Ryman Frey, Leslyn Haigh and his son, Forley Prester… And Genna Lannister, of course.” 

Daryn smiles. “To think she thought to be lady of the place, aye?”

Nell tries to smile back, but instead finds herself asking, “Her grandson was to be Emmon’s heir to Riverrun- a boy of twelve, serving as a squire. Have you taken him as well?”

“When we found Genna Lannister, she was wailing fit to wake the dead, clutching the boy’s corpse,” Harry says after a moment’s pause. “I imagine he tried to be a hero. Him and that runty one with the mustache- he came at Daryn with a mace, didn’t he?”

Daryn nods. “Wendel. One of the younger sons”

Arwyn’s brother, she thinks.

Catelyn looks away. Nell swallows, and takes another sip of broth. “I see. And Daven Lannister?”

Daryn Hornwood offers her a hunk of bread; she shakes her head minutely. 

“Wounded, gravely,” says Harrion. “He damn near vaulted over a bannister to get at me, and then took a blow from the Hound. Feverish and ranting and raving about his little wife, last I heard.”

“Arwyn,” Catelyn recalls, and then looks to Nell, a note of worry in her eyes all the same, even after everything. “Walda and Zia were found hiding in one of the bedchambers with Waltyr and some maids, but no one’s accounted for Arwyn yet. You didn’t see her last night, did you, after… after it began?”

“She’s dead,” Nell resists the urge to pick at the bandage around her hand, and then repeats herself in a louder, clearer voice, tone brusque and brisk. “No, she’s dead. They should be told, her siblings. We’ll have to decide what we’re going to do with the bodies.”

“Some of the men have been taking trophies,” Daryn says, and at the look on Catelyn’s face, hastily adds, “but we’ll put an end to that. The bodies are being laid out wherever there’s space. More outside Riverrun. The Brotherhood took heavy losses in their first wave.”

“But we’ve won the day,” Karstark amends. “For now, at least. Orders have been given to remand the Riverlands forces here. If this is going to last, we need a united fighting force. No more scattering to different holdfasts,” he all but spits in disgust, “running from place to place like rats. The people need a show of strength. And a promise that this is the end of any Lannister reign in the Riverlands. Permanently.”

“But,” Daryn says swiftly, before Harry Karstark can launch into what Nell suspects is a speech brimming with calls to Northern honor and defiance against tyrants, “we were waiting for both of you to be up and well before we told you the good news.” He looks meaningfully at Harrion, who seems to be at a loss as to what the ‘good news’ might be beyond their victory in battle, and then realizes. His harsh look softens slightly. 

Catelyn puts down her cup, exchanging a look with Nell. “We’ve sorely missed any good news, as of late,” she says warily. “But after Robb… I could believe anything,” her voice cracks slightly on the last word, but she composes herself quickly.

“We have Arya Stark and Danelle Flint,” Daryn says, with a slight smile. “They’re on their way.”

300 AC - OUTSIDE RIVERRUN

Dana only relaxes when they crest the ridge and see the intersection of the Red Fork and the Tumblestone laid out before them, and nestled between the two, Riverrun. The wreckage of the siege camps is spread out far and wide, and she averts her gaze from the sight, but looking north across the Red Fork towards the woodlands doesn’t offer much hope either, from the faint plumes of smoke drifting up and the distant cries of the dying. Robert Paege only agreed to move them when it became clear that the Freys had not managed to turn the tables on Jason Mallister’s men and wouldn’t be lying in wait along the Red Fork to ambush them. 

Ser Robert, who is usually so amiable, seems the opposite now; he’s said barely two words to her or Arya since this morning, and now it is late in the day, dusk rapidly approaching and the skies growing darker overhead. Dana thinks she knows why; like as not he was infuriated, young man that he is, to be left out of the fighting and instead set to guarding a woman and a child. Sure, there is some great honor to be had to be entrusted with Arya, who is still a princess, but Dana is a no-name northern lady, and they are hardly arrayed in all their silks and finery while he goes galloping ahead in gleaming plate armor. Instead they are both in rags, and the red-and-white of his worn cloak has seen far better days, and his horse is rapidly ailing. 

If they have to stop because a mount throws a shoe or stumbles, Dana thinks- no, she knows, she will scream. It’s been a very long time since she saw Riverrun, after all, and a long time since Riverrun saw her. Nell is there, waiting. And perhaps- she knows it’s stupid to wish, but she’s heard tell they brought some Frey women south for that doomed wedding. Marianne could be there. It’s dangerous to hope, but she could, unless- Vance surname or not, she is still a Frey, and Dana would truly go mad if she heard that Marianne was hurt or killed in the fighting, simply due to her surname. She’s sick of that old excuse. How can an entire house be one’s enemies? Of course she curses the Freys, but it’s clear enough who she means- the cravens and traitors who plotted so much murder and destruction, not the innocent women married to them or the helpless children born to them. 

How could anyone wish death upon a child? But they can, and they do, of course. Is Arya not proof of that? Had the Lannisters caught her in the city, they likely would have quietly killed her, already having Sansa as an assured hostage. Perhaps if the likes of Gregor Clegane had discovered her identity he might have given her to Tywin Lannister’s clutches… or perhaps he just would have killed her then and there. He certainly had experience butchering little girls. Her stomach turns over at that thought, and she looks over at Arya almost anxiously. No. What matters right now is that Arya is safe, and about to be reunited with her family at last. 

Dana had wondered if the dam might finally burst, and almost thought it did- for when they had word that Robb and Harry Karstark’s forces had triumphed, Arya had bounded up and breathlessly embraced a shocked Ned Dayne, she was so excited, and Dana had impulsively hugged Robert Paege, who was disgruntled but not hostile. Yet as soon as the outburst had come, it had passed, and when Arya heard that Nell and her mother were safe, she’d quietly said, “Good,” and then retreated back to her hard little shell of forced indifference and obstinate isolation. 

Mayhaps it will always be two steps forward, one step back with her. Dana tries to be patient. She can’t expect a child who’s spent so long on the run, living in constant fear, forced to do hard labor day in and day out, to suddenly revert to the carefree little girl she once was. She may never go back to that. A grown man or woman likely couldn’t. They say children easily forget their hardships, but Dana knows that’s not true. All her worst memories from childhood, they’re all neatly lined up inside her mind like medals of valor. It’s likely much the same for Arya. Sometimes you can’t go back. Sometimes you can never be that person again. Dana will never be the girl she left behind at Flint’s Finger again, nor the girl she left behind at Winterfell. 

But she just wishes better for Arya. She’s not even sure why she cares so much. Arya is not her kin. They weren’t particularly close before the Stark sisters left for King’s Landing. Maybe it just feels like a chance to fix something for once, a chance she’s failing miserably at. She can’t ‘fix’ Arya; can’t wipe away all her fear and misery and rage. She can’t take away Needle and replace it with a child’s toy. Arya’s been allowed to be more of a child as of late, but this hasn’t been a marked improvement. She’s still been more or less on the run, still forced to hide her identity, still mostly alone. Yes, she’s been reunited with her brother, but how much of a reunion has it been when her brother is still a dead man with a dead man’s broken mind and ravaged soul?

Dana jingles the reins lightly of her steady old mare, and finally looks directly at Arya, who sits straight and comfortable in the saddle, clearly chomping at the bit to break into a gallop far more than her meek little sorrel. She calls her Craven, Arya, which to Dana suggests that at least she still has something of a sense of humor. Mayhaps Dana should name her own horse something funny. Bastard? Cuckold? Whoreson? “Thumb,” she says aloud, and Arya looks over at her, pale brown furrowed. 

“What?”

“I’m going to call her Thumb,” she tells Arya. “My mare. Get it?”

The girl looks at her flatly, then says, “No. Why?”

“Because I’m a Fingerflint,” Dana explains, unable to keep a small grin off her face. “Aye?”

“No,” Arya says, shaking her head, but she does snicker a little. 

“Yes,” says Dana more merrily than she feels. “I’m a Finger, she’s a Thumb, and my blade,” she pats her belt, at the knife she’s mercifully not had cause to use yet other than to cut her meat on occasion, “is a Thimble. Do you like it?”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Arya informs her, although her eyes scrunch up when she smiles reflexively. 

“It can’t be the stupidest,” Dana snorts. “You spent too much time around Tom Sevens and Anguy for it to be the stupidest.”

“Too much time around Hot Pie,” Arya counters.

“Too much time at Harrenhal; everyone knows the water there rots your brains out, s’why they give it people they don’t like.”

“Too much time at Hollow Hill!”

“Too much time around knights,” Dana adds in a loud whisper, and Robert Paege looks back at them, affronted. “Sorry, Ser!”

He shakes his head and turns back round in the saddle.

“I think Thumb’s a sweet name for a horse, my lady,” Ned Dayne tells her courteously, although he is clearly lying through his white little teeth. Do all the Daynes have the same blinding grins? Maybe it has something to do with the water in Dorne.

“Liar,” Arya says under her breath.

“Is that your favorite word?” Ned asks her in an uncharacteristic display of cheekiness, before he adds teasingly, “My lady?”

“I’m going to thrash you the next time we stop to break water,” Arya informs him curtly.

“That might be difficult,” Ned replies with mock sympathy. “I think I’m growing taller again.”

“Your ego certainly is,” Dana says dryly, then grins. “That pout doesn’t work on me, my lord Edric.”

“It works on Allyria,” he mutters, and spurs his gelding up ahead to join the front of the escort.

“Allyria, Allyria,” Arya grumbles, “he never shuts up about his perfect aunt Allyria.”

“Everyone has an infuriatingly perfect aunt,” Dana shrugs. “Mine’s a Norrey. Berena Norrey, married a Wull. She can skin a rabbit in under ten minutes and she had six children one after another, all without breaking a sweat. My mother hates her.”

“I think my aunt’s dead,” Arya replies, and then there is a long silence only interrupted by the sound of the horses, until she says, “You never talk about your mother.”

Dana gives a small, sad, wry smile. “There’s not much to talk about. She had my sisters to fuss over. I think she wanted to be done with daughters by the time she had me.”

“She didn’t love you?” Arya’s tone sounds small and wounded all of a sudden.

Dana chooses her next words carefully. “I know she loves me. Not just because she’s my mother, because she cares for me. She picked me up when I cried and she knows my favorite foods and she showed me how to make a snowman when I was five. We just… haven’t always gotten along. We’re very different. My sisters are more like her. I’m more like my father.”

“Your father’s dead,” Arya recalls.

Dana nods mutely, her throat momentarily closed.

“I’m sorry,” Arya offers after a moment. “I forgot.”

“That’s alright,” Dana says, inhaling and then regretting it, because she can smell the stench of dead bodies from here. “I’d like to forget it. I don’t know if my mother knows. I’m sure she’s worried. I haven’t seen her in two years,” she adds gently, with a searching look at Arya.

After another moment, out it comes. “I don’t know-,” Arya hesitates, chewing on her lower lip, then admits in a low, frightened tone, “I don’t know if she’ll… she’ll want me.”

Dana resists the urge to shake some sense into her, and says more calmly, “Why wouldn’t she, Arya? You’re her daughter. She loves you.”

“Robb loves me,” Arya hedges, “but he doesn’t… he doesn’t care that I’m here. Not really. It’s not like he used to be.”

“Robb isn’t what he used to be,” Dana says softly. “You know that, Arya. Your mother… it won’t be like that with her. Of course she cares. You think she doesn’t miss you? That she hasn’t been worried for you? I was with her for most of it. All she wanted was you and Sansa back.” She debates saying it aloud, then concedes, “Arya, she released the Kingslayer because she loved you and Sansa so much. She thought if she could return him to the Lannisters, they’d trade back Sansa and you.”

“But I wasn’t with Sansa,” Arya studies Craven’s tangled black mane. “I was with Yoren, and then at Harrenhal, and then… I’m not like Sansa,” she bursts out, and Dana can see her eyes beginning to tear, and not from the cold wind. “I’m not. I wasn’t- before- and I’m not now. I was a boy. I… I’ve used Needle,” she admits, and Dana knows exactly what that means.

“Arya,” she says, “none of that is your fault. You didn’t have a choice. You were alone. You didn’t have people to protect you. You were a captive at Harrenhal. Whatever you had to do… I don’t think she’ll blame you for it.”

“But I’m not good,” Arya says, nose running now. She rubs at it angrily. “I mean- I’m not good at lady’s things, and I’m not good with… how I should be. Everything’s been all wrong, and I- I don’t think I’m good,” she echoes herself, then blinks away her tears, reddening. 

“You are good,” Dana snaps. “You are ten years old, and you are good, and you are one of the bravest people I know, lord or lady or what have you. You shouldn’t be worrying about these things, alright? Those are grownup things. What’s happened to you- what happened’s here, in the Riverlands, everywhere- it’s horrible. It’s a horrible thing for anyone to go through. But you are still here, and so am I, and you said we were a pack, so we’re a pack, and we’re going home, alright?”

Arya is silent for a long moment, then nods jerkily. “Alright. We’re going home.”

Riverrun looms much closer now; Dana can see the walls in greater detail, can see the murky brown of the moats, and can see the bodies clogging in, and feels another, final, wave of fear. She swallows hard, blinks back her own tears, and then she sees the riders, coming out over the drawbridge. That’s hardly shocking, but then she recognizes the way one of them sits, and sees the glint of the other’s auburn hair in the rapidly vanishing sunlight. “Arya,” she says, “look.”

Arya looks, gives a strange, strangled sort of cry, and spurs Craven into motion. The guard nearest her swears and reaches for her reins, but she easily evades him, and Dana grins helplessly, nudges Thumb to pick up the pace, and breaks into a canter after her, yelling, “Let her go, for the love of the gods!” Thumb’s canter edges into a gallop, and for an instant Dana could be fifteen again, racing through the sprawling golden fields of the Barrowlands, the sun’s fading light hot on her back, and up ahead Nell pushing Roddy in order to jump a fence with a sharp, exhilarated cry like the one that tears its way out of Dana now, and she races over the muddy, grey-brown earth, and the riders are coming quickly towards them, faster, and faster, and faster, and one screaming, just screaming fit to wake the dead, “ARYA! ARYA!”

And the other is silent, but when Dana first glimpses her face she sees her all the same, and she is nearly sobbing when she finally reins Thumb up, and there is Nell, riding Harry Karstark’s warhorse, of all the mounts in the world, and they are alongside each other, reaching and exclaiming, and Dana takes Nell’s flushed face in her cold hands, and Nell is gripping her shoulders like vices while their horses brush snouts, and all Dana can think to choke out is, “Missed me, did you?” and Nell nearly hauls her off her horse. 

When she does finally look over, she sees that Craven’s saddle is empty, and Arya is on the filthy ground, her arms thrown around her mother’s neck, face buried in her long hair, and Catelyn is rocking back and forth, weeping, her face wet with tears and pink with joy and relief. “I’m sorry,” Nell is saying breathlessly, “Dana, I’m so sorry, I never meant for you to be hurt, I’m sorry for everything-,”

“I’m not,” Dana kisses her on both cheeks. “So stop your nattering, Nellie. I’m supposed to be the soft one, you silly girl.”

“I love you,” Nell says, squeezing her until she can barely breath, and Dana laughs aloud and kisses her again on the forehead. “I love you too, sister.” She’s never said that before. It feels good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. I apologize for the lack of Robb/Stoneheart in this chapter, but it was difficult to fit him in around the more practical discussions, and like it or not, Risen!Robb is not really the type to be all that great at giving comfort and sharing tender moment. Ironically (or not, really) he's far more comfortable, Nell is discovering, outside in the elements with the dead and dying, rather than inside with the living. We will be seeing much more of him through her eyes in the near future, as she adjusts to this... version of the person she loved. 
> 
> 2\. Nell is in shock for much of this chapter, which explains her fits of laughter and stammering (well, that and the cold) upon being faced with the reality that they have won Riverrun back. Poor Harry is not really sure how to deal with this, other than getting her inside ASAP, and as we can see, Robb is not at equipped at present to really be comforting or reassuring well, anyone of anything. She is also going through various stages of grief and/or guilt, as she goes back and forth on whether or not she should feel guilty over the deaths of Arwyn and others.
> 
> 3\. This was not a perfect battle, the Mallisters are still actively fighting the Ser Ryman's force of Freys north of Riverrun, and they certainly did not manage to kill or imprison every single Lannister bannerman, although they have taken numerous hostages, such as Genna Lannister, Ryman Frey, the Haighs, Daven Lannister (who was badly wounded), etc. Other people have been killed in action, such as Theomar Smallwood, Lymond Lychester, Dana's cousin Ben Flint (whose death she is not yet aware of), Desmond Grell, Benfrey Frey, etc. With Riverrun held once more by river/northmen, things are certainly looking better than they did a few weeks ago for the Stark cause, but they're hardly out of the woods yet, and winter is actively approaching with haste. I didn't want this chapter to just be 'yay, we won, okay, time to pack up for Winterfell, stat' nor did I want it to endless misery and angst about an imperfect victory.
> 
> 4\. That said, this fic is ultimately headed northward, and we are catching up with the timeline that is left off in canon. It is now early in the fourth month of 300 AC. A lot of Big Shit is in motion. Not all of it directly effects our protagonists, but it's still happening. We will be seeing Beth again soon, and a new POV character, someone we have not heard from in long while. 
> 
> 5\. I like interactions between Dana and Arya because I think they really lift each other up, as they both have deep insecurities about their places in life and their families. I also really wanted to show the reunions through Dana's eyes. In some ways I think the reunion between Catelyn and Arya was more important to show in detail than then reunion between Catelyn and Robb, since Catelyn spends so much time attempting to get back Sansa and Arya and feeling like she's failed them. Also, Nell and Dana are truly sisters in spirit and it felt good to have them back in action together again, after so long apart and worrying about each other.
> 
> 6\. Next chapter 90% chance of being a Nell POV again, exploring more of the aftermath, and future plans for the Riverlands, etc. Also just sort of a massive reunion for multiple characters at Riverrun as everyone reels from what's just happened. This fic is probably not slowing down anytime soon in terms of pacing, so I am going to try to set a brisk pace for future chapters so we don't have any frustrating lulls in plot or action. Thank you all for being in for the long run!


	57. Donella XLIII

300 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell can’t remember the last time she enjoyed a bath enough to nod off in it. Her privacy was never assured at the Freys; yes, they let her have some liberties here and there once it became clear that she was not going to attempt to escape from the Twins, but she was always made well aware that any one of them could barge through the door at any time, be it the dead of night or early in the morning. Sometimes she was convinced they send servants in at odd hours specifically to disturb her, to keep her uneasy and nervous, never certain she was truly alone. Or perhaps she was just becoming increasingly paranoid by the time they sent her down to the siege, convinced every little habit or behavior indicated some grand conspiracy.

She still blames herself for it, of course. She blames herself not picking up on it sooner, for not realizing something was very wrong, that something foul was being plotted, from the moment the Freys began to insist on absolutely holding Edmure and Roslin’s wedding by the year’s end. She should have known something was wrong when they kept her ladies from her. She should have known something was amiss from the moment she beheld their smug, ferrety smiles. Surely she should be used to detecting ill intent by now, after all those years at the Dreadfort. But she didn’t see Ramsay for what he really was until he’d taken Sara from her, and she didn’t see the Freys for what they were until she was fleeing with Lysara in her arms.

She’s lost both her Saras now, the elder and the younger. She thinks about Lysara often. What she’s doing. Is she sleeping and eating normally? Has she taken to the wetnurse’s breast better than she ever took to Nell’s? Are Fat Walda and Marianne and Marissa looking after her, as they promised, or have they chosen self-preservation? Would any one of them really put themselves between her child and Roose? Or the Bastard? Likely not. They may sympathize with her, but Walda will soon have her own child to worry about, and as far as they knew when they left, Nell was a widowed one-time-queen who’d helped lead a doomed rebellion. What stake do they really have in it? She still doesn’t know if her father’s forces have even made it through the Neck. She doesn’t know where Lysara is, if she’s alright, if she’s growing big and strong or if she’s crying and wasting away, all because Nell failed her. 

Just as her own mother failed her. Beth Bolton could not protect her daughter, and Nell Stark cannot protect hers. 

She’s tried to explain to Robb, but it is difficult. His memory is- it is like a patchwork quilt with large unfinished swathes. He recognizes his mother and his sister and others- Harry Karstark, Daryn Hornwood, Olyvar Frey- but how much does he remember of them? What conversations can he recall, what moments does he think back to? Is there anything there at all, or just massive dark spots inside his skull. She can’t sit down and speak to him for hours as she would have before. She can try to provoke his memory, tell him things, try to coax anything out of him, some sign that this… that this all just temporary, that eventually he will be the man she remembers, the man she loves, but it is so difficult. 

She thought’d lost him, and that horror is still clinging to her like a shroud. Because now she has him back, but only parts of him. His eyes are a different color. His skin has a different tint, and stretches tightly across his cheekbones, and his sockets are sunken hollows. His hair is near constantly damp, for he cannot bear to spend much time indoors, will not sit by the fire with her as he once would, finds no pleasure in mead or wine, will not eat, and when they sleep- well, she sleeps, sometimes. Robb will lie down beside her, but his body holds no heat. She can’t wrap her arms around him and fling a leg over his and nestle her face into the crook of his neck as she once would, drinking in the warmth of him. He is not warm and soft. He’s cold and hard and of course she is grateful to have him back, even like this, but he is not- 

It’s like seeing a distorted reflection in an aged or shattered looking glass. Some parts of him are familiar enough, and she still gets a little thrill of shock and relief whenever she sees him moving through a room, whenever he comes into the light, but the rest is not… She asked Thoros of Myr, the red priest, what could be done. Surely there was something he could do. If he was present when Beric Dondarrion raised Robb from the dead, if he coaxed his heart to beat and his lungs to breathe again, surely he could help heal the rest of him. But he’d just stared at her, flummoxed, as if she’d asked him to cast a magic spell or wave a staff of some sort. “I cannot question the Lord of Light’s work,” he’d told her instead, gently. “I am only an instrument of his will.”

“You brought him back for a reason,” she’d snapped. “Do not play the mystic with me, priest. It was your will to-,”

“It was Lord Beric’s will,” Thoros had said, and the fresh grief in his voice surprised her, as if Beric had only died yesterday. She has never met the man, who is now a corpse many times over, but in some sense she owes everything to him. “I… I cautioned against it, Your Grace. The wounds were not so gruesome or vast, but he had been dead for over a day when we found him, after his wolf dragged him from the shallows. But Beric felt his time… that his time was over, that he had done all he could for these people. It was on Ned Stark’s command that he left King’s Landing to seek justice against the Mountain. He thought it fitting to give Ned Stark’s firstborn new life.”

“And I thank him for it,” Nell had said raggedly, struggling to compose herself. “But His Grace is not- he is not all that he was. To me or his men. You must see that.”

“I do,” Thoros had said, shaking his head. “I do, and I look into the flames for hope every night, Your Grace. But these powers are not mine alone, only borrowed. And I have wounded men to tend to.” He’d left her standing there, feeling a numb creeping sensation up her spine, while he hurried back to the wounded soldiers filling the hall, calling out to him, or the Seven, or R’hllor.

Now she sits in the tub, and despite all her worries and fears and the massive gulf between her life at Riverrun now and the last time she was here, she nods off. She hasn’t dreamed of much in months, and this dream does not last very long, so she is not particularly disturbed by it, doesn’t feel the same clenching dread she use to. Perhaps it is because she is not outside in the dream, not in some dark wood, but back in Winterfell. In her dream, Winterfell is restored to its former glory, or perhaps was never sacked and burned at all, and the Stark direwolf hangs proudly on the walls, and the servants smile and chatter, and the hall is full of feasting guests, all the prominent northern houses. The Bolton flayed man is conspicuously absent. She walks through the hall with Lysara in her arms, not an infant any more, but a proper child of one or two, her head lolling against Nell’s chest, her auburn curls grown down past her small ears, shining copper in the torchlight. People stop to talk to her as she passes, reach out to touch their princess, praise her health and beauty, and Nell feels warm inside for the first time in a very long time. 

She goes the entire length of the hall, and only stops near the back, shadowed corners, where she can see a few stray dogs fighting over some abandoned meat. Lysara whimpers in fright to hear their faint growls and snarls, and Nell turns back around, hushing her, comforting her, only to find the crowded feasting hall virtually empty, the tables void of guests, their meals left to sit, their swords and shields gone from the wall. The music still plays faintly, although she can see no singers, and the torches and fires yet burn, perhaps even more brightly than before, but there is a cold chill in the air despite it, and the growling and snapping of the dogs grows louder and louder just behind her, as if they’d turned from the dead meat to the fresh meat. Lysara begins to cry, and Nell breaks into a run, tripping over her skirts as she goes, racing for the high table, which is all but empty as well, save for just one. 

“Help me!” she screams, but if Robb can hear her, he gives no sign of it. “Robb, help us! Please!” But he does not so much as look up from his meal, and the dogs are snapping at her skirts, she can smell them. “GREY WIND!” she shouts, stumbling, as Lysara’s cries to turn to piercing wails, and a grey blur races past her, knocking her with a yelp to the dirty floor, as Grey Wind tears into the pack of dogs, immediately savaging one’s belly open, pulling out its steaming guts. Nell scrambles backward, her daughter in her arms, still shouting for Robb, and is vaguely aware of a great clamor outside the hall- as if a battle were being waged right outside their door, the screams and clashes of metal and march of feet. 

She finally reaches the dais, breathless and trembling, and hauls herself up onto it. Grey Wind is still fighting with the dogs; he is much, much bigger than even the largest of them, but they seem to multiply before her eyes, and she gapes in horror as one of the bolder hounds ripes at Grey Wind’s already damaged ear. “Robb,” she pants, whirling back around, clutching their daughter, “what are you doing?” He is eating. She has yet to see him eat more than a bite or two of very undercooked meat, but now he eats well and with a flourish she’s never seen before, carefully carving into the severed head on his plate. She gasps, stiffening in horror, and watches rivulets of blood run down his chin as he chews and swallows, the apple of his throat bobbing almost gleeful. 

She looks from him to the bloody, peeling head again, a low cry escaping her, and Lysara squirms and then falls from her arms, and she wakes with a gasp, sloshing water over the sides of the tub.

She’s still shaken from it later, even when she enters the deceptively sunny godswood. The weather has brightened considerably in the fortnight since they retook Riverrun, and at times when she is simply walking along it could almost be the early days again, after they’d reclaimed Riverrun from the Lannisters for the first time, when she and Robb were still newlyweds and there was a palpable air of victory and defiance. When an entire army waited outside their gates, hanging on his every word. 

Well, the army is back, or getting there; Nell estimates that in total they have perhaps some three thousand northmen, with more to the north led by the Greatjon, holding the Twins at bay. Then there are perhaps eight thousand rivermen, not counting Mallister’s fifteen hundred that just cut the last of the Frey’s old siege camp in half and sent the survivors fleeing back to the Crossing. These are far from the numbers they had when they were first here, but it is something. At least they are approaching a united force again. Harry Karstark argued fiercely for remanding the majority of the Riverlands’ fighting force here, and Nell agrees with him. 

Scattered to various holdfasts and keeps, they are easy picking. Here, surrounding Riverrun and lined up and down the river road from Wayfarer’s Rest to the Kneeling Man, they are nothing for any Lannister to sneeze at. The riverlands have no hard boundaries, no easy, obvious points of defense. But they do have the Brotherhood, who are far better served being the ones to scatter to the four winds as their eyes and ears, from Raventree to Stony Sept. 

They have time. Not much, but they have time. The survivors of Marbrand and Lannister’s men were in no easy position; they could either flee down the Tumblestone towards into the mountains, towards the goldmines of Nunn’s Deep and the Pendric Hills, where the most powerful nearby ruling lord would have been Quenten Banefort, who is dead, leaving behind six young children in no state to come to anyone’s rescue. Or they could have tried for Ashemark, whose ruling lord is an old man whose sole son is now dead. Or they could have tried their luck and made a mad dash for Harrenhal.

Harrenhal, where Jaime Lannister has now taken roost, like his deceased father before him, with perhaps a thousand men, and Flement Brax’s small force. The real danger is not Jaime Lannister, though. The real danger is that Jaime Lannister will call on Randyll Tarly’s seven thousand men who have occupied Maidenpool in an attempt to rebuild the town and restore function trade with the northern crownlands. Nell doesn’t care about the Kingslayer. Well, she does, of course she does, but he’s hardly a renowned strategist or commander. No one could deny the man can fight like a devil in single combat or astride a warhorse, but his languid assault on Riverrun to begin with was what set this whole thing off in part. 

Perhaps he’s colder and wiser after his imprisonment, shameful escape, and glorious return to King’s Landing, just in time for his bastard’s death. Or mayhaps he missed that. She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care. What she cares about is Randyll Tarly, who is a renowned commander, who has by all reports been winning Mace Tyrell’s battles for him for years now, coming to call. That’s a man they don’t know, one they’re wholly unfamiliar with, and their men are not used to going up against knights of the Reach. If Tarly outfoxes them, and undoes all this… It doesn’t bear thinking about. Maester Vyman estimates they have perhaps three moons until winter begins. Travel north will quickly become slow, arduous, and eventually, impossible. If they sit around here playing cat and mouse with a series of westermen and Reach lords, they will still be sitting here when the deep snows come, and it won’t matter, because the North will be lost to them- not just for weeks, or months, but years. Perhaps another decade, and her father’s health is unfailing. 

She cannot wait an entire winter to save Lysara and reclaim Winterfell. She cannot wait a decade to have her vengeance. 

The godswood is more grey and brown now than blue and green, but the birdsongs are the same, and the wind rustles through the trees, and she finds Catelyn and Arya sitting on the stone bench where Robb first told he he was to be crowned. That they were to be crowned. Neither of them wear crowns any longer. There have been numerous offers and suggestions to forge new, stronger ones, but Robb seems to have little interest in any adornment or finery. “This is all I need,” he’d said, unsheathing his sword, and Nell had touched her own bare hair and said nothing. She has enough weighing her down without cold iron atop her head again. They were barely more than children when these people crowned them. Things are different now.

Everything is different now.

Nell still cannot get over the sight of Arya like this. When she was first reunited with them she was dressed as a boy, her clothes little more than rags, her hair a snarled, rumpled, greasy mess, her skin grey with dirt. When Catelyn found out Harry Karstark had her disguised as a bastard brother squire, she nearly slapped him. Nell is certain she would have had she not been so overcome with emotion at having one of her children in her arms again. She knows her goodmother was overjoyed to have Robb back as well, but… well, Catelyn is not blind. She looks at Robb and sees what Nell does, and the grief in her blue eyes does not lessen when she beholds him like this.

But with Arya at her side she seems younger, brighter again, and for the first time in months is not dressed in dark colors but back in Tully red and blue. Arya is uncomfortably wearing a very old gown of deep purpling crimson with emerald green ribbons in the bodice; the design is clearly out of fashion by now, and Nell would be willing to wager it once belonged to Catelyn herself, or her sister Lysa. Arya’s hair doesn’t come past her ears, but it is properly washed and combed flat against her scalp, and while the gauntness makes her solemn grey eyes and long nose especially prominent, she looks something approaching a proper little girl once more.

Catelyn holds Arya’s thin hand in her own; the pale flesh there is covered in scars from cuts and burns, and as Nell sits down beside them, it’s obvious that the girl is covered in callouses all over her palms and fingers. Septa Mordane was once like to say that Arya had the hands of a blacksmith, but that wasn’t true then. It could be approaching the truth now, if blacksmiths were ever eleven year old girls. She’s been doing hard manual labor for some time, and Nell doubts those are all just from waving Needle about. That’s what she calls her sword. Catelyn stared, nonplussed, when Arya almost guiltily produced the blade, and was reluctant to so much as name until it Dana encouraged her. And Dana; Nell can see Dana from here, a-ways off speaking quietly under some decaying vines with a nervous Zia Frey, who is pulling at the sleeves of her oversized borrowed gown. At Nell’s insistence the Frey girls have not been imprisoned like many of their kin here, but they are seldom left alone, either, and she hasn’t spoken a word to either Zia or Walda since that night.

She doesn’t know what to say, and she doesn’t want to think about it. They owe her their lives. Does she owe them hers? Had they refused to give her any aid or information at all, how different would things have been? Is she simply being soft-hearted and weak? Or is this justice of a sort? She did promise them marriages. But can she rightly marry them to vengeful men who might feel they have every reason to abuse and mistreat them? She could send them to a Motherhouse. Yet she does not even practice that faith herself. What right has she to order them to a life of quiet servitude, when she does not even worship the Seven? But how would it look to keep them as her own ladies in waiting? Mayhaps she is far past the point of caring what anyone thinks. Robb certainly is.

“I was just telling Arya we should begin her lessons again, now that she is back under a safe roof,” Catelyn says to Nell, in that forcibly cheery, fragile voice she often uses around Arya, who looks torn between shrinking into the shadows of the wall, and tearing her hand free and taking off running. She didn’t protest the baths or the clothes or the trimming and combing of her hair, but she does insist on sleeping with Needle every single night. Catelyn managed to convince her to simply keep the sword in the same room, hanging on the hearth. It doesn’t matter; Arya never sleeps alone anyways. Either her mother or Dana sleep with her. 

When Nell has Lysara back, she will never let her out of her sight again. She is certain of that. 

Arya shifts, but says nothing, squinting as the wind blusters at them, bundled into her dark green cloak. 

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” says Nell cautiously. “We’re not leaving Riverrun anytime soon, and it will give you something to occupy your time, Arya.” 

She has no idea how to act around Robb’s sister, nor Arya around her. Nell spent comparatively little time with Sansa and Arya before they left. What time they did spend together was either at meals, where Arya could usually be found playing with her food or whispering and giggling with Bran, or listening wide-eyed to Jon Snow and Robb’s conversation, or in sewing circles, where she could usually be found making every attempt to get out of it, or being snickered at by Sansa and Jeyne Poole, or arguing with Septa Mordane, or not there at all because she’d run off to play with Nymeria instead. Nell has no idea what the girl even thinks of her. Does she hate her for her Bolton name? Dana told her Arya served for a time at Harrenhal, right under Roose’s nose. Nell has resolved to never speak of that. It wouldn’t bring up very pleasant memories for either of them.

“I have things to do,” Arya says, although her voice comes in a low, wary sort of mutter, and her gaze darts between her mother and Nell as if either were about to pounce on her. “I can practice my dancing with Needle. And my riding. I can’t let Craven sit in her stall all day. Or I can- I can help in the kitchens now,” she says, reddening even as she speaks, as if aware of how ludicrous that sounds, “I… I know how to do things like that, I can help fix things that need fixing, or run and fetch things-,”

“Arya,” Catelyn says, pulling her into an embrace that is stiff on her daughter’s part, pressing an almost incredulous kiss to her scalp, “there’s no need for any of that now. You are home, you’re… you came back to me,” her voice hitches slightly, “and you are my daughter, a princess of House Stark. You won’t work in kitchens or fetch saddles anymore, or carry swords, you’re a little girl, and you will be a great lady someday-,”

Arya jerks away from her suddenly, springing to her feet. “No,” she says, and Nell is shocked to see that the girl is tearful, flushed scarlet, her hands in shaking fists, knotted up in the thick fabric of her dress. “No, that’s not- why don’t you listen! I’m trying to- to tell you- I can’t be that anymore! I can’t be your- I’m not Arya your daughter, Arya the princess, I’ve never- I’m Arry,” she bursts out, “I’m Arry and Weasel and Nymeria and Nan, I’m not a princess, I’m not a lady, that’s- that’s Sansa! You just- I know you’d rather have her back anyways, but she’s- she’s gone, and you have to pretend I can be- I can’t be her, I can’t be like that, so just stop it! Stop it!” 

She kicks at the loose dirt, then recoils at the look on Catelyn’s face. Nell wants to recoil as well; the raw grief displayed there is not easy to take in. Catelyn looks as though her daughter had slapped her, or torn at her hair. She stares at Arya, who stares back at her fiercely for a moment, then crumples, and dashes off, losing a slipper in the process, disappearing into the thickets, which tear at her dress, until she disappears from view, underbrush crunching and crackling underfoot. Nell and Catelyn both look after her in stunned silence for a moment, and then Catelyn slowly brings her shaking hands up to her face. 

“I- Catelyn, I’m sure she’s just…” Nell exhales. “It’s a shock for her to be here, with you again, I’m sure. She’s… Dana’s told me that she…”

“Danelle has told me as well,” Catelyn’s voice comes muffled and bitter. “My daughter. Shorn like a sheep and forced to dress in filthy rags. Marching north with murders and rapers on all sides, knowing she could have been killed at any moment. Then captured by the Mountain,” her voice cracks painfully, “forced to witness gods know what sort of atrocities and crimes… then Harrenhal, I- I want to understand but I can’t,” she says hoarsely, “Seven help me, I praised them all when I saw her again, riding to me, my fierce girl, but I- she is not the Arya I saw leaving Winterfell that day,” she sounds on the verge of outright weeping. “She is not the little girl I- I did not even come down to see them off. I was with Bran. Well, Bran is dead, and she is here with me, and now I don’t- I think she decided she was a motherless child, an orphan, long ago, and I don’t… She hates me.”

“No,” says Nell, reaching over to hold her. “No, you cannot- she loves you, you’re her mother- of course she doesn’t hate you. How could she- she loves you, Catelyn! She does. She just… I doubt she thought she’d ever see you again, ever hear your voice. You just have to give her time. She’ll adjust again. She’s young. She will adjust.”

“She’s adjusted to life as an orphan named Arry! Or Weasel, or Nan, or whatever the rest- she doesn’t need me, and she doesn’t want me,” Catelyn says, finally lifting her face from her hands, and clenching them tightly in her lap. “She- to hear her say it- I miss Sansa. Of course I do. I have mourned her half a hundred times, whether she be alive or dead. I was always closer with her. She was my eldest girl. My secondborn. Robb was always Ned’s son, the heir, but Sansa was the first one who was all mine. Ned didn’t know what to do with the girls,” she almost gives a strange sort of laugh, “but I understood Sansa perfectly. I thought I did, at least. She was like me. Arya… she was a trial, we argued, she vexed me, but I- I love her,” she says with a wretched heaving cough-

“I love her, and it… it doesn’t matter at all anymore. I love her but I’ve lost her. I hold her at night and she kicks and squirms away as if I were a stranger. I dress her and she stares at me as though I were mocking her. I eat with her and she guards her food like a dog. I daresay she trusts Sandor Clegane and Harry bloody Karstark more than she does me!”

Nell lays a hand on her shoulder. “You know that isn’t true. She’s had to live in a world full of dangerous, rough men for years now. That’s what she’s grown to accustomed to. She’s still just a child, not even flowered yet. You have not lost her, not really. She will come back to you.”

“As Robb will come back to me?” Catelyn shakes her head. “I named her Arya for Ned’s grandmother. He never had much of an idea for names, and he was not there for her birth besides. Off on Pyke, fighting Ironborn. But she was all mine. Another girl. I was so pleased. I missed Lysa so. We’d been so close. I thought my own daughters could have that. Arya, I thought. A strong, Northern name for a girl with Ned’s look. Our… our only one with his look,” she trembles as if shivering from the cold. 

“She was always so dear to him. She reminded him of his sister. In ways Sansa or I never could. But I… perhaps I was never right for her. Not the mother she needed. Nor one she wanted. Sansa would sit in my lap and fall asleep while I brushed her hair. Arya would fight me all the way to the chair, then chew her nails or beg for a story about Queen Nymeria. What did I know of Nymeria of Rhoyne?” Her voice shakes again. “I should have told her more stories. The ones she wanted. I should have… I should have done more for her. Been more for her. I should have never let Ned take the girls south.”

“You have always loved her,” Nell says, standing up, and pulling Catelyn up with her. “She survived this long because she is your daughter. In spirit, not because of her family name or her appearance or anything else. She is your daughter, and she has your strength, and your wits, and your determination. I know you well enough to judge that, surely. You’ve never let anyone stop you from doing what you thought necessary, from speaking your mind, and neither has she. So you need to go to her, now. Do you- do you know how lucky you are?” And it feels terrible to say but she has to say it all the same. “Your daughter is right here. Right now. She might scream and stomp her feet or run from you, but she is still here. Mine... “

Catelyn’s warm hand finds her cold cheek. “Donella. I’m sorry.”

“Just go to her,” says Nell, flinching from the warmth. “Go. And tell her that you love her, whoever she has been or whoever she is now. You still have time.”

Catelyn goes, walking slowly at first, then breaking into a brisk stride, lifting her skirts and raising her chin, and Nell watches her auburn hair disappear between the tree trunks, then sits back down on the cold little bench, at least until Dana emerges over a small footbridge, and comes over to her. Nell stands up reflexively to embrace her, and they stay locked like that for a moment. Dana is here. That has to be enough for now. They have Riverrun and Arya and Dana is here. “Grey Wind is with her,” Dana tells her when they finally break apart. “I just saw them under the pines. He’s got his head in her lap.”

“Good,” says Nell hoarsely, rubbing at her eyes. “That’s… that’s good.” She swallows. “I should go. Robb will need my help with the maps or- or dealing with Karstark, or…”

Dana embraces her suddenly again, and Nell is even more loathe to let go a second time. “I miss her,” she says, her own voice trembling now. “I miss her so much it’s burning a hole in me, Dana.”

“We’re going to get her back,” Dana says into her hair. “Alright? I swear it. I will be there with you when we do, and Robb, and Catelyn, and Arya, and whoever else, I don’t care what we have to do. We will find her, and Marianne, and the rest, and we will stand like this in the godswood at Winterfell, and I’ll see you smile again, aye?”

“Alright,” Nell chokes out, and squeezes her tight. “Thank you.”

Dana does not reply, only makes a little choked noise, before she relinquishes her hold, and pushes her dark curls away from her flinty face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Technically not a lot really 'happened' in this chapter and I know people are anxious to see Nell and Risen!Robb interact more but I felt that I needed to establish the current situation at Riverrun firstly and also address the reunion between Catelyn and Arya. Future Nell chapters will of course go into more technical detail about who's dead, who's a prisoner, what the plan here is, etc. This felt appropriate for being a more introspective emotional break after the big battle we just had.
> 
> 2\. It's been about two weeks since they took back Riverrun. Nell is obviously relieved and grateful to no longer be a prisoner and to have sort of reunited at least part of Team Stark, but there is still a lot of trauma to unpack here. She feels a tremendous amount of guilt and seeing Catelyn reunite with her daughter while being separated from Lysara is not easy for her, even though she is thrilled to have Dana back. She is also increasingly aware that Robb is, well.... not himself. 
> 
> 3\. As I've mentioned before I do not necessarily include nightmares with the intention of them being taken as 'totally-accurate-100%-will-happen visions of the future' but there is of course meaning to the fears and anxieties of Nell's dream here. That of course being the combined hope of a happy future back at Winterfell with Lysara, and the continued terror of not only war and betrayal but of this Robb who she does not always recognize as the man she loves. Sorry for the impromptu cannibalism. 
> 
> 4\. Catelyn and Arya have a very complicated relationship and I didn't want to just ignore that here. Of course they love one another and of course all they both wanted was some sort of reunion, but the reality is often harder to accept. Arya has spent two years of her young life essentially pretending to be everyone *but* Arya Stark the highborn lady. And Catelyn is struggling to accept that she has Robb and Arya back, but neither how she remembers them. And of course this all sucks for Nell, who is struggling to balance wanting to comfort Catelyn and encourage her to try to rebuild things with Arya, while also hating that she is so far from her own child, and can't even lean on Robb in shared grief.
> 
> 5\. Next chapter is an all new POV who I hope everyone will come to enjoy as much as they have Nell, Beth, and Dana. I know it can be annoying to deal with a new narrator this late in the game but hopefully they will win everyone over in time because I've been eager to introduce them for a while now.


	58. Jorelle I

300 AC - THE QUIET ISLE

Jory is always back in the river when she falls asleep. At first she could not bear it, and would shake herself awake, moaning and crying and clawing at nets and reeds that did not exist, pushing away corpses that were no longer brushing up against her, but now she almost welcomes the lull of it. The thing about the river, after all, was that after the initial shock of being plunged into frigid water, and her frantic attempts to escape the current, and all the pain from colliding with rocks and branches as she was swept downstream, head over heels and back up again, surfacing with her lungs burning each time, fighting to scream but knowing she would never be heard over the roar of the bloated Green Fork- 

After all of that, once she was drifting in and out of consciousness on her back in the water, a limp bundle of flesh and bones drifting into the shallows in a gentler stretch of water, it was almost peaceful. Like being rocked to sleep. She doesn’t remember much of it- Jory hasn’t remembered much of anything until recently, because for what seemed like the first turn of the moon she was just another invalid in a bed, beset with chills and fevers, fighting off blood rot, tormented by the pounding in her head and the agony in her arms and legs and back- but she can recall snatches of what may or may not have happened. She remembers floating on her back, the sky now light with the midday sun above her, bumping against other dead bodies from men who’d either drowned or whose corpses had been pushed into the river. 

All around her was ragged clothing and ruined, rotting flesh and the constant movement of the birds, landing on one corpse to peck, then hopping gaily to another, but Jory had floated on in her own little world, vision blotted pink from the blood in her left eye, gazing up almost dreamily at the sky, not even recoiling when it clouded once more and fat rain drops landed on her face. She’d simply closed her eyes and gone back to the comforting dark hole of her mind. She has no idea how long she simply drifted until bumping into the makeshift dam of bodies, has no idea how long she laid there with all the dead, her pain deadened by the cold water around her, her lips steadily going blue, all the color leeched from her skin until she was white as snow-

And then an oar had prodded at her leg, and she must have moaned or twitched, because there’d been excited chatter and then something catching at her, a net of some kind, tangling in her hair, choking at her neck, and she’d almost come alive then, gasping and yelping like a wounded dog, until she was bodily hauled into a boat and staring blearily up at the faces above her. She doesn’t know their names or even remember what they looked like, but she owes those fishermen her life. At first she’d even resented them for it. She’d been so peaceful and content in the river with all the sleeping soldiers. Why would they take her from the water? She was a Mormont, a she-bear. She knew how to swim and fish and ford a stream. They had no right to drag her up in their net like they were Ironborn catching a salt wife. 

“Mermaid,” the little one had said. It must have been the fisherman’s youngest boy, maybe five or six. His warm little hand had tentatively brushed her hair aside to check for gill slits on the side of her neck. “It’s good luck to catch a mermaid.”

“She’s a wolf,” an older voice had said. “Bad luck to be caught with one of them. Push her back over, she’s already dying.”

Yes, Jory had thought, push me back over. I don’t want to be here, I want to go home. Push me out to sea and maybe I will wash up on Bear Island. I want to go home and see my sisters again. I want to race horses on the beach and dance in the pine grove. I want to watch my father shoe a horse and kiss him on his beard. 

“No,” said an even gruffer voice. “She’s still breathing. We’ll take her to the septry. Girl,” and a foot had nudged at her. “Who are your kin? You fight for House Stark?”

“She looks Northern,” one of the boys had said. “She’s a shieldmaiden. They let their women dress like men.”

“Only the she-bears,” the gruff voice had said. “Remember Hal said, how he saw the She-Bear and her daughter driving all the cattle in from the west? Mayhaps that was her.”

“It couldn’t have been,” someone argued, and then their voices had faded away. Others had come back a little later, when she was in another boat, bundled in a blanket and lying in a heap on the deck, then when she was in a cart, trundling along a road, and someone was forcing water down her throat, a cold, infuriating trickle, and then she was in another boat, vomiting into a puddle and sobbing from the throbbing pain in the back of her skull, and then…

And then all was quiet, so she must have been here. After growing up in raucous Mormont Hall, where someone was always shouting, children were always shrieking and playing, her sisters always laughing or bickering, Jory found the constant quiet both unsettling and appealing. But of course, mostly all she did was sleep in the beginning. Sleep, choke down gruel and water, and sleep some more. Sometimes a man prayed over her, and she wanted to tell him to stop, to get away, that the Seven did not will and order her life like some southern maid, that he should take her to a godswood. But there is no godswood here. The old gods do not call this place home. 

And his prayers were strange and irritating at first, but she came to like the steady rhythm of his voice, and she liked the crab stew and fresh bread he gave her when she was strong enough to sit up and hold a bowl even better. That reminded her of home, at least, and the man’s shaved head and square jaw reminded her of her father, even if he had no beard and dressed in shabby brown robes. He spoke to her softly always, as if tending to a small, frightened animal, and comforted her when she began to sob and sniffle, when she broke down like a child and wept for her mother and sister.

“I lost my footing,” she’d say, burying her face in the scratchy woolen blanket like a little girl anticipating some punishment. “I’m sorry, I lost my footing, I went over the edge, it was my fault, I tried- I tried to swim for the banks, but I couldn’t, it was too strong- I couldn’t make it- it’s my fault,” she’d heave and weep, racked with hoarse cries. “I failed.”

“You didn’t fail,” the man would say, patting her back with a large hand. “You didn’t fail, child. You fought honorably. You fought to defend a woman and her child. But you were just one young maid.”

“It was my duty,” Jory would grit out, “I swore I’d die in my queen’s defense, and I-,”

“You did die,” he’d tell her then, often. “Many men and women have died in that river, child. Some of them made it out of the water, most have not. I went into the water at the Trident. That man who entered the river is dead now. But I am still here. As are you. You must accept that. Your old oaths and vows cannot bind you any longer. In time, you will learn to forgive yourself for what you could not control.”

She didn’t believe him, and often she wanted to scream and strike him, but he tended to her wounds and shaved her head to properly stitch up the gashes there, and without fail he or one of his proctors brought her food every day, and changed her bedding and emptied her pot and when she could stand without trembling all over, the septon would take her by the arm and carefully lead her around outside like a newborn foal, letting her stand in the pale sunshine and learn to walk without immediately crumpling again. 

“What’s your name?” she’d asked him once, squinting up at his grizzled face. He had to be at least forty, and she was aware enough by then to realize that when he spoke of falling into the Trident, he must mean the Battle of the Trident, during the great war, Robert’s Rebellion. He must have been a southern knight. 

“You may call me Elder Brother,” he’d said calmly. “I gave up many things when I washed up here. My name and title among them.”

“I’ve never had a brother before,” Jory had said, smiling weakly up at him, and although he could have taken offense to her snide jape, he only smiled back. 

“The Elder Brother has healing hands,” Brother Narbert told her when it was his day of the week to break his vow of silence, as she limped along with him through the grove of gnarled apple trees. “You are not the first nor the last one he’s brought back from the very edge of death, my lady.”

“I owe him my life,” Jory had said grimly. 

“Our only debt here is to the Seven,” Narbert had shook his head. “Petty debts and grudges pale before their light.”

I don’t want to be indebted to the Seven, she might have said, but she did not. All the brothers here must have known she was from the North, could easily surmise she had never been anointed in the Faith, had never set foot inside a sept until Riverrun, and that was only for the weddings, when she was guarding the queen. Yet they never chastised or gave dirty looks- not that they could do much of the former, as the vast majority of them did not speak at all. But the Elder Brother and his proctors did not berate, scold, or threaten her into giving thanks to the Seven, nor did they drag her into a sept to kneel and pray. 

For the most part, once she was well enough to be left alone without fear she might taken a sudden turn for the worse, Jory’s life narrowed into a solitary stream of existence, only occasionally broken up by other people or mundane events. Time seemed to slow to a crawl on the Quiet Isle. If the days grew shorter and the nights ever colder, well, she did not pay it much mind. And there was always work to be done. On the cold, craggy eastern side of the isle, where a small collection of humble cottages nestles into the rocky hills and slopes, Jory wakes from the river, not for the first nor last time, and for a moment just lies on her rough straw pallet, staring at the perfect shaft of sunlight piercing through the smoke hole in the roof, and feeling the water wash away from her body. 

Being inside the cottage feels like living in a beehive, the patterns of the stones far more exacting than they have any right to be. When she was feverish they’d all swirl together into a series of dizzying spirals. The floor is dirt but so packed together she barely notices anymore. Jory has always been proud of her relatively humble origins; everyone in the North knows the Mormonts are old and respected but among the poorest of the greater houses. Mormont Hall has been derided as little more than a log hall more than once, but Jory always loved her trundle bed and the furs covering the glossy wooden floor. She loved the homely antlers over the mantle and the lack of regal silks or gilded archways. It was dark and dim and cramped in places, but it was home and she knew every inch of it.

She folds up her blankets on top of her furs, pulls on her heavy woolen cloak, washes her face from the simple basin, and takes some of the bread left for her as she pulls on her thick stockings and shoves her feet in her sturdy boots. On the Isle she always wears the same variation of a shapeless brownish grey sack of a dress, with a grass-stained smock tied around the waist. Jory spent most of her childhood in breeches and tunics, but she’s never minded dresses, even if they were usually reserved for feasts and celebrations. Her clothes now are ugly and plain, but it doesn’t matter; all the women given shelter on the isle dress the same, and without any looking glasses beyond pools of water there’s hardly any reason to fret over her looks.

Jory never counted herself as pretty as Dacey, anyways, and although she can’t really see herself, she can feel the bristly short cropped hair that barely reaches her ears, and she can feel the ropy scarring that coils down the back of her scalp and under her chin. She only stopped limping a month or so ago. Old pains creep up her arms and legs at night, and blinding headaches come and go every few weeks. She doesn’t feel as weak anymore, doesn’t feel crippled or useless or a soft-witted, soft-bellied child, but she doesn’t feel like herself, either. She’s not Lady Jorelle Mormont here, not respected or derided or anything, really. She’s just Jory, a maid of seven-and-ten, who works with her hands and tends to the brothers’ sheep. Her staff is propped up outside the low door of her cottage. 

Little Jocelyn Deddings has attached some shriveled wildflowers to it once again. Jocelyn’s parents, Lord and Lady Deddings, were killed and their keep ransacked and burned during the initial outbreak of the war. Some servants smuggled Jocelyn downriver to the Quiet Isle, passing her off as their niece. She is only ten and the last of her line, although you would not know it from speaking with her. Jocelyn is a happy, gregarious child, and can usually be found scaling a cliffside while one of the other women stands far below, shouting for her to come down this instant before she breaks her neck. 

Jory hefts the staff up in her grip, then peers beyond the clump of silent cottages to the wooden shrine to the Mother on the hillside, where the bowed, cloaked figure of Lady Whent can just barely be made out through the mist. Once Lady Shella was the ruler of all of Harrenhal, the very last of her kin. It was her daughter whose sixteenth name day was celebrated with the great Tourney where Rhaegar first laid eyes upon Lyanna. Now she is just another dispossessed old woman, with no living children, grandchildren, or nieces and nephews left to her. They say some railed against for her immediately yielding Harrenhal to the Lannisters when the war began, but what choice did she have? She came to the Isle because there was nowhere else for her to go, beyond King’s Landing to swear her fealty, something she’d likely rather have died than do. 

Now she prays every dawn and dusk. For what Jory is not sure. Lady Shella is still sound of mind and can walk, albeit very slowly, unaided, but she must be near seventy years old. Jory watches her for a few moments, that hunched figure before the shrine, before deciding against approaching her. She would not want anyone to disturb her prayer in a godswood, and it seems only decent to offer the same courtesy. The sky is streaking pale blue now; the others will be up and about soon, and while Jory generally enjoys their company, she doesn’t feel like getting caught up in the usual conversation and worries today. Two of the women here are very pregnant, and she knows someone will send Jocelyn to find her if anything should happen. 

Pulling her cloak tighter around her, Jory turns for the grassy brown hills instead, and the small barn on the slope below them. Brother Gillam will be wondering where she is, and the sheep will be hungry.

Shepherding on the Quiet Isle isn’t very gripping; there are no bears or wolves to worry about coming after the flock here, as the isle has no true woodlands- it isn’t nearly big enough for that. Jory has never seen a map of the place, but she can walk all around it in well under an hour’s time. She knows Bear Island is small, possessing just eight villages and only one port, but this is barely a true island, moreso a hunk of rocky land in the middle of the river that goes on to become the Trident. Most of the trees are not much taller than her, and there is no real danger here beyond turning one’s ankle in a hole, falling off one of the cliffsides and down onto the rocks below, or drowning in the mudflats. They are close enough that when the weather clears the mainland can easily be seen. They watched the Saltpans burning not so long ago. Jory had ducked her head and turned away like a child. Where once she spoke unflinchingly of honor and battle, now she’s like a skittish kitten. 

She hates herself for it, and although she has tried to take the Elder Brother’s words to heart, tried to accept that it was not her fault that Donella and Lysara and Lady Catelyn were captured or killed, tried to accept that she did what she could, that she simply stood no chance against so many men, part of her wishes she had never left Bear Island. She’s not worthy of any of this. Certainly not these grey, peaceful months here. At least if she’d died in the river she would have been remembered with something like fondness or respect. But she’s a craven. She should have set off for the Twins as soon as she could walk again, Freys and Lannisters and outlaws be damned. That’s what Mother or any of her sisters would have done.

But Mother’s off in the Neck with the crannogmen and Lyra, and Dacey’s either dead or captured, and Aly is back on Bear Island with Lyanna. And Jory is here, forgotten and weak and foolish, daydreaming about her happy childhood and tending to farm animals instead of finding a sword and shield and swimming for the shore. She was always such a strong swimmer. She must have learned when she was no more than three or four, in shallow water with her sisters passing her between them, laughing. But none of that mattered when she went into the river that night. Her clothes and armor, light as it was, weighed her down instantly. She seemingly collided with every branch and stone in the water. Within minutes she was clinging to consciousness, unable to even scream, simply being battered here and there like a cat with a mouse. 

She failed. She may be in some thankful she is alive, grateful she is not just another corpse damming up the river, but she failed. She swore to protect Donella Stark to her dying breath and she didn’t. She didn’t. Whatever has happened to her queen or the princess rests on her shoulders. News is scarce here. The Elder Brother does not often make announcements of the going-ons of war. All she has learned from him since she was brought here was that the Freys held Stark and Tully prisoners, that King Robb was dead, and that the Brotherhood roamed the land at will, harrying the Lannisters and Freys sieging Riverrun and the Blackfish. Jory has asked him more questions, was far more insistent and demanding at first, but arguing with the Elder Brother is like shouting at a stone. He is kind enough, but not one to be won over by anger or tears. She’s never even heard him raise his voice, and he speaks only when necessary as it is. 

Jory was never noted for being ‘quiet’, and this was difficult for her to countenance at first, the endless silence, even at mealtimes. It has been better since she fell in with the other women. No one is stopping them from speaking, at least, and often they take their meals out here at a long wooden table in the middle of the cottages. She does not even mind when the other women bow their heads in prayer before the meal. Sometimes she bows her head to, not to pray but out of respect for them. She likes their company. Aye, none of them have ever gone to war, but they have lived through it all the same, unwillingly. They know better than to ask questions about how she came to be here, just as no one questions little Jocelyn on the deaths of her parents, or old Shella on the fall of Harrenhal, or Yenna on who her child’s father is, or Morya on why she wails in her sleep at night, the sound echoing through the smoke hole. 

Jory sits on top of one more comfortable hillock and watches the sheep graze contentedly, watching the tide come in in the distance, and then as the day drags on go back out again. At some point Jocelyn comes by with some honeyed bread and a few sausages wrapped in a cloth, and Jory sits with the little girl and plays a clapping game with her and lets Jocelyn weave a crown of brown grass and place it on her close cropped hair. “What do you look like with your hair long?” she asks, pursing her little lips. 

“I don’t know,” Jory says honestly. “Better?”

“I think you still look pretty like this,” the little girl tells her kindly, then runs down to frighten the sheep. 

As the sun begins to set, Jory’s eyes start to ache, and she comes down from her hillock to rouse the sheep and guide them back to the barn, jangling the bell on her staff and shouting. She’s a much better shepherd than the brothers, mostly because they can’t break their silence, and sheep don’t respond well to pointing. She’s nearly to the barn, where Brother Gillam is holding the gate open for the sheep to filter in through the back, when something draws her gaze back to the mudflats, the figures hurrying to beat the tide. 

Jory stares, staff gripped loosely in her calloused hands, until the sheep begin to brush past her, jostling her. Brother Gillam is looking curiously at her. “People,” she says hoarsely, then a little louder, “People are coming onto the shore.” She looks back, squinting, and cannot deny the slight increase in her breathing when she just barely makes out the swords on two of the figures’ backs. “Knights… and a boy? And another man and a dog.”

Unbidden, she begins to move down towards the shore, and then when she gets a bit closer and really looks, stops where she is, rooted to the ground, and goes no further. Presently Brother Narbert comes bustling down to take the visitors up to meet the Elder Brother, and Jory beats a hasty retreat back into the long shadow of the barn, where, from a distance, she watches Brienne of Tarth, a young knight in a white surcoat, a skinny boy, and an old septon and a big shaggy dog, which keeps bounding ahead up the hill, wagging its great tail and barking happily, chasing gulls.

Jory stands there, a hand over her eyes, watching as they disappear up and out of her line of sight up the winding path to the Hermit Hole, and feels a sort of scab break off her heart, and all the hate and rage and grief come dripping out again in a steady torrent. She doesn’t bother going back to the cottages to stow her staff away; she steadily picks her way after them again, her journey uphill unimpeded, as the bells in the sept are ringing and most of the brothers are now going in for evening prayer before dinner. Jory’s pace quickens, even when her legs begin to burn, and she is breathless by the time she reaches the summit where the Elder Brother’s cave is located. Jory stops there, noting that Brienne and the old septon have gone inside to speak with the Elder Brother, but the knight and the boy are outside with the dog. The knight has sat down in the grass, his back to the dirt-and-rock wall, eyes half-closed as if he were napping, and the boy is crouched next to the dog, speaking to the animal in a hushed voice and patting his great thick mane of yellowish hair. 

Jory watches them from behind the ancient chestnut tree, wishing she had any hope of hearing the conversation inside the cave. But she can’t get closer without attracting the attention of the knight and the boy, who must be his squire, or the damn dog. Frustrated, she stays where she is, before deciding she might as well scale the tree and hope to overhear something when they come back out. It’s getting dark enough that the lack of leaves won’t be much of a hindrance. Jory easily clambers up onto the lowest branch, silent as a squirrel, pulls her staff up after her without so much as a rustle, and waits, crouched there for what seems like a long time.

Finally, Brienne and the septon emerge with the Elder Brother, who is amiably patting the old leathery septon on the back. He is even taller than the Brother, despite his obvious age. But Brienne still stands taller than both of them, and Jory watches her with a mixture of that same old envy, curiosity, and seething anger, although she notes the distraught, disappointed look on the young woman’s wide face. The other knight appears far less concerned about whatever they’ve come here for, instead inquiring where he can get some food, and why there’s a shepherd girl in a tree spying on them. 

Jory freezes. Brienne freezes. The boy looks around in confusion. The septon frowns. The dog barks. And the Elder Brother simply sighs and says, “Jorelle, I am very fond of this tree. Come down before it’s damaged any further.”

Jory vaults down to the ground with ease, almost proud of how there is only a twinge of pain from the action, and straightens, staff in hand. “You don’t look like a silent brother,” the young knight observes; from the light from the Elder Brother’s lantern she can make out his face; plain, tanned and weathered from years outdoors, crooked nose that was most certainly broken in combat or a simple brawl, scar across his cheek stopping at his left ear, hazel eyes like her mother, cleft chin, short- Brienne is taller than nearly everyone, but this man is short even for that, barely an inch or two taller than Jory herself. 

“I don’t think she is,” the boy says in a voice barely above a whisper; he’s older than Jory first thought, perhaps twelve or thirteen, with rumpled dark brown hair, big, almost frightened brown eyes, and a pallid, roundish face atop his skinny, short frame. A sty under one eye, too, which he keeps picking at.

“It was a jape, Pod,” the knight says in exasperation. “We’ll have to acquaint you with them.” 

“Jorelle… Jorelle Mormont?” Brienne looks much the same as when Jory last saw her at Riverrun, although her armor is obviously new, her shield is the yellow and white of an unfamiliar house, and her hair is longer than Jory recalls, falling nearly to her shoulders. She has a few new scars to boot, but- 

But none of that matters in the face of the fury that coils up in Jory like a snake, “Aye,” she spits out, “and I know you, Brienne of Tarth. Traitor. How could you? How dare you set foot here with- with Lannister coin in your pocket and on your back! What did the Kingslayer offer you?”

“Certainly not a knighthood,” the knight says under his breath, then widens his eyes innocently when the boy, Pod, gives him a little scowl of disapproval. 

The dog comes up to sniff and lick at Jory’s hand, oblivious to her palpable anger.

“Child,” says the Elder Brother, “will you not come break bread with us tonight? I’m sure Lady Brienne will be glad to tell you her tale-,”

“I don’t care!” Jory snaps. “You- you helped the Kingslayer escape!” she rounds on Brienne again, who continues to stare at her in shock, high spots of color in her cheeks, “you helped him evade capture, and then you- what, you brought him back to King’s Landing to collect your reward? How could you! How could- Lady Catelyn was mad with grief, but you swore yourself to House Stark-,”

“I swore myself to her service,” Brienne finally says, sounding almost hurt, as if she had the right, Jory thinks venomously, “not her son’s, or her gooddaughter’s. She chose to release him, and she put him into my care. I promised I would see him to the capitol in the hopes of restoring her daughters to her, and so I did. It was not an easy journey-,”

“Well, I don’t see Sansa or Arya Stark with you!” Jory retorts incredulously. “Why would you trust in a Lannister? Where is he? Riding off to war against the Starks again? Do you know- do you know what they did, his kin? They bought the Freys out from under us, and then they- they-,” she chokes up without warning, and flushes in mortification.

“They killed them all,” says the knight, as if impatient. “Yes. The story’s made the rounds… my lady.” The last bit sounds doubtful. 

“Shut up,” Jory snaps, and he blinks languidly again, before raising a hand in surrender.

“As you wish.”

“They did not kill them all,” the unknown septon begins kindly. “Why, there is word circulating even now that Catelyn Tully and the Young Wolf’s wife yet live-,”

The Elder Brother sighs slightly.

“Jorelle,” Brienne says flatly, “the Starks are not all lost. There’s been another battle at Riverrun. Rumors are spreading that the Blackfish and Harry Karstark took it back from the Lannisters. That Donella Bolton rules from there again, with Lady Catelyn and other northern lords. They are saying Addam Marbrand and Daven Lannister may both be dead.”

“They’re saying Robb Stark’s ghost led the charge with his direwolf,” says the sarcastic knight, “but knowing the rumors, perchance it was just a particularly gaunt Karstark and an overgrown sheepdog.”

Jory stands there, frozen again for a moment, before she spits out, “Then at least you’ll face some justice!”

Brienne of Tarth’s eyes are deep blue and tremendously sorrowful in her young face. “I mean to make my own justice,” she says, “and deliver Sansa Stark back to her kin, or die in the attempt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Road trip! Road trip! Road trip! Happy Valentine's Day!
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Jory is (clearly) pretty out of the loop since she was brought to the Quiet Isle. She is only just now hearing about any attempts to free Nell and Cat and the retaking of Riverrun. For clarity, this chapter takes place about a week after Nell's last chapter, so about three weeks after all the drama. If the Elder Brother could (it is heavily speculated) manage to heal Sandor from the brink of death in canon, I think he could probably manage a badly wounded Jory just fine. I also liked this opportunity to bring Shella Whent back onto the scene, if only on the very outskirts of it, because it's nicer for me to think of this lady having found sanctuary on the Quiet Isle than being dead or imprisoned somewhere. 
> 
> 2\. I do not currently have my copies of A Feast For Crows and A Dance with Dragons with me, so I apologize if any details are inaccurate in terms of setting or if people's speech patterns sound off. It's difficult to gauge much about say, Hyle or Pod's mannerisms from the wiki alone. Some people guessed (or were hopeful) that the new POV would be Sansa. Well, it's not Sansa, but without spoiling anything I can tell you we will be seeing Sansa through this POV soon, so it's uh.... Sansa-adjacent? I needed a way to bring Brienne back into the narrative while also incorporating Jory, and to also loop into Sansa's canon plotline without just suddenly switching gears and dropping us all in the Vale. (I also really don't want to just rewrite the Sansa/'Alayne' chapters from A Feast For Crows or her released chapter from The Winds of Winter.) So yeah, road trip. 
> 
> 3\. Looking up character info and double checking my notes it again becomes glaringly clear just how young everyone is, which even I sometimes forget. Brienne is only around 20 years old, Hyle about 20 himself (or thereabouts). Jory is just 17, and Pod is only 13-ish. Babies everywhere, haha. Also the fact that we do not know the canonical fate of Dog (Septon Meribald's, the unidentified septon Jory sees with Brienne and co's dog) hurts me deeply. I promise nothing bad will ever happen to Dog in this fic. 
> 
> 4\. Jory's sort of in a bit of a depressive state this chapter, at least until she comes alive with fury when she sights Brienne, who is temporarily a convenient scapegoat for all her pain and self-loathing. Jory feels horrible about 'failing' in her duty to protect Nell and Lysara, even though she was very much outnumbered and outgunned. She goes between wishing she was a child at home again, to wishing she'd died 'nobly' in battle, to wishing she could just forget it all and stay on the Isle forever. So she's in this odd sort of limo state, wondering if she should set off on an honorable but doomed quest to launch a one-woman rescue mission at the Twins, wondering if there's any way for her to ever get back to Bear Island, and then... bam, after all these months of being so removed from everything, Brienne wanders onto the scene, clearly with some armor and weapons upgrades courtesy of House Lannister, and she is the perfect target and trigger for Jory's explosion. 
> 
> 5\. Some timeline stuff- basically, next chapter will also be a Jory POV as well due to some events/info I need to show through her eyes (especially because she is now around Brienne and Hyle, who were literally just at Maidenpool with Randyll Tarly) before we can jump back to Nell and get the run-down on Riverrun. Then I promise we will be back to Nell, hopefully lots of interesting stuff will happen, and the plot will keep chugging along. For anyone interested- around this time in this fic's timeline which is really not that far removed from the canonical timeline- elsewhere in the world, Cersei has let the Faith rearm themselves, Jorah has kidnapped Tyrion, Davos is dealing with a certain Northern family who love mermaids, and Jon Connington is dealing with the Golden Company. So that's just about where we are timeline-wise- we're not so very far removed from being completely caught up to say, the ends of AFFC and ADWD!


	59. Jorelle II

300 AC - THE QUIET ISLE

Jory is practicing her knife throwing when Brienne of Tarth finds her after dinner. The brothers of the Quiet Isle don’t forge or keep weapons; anything metal that washes up on the isle is promptly melted down in the forge to make new tools or other necessities. So Jory does not even have a throwing knife to hurl at the dead oak tree behind her small cottage; what she does have is a ‘borrowed’ carving knife from Brother Rawney, who assumed she wanted it to make some figurines out of wood. Brother Rawney is an excellent carver; usually he just makes figures of the Seven, but he also made little Jocelyn Deddings a wooden princess and knight to play with, right down to the tiny expressions on their miniature faces. 

Now Jory feels a brief stab of guilt as she turns the knife over in her hand, but it dissipates as she sucks in a breath, adjusts her stance, and launches it at the withered old trunk. Her arm burns, but not terribly, and she feels a rush of satisfaction as the blade collides solidly with the deadwood and sinks in almost up to the hilt. The last time she threw a blade was that knight. She remembers pulling it out of her boot as she stood up in the stirrups, and she remembers the thunk it made when it collided with the bone of a Frey’s shoulder blade. He’d screamed and twisted in agony in the saddle, and she had smiled grimly and spurred her horse on past him, so certain, if only for that instant, that she was young and invincible and powerful, and she was a she-bear, a Mormont, and she’d kill half a hundred men before they so much as laid a finger on her.

She stands there, breathing hard, staring at the knife in the trunk, and is about to move to retrieve it when she hears footsteps behind her. Brienne of Tarth may be remarkably light on her feet for a woman of her size in heavy armor, but there’s no lightfoot like a Mormont, as Jory’s mother would say, and none have as good hearing as they do, either. Jory turns immediately, and out of years of habit her right hand goes to a sword that is no longer there at her belt, that has not been there for months and months. She flushes, although she’s not sure if Brienne even noticed her mistake, and stiffens, folding her arms across her chest. Angry and spiteful as she is, she does know that Brienne likely means her no harm, so she’s not worried about being attacked or ambushed. At least the others aren’t with her; just the sight of a knight like Hyle Hunt, however young or unassuming to look at, might throw the other women into a panic. 

Brienne says nothing for a moment, before asking in a raw voice that sounds as though she’s been weeping, “May I speak with you, my lady?”

“Enough,” Jory says irritably. “What would you have us do? Go ‘my lady’ this, ‘my lady’ that? I’m a lady. You’re a lady. You may be a turncloak but we are still equals, Brienne.” She wishes it didn’t hurt to say her name. How she had admired her! Looked up to her, even! As awkward and uncomfortable and guarded as Brienne could be, at least she had seen action, been in battle before! She’d competed in tourney melees, had ridden as part of a great host of warriors, even if they were southern, hadn’t been constrained to guard duty as Jory had. Brienne of Tarth was alone, aye, but it had seemed to Jory back then that there was some freedom in it. She had no fierce mother’s expectations to live up to, no competitive elder sisters whose shadow she had to avoid… In some sense Jory had almost been envious of her. Brienne was often alone when she was not at Lady Catelyn’s side, but it was also she and she alone who would shape her legacy. No one determined anything for her, no one coddled or patronized her. 

“We are,” says Brienne, although she sounds slightly doubtful of that. She looks around the darkening evening, the rolling hills behind them, the distant crashing of waves and crying of birds. “Should we go inside?”

Jory hesitates, then nods curtly. “Fine.” She retrieves the knife, leads Brienne around the hut and inside, where a small fire is crackling in the hearth. Jory stokes it up impatiently with a poker, then sits down on her straw-and-fur bedroll, lifting the skirt of her dress so she can cross her legs comfortably beneath her. Brienne glances around, then takes a seat at the small table. She practically dwarfs the diminutive wooden chair beneath her. Gods, Jory wishes she had that sort of height or build. Brienne is not just ‘strong for a woman’. She is strong, period. Her Seven blessed her with that, at least, even if they neglected to give her beauty along with it. But beauty is worth next to nothing in a fight.

Brienne says nothing for a moment, shifting in her seat, and then Jory blurts out, “Why did you do it, then? I thought- they said he must have offered you coin, but- you never seemed the sort to value that over your honor.” She exhales. “You told me once you promised yourself to Lady Stark’s service because you thought her cause was a worthy one, that you could be honorable and serve under her-,”

“I did,” Brienne snaps, her face shadowed by the dim lighting of the cottage. “I- I am. I never left her service. I swore to her I would return her daughters to her, and… and that’s what I mean to do. But it was not- it’s not as you think, Jorelle- Jory. I didn’t… I never intended to sympathize with Ser Jaime- I loathed him!” She reddens slightly, and she’s pale enough that Jory can see it from here, “I… perhaps part of me still does. He’s an easy man to loathe. And a hard one to trust. But… but I do trust him.”

“You trust him?” Jory snorts. “Have you gone mad?”

“Listen to me,” Brienne says fiercely. “I- he has done terrible things, it’s true. Things I cannot excuse. He can be cruel, and… and vindictive, and gods know he’s arrogant. But the man I left in King’s Landing was not the same man who Lady Catelyn set free at Riverrun. He has changed. He can change. When we were captured by the Brave Companions-,”

Jory blanches. “You were captured by outlaws?” She’s heard more than enough of the Bloody Mummers and their ilk. They act more like animals then men, if half the tales are true, and even then- a bear will savage you and eat you warm, aye, but it won’t laugh while it butchers your children, nor will it burn your farm or torture your kin. “How- how did you escape? What happened?”

Brienne swallows. “They brought us to Harrenhal, to Lord Bolton.”

Jory stops breathing for an instant, and feels an icy chill blossom at the small of her back. She will never admit to being terrified of anyone, but she knows in her bones that Bolton orchestrated the whole thing at the Twins, and she knows… she knows if he is still out there, be he in the Riverlands or the North, some part of her cannot rest until he is dead. If Dacey is dead or brutalized because of his treachery… Mother will rip his heart out of his chest and eat it. But only if Jory doesn’t get to him first. Bolton is no Jaime Lannister, no renowned fighter. Jory knows she could kill him. She could.

“But first they- they cut off his hand,” Brienne says, and Jory is shocked by the raw pain in her voice, as if she were recounting her own tragedy, and not the Kingslayer’s. What should she care if the brute lost a hand? Jory is glad. But there is something hollow to the gladness all the same. He deserves to die for what he’s done. Maiming and mutilation… that’s all just distraction. 

Mother’s always professed to never see much of the point in torture. “Men will say anything to stop the pain,” she always said. “That doesn’t mean it’s true. You’d get more out of most of them with a warm drink and a seat by the fire. Then you can gut the bastard while he’s lulling off to sleep. None of this nonsense messing about with thumbscrews and whips and chains. Most men are like dogs. They want to eat, and rut, and please you, so long as you know when to keep a soft tongue and when to kick.”

“His sword hand,” Brienne continues, “and… I’ll not deny he deserves to face justice for his crimes, but there was no justice in that, just… I hated them. I’ve hated men before, but never like that. I think I almost hated them for him, for he was… he was gone with fever and madness much of the time after that. He could barely eat or sleep, and he cried like a child in his sleep. Think me soft-hearted if you like, but I… I tried my best to console him, to keep him alive.”

“I would have let him die,” Jory says, although she is unconvinced. She tries to imagine being a captive of the Bloody Mummers, and it almost gives her a violent jolt. She’s lucky in many senses, but above all, she knows she is lucky she was found by those fishermen, and not men with far uglier intentions, be they soldiers or common bandits. They might have tried to keep her alive for a little while, but it would not have been out of the goodness of their hearts. It would have been so they could use her body a little longer, before they gutted her and tossed her back in the river to float away.

“He saved me,” Brienne replies, and seeing the look on Jory’s face, adds, “twice. From… from rape, from the Mummers, he- he lied and told them Tarth was wealthy, that they’d get a better ransom if I was unharmed.”

“They still hurt you.” There may be no obvious signs of it, but Jory can tell from her body language. They may not have raped her, but they likely beat her, groped at her, did all sorts of things men do to convince themselves of their own power. She’s seen semblances of it before. Dacey once told her the things men screamed at her when they realized they were fighting a woman, the vile threats they made. Aye, you could argue men regularly jeered at and threatened other men in battle, and so they did, but not like that. They weren’t as angry as they were when they were fighting a woman, especially when they thought the woman stood a chance of hurting them. 

“They did,” Brienne closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them. “But not as badly as they could have, had he not intervened. He had no reason to. I’m sure he still hated me even then. But he did. And then… when Lord Bolton let him go, but kept me back, and Vargo Hoat threw me in the pit, with… with the bear, he came back for me.”

Jory stares. “What?”

“He came back for me,” Brienne says almost fervently. “I- I still don’t know why. He said he… he said he dreamed of me, but that was- just one of his japes, he had no reason to… I don’t know why he did that.”

“They threw you in a pit with a bear?” Jory is heated with rage on behalf of Brienne towards men who are likely long dead. 

“With a tourney sword,” Brienne admits. “I knew I was like to die, but I meant to fight it out, not let them see me weep or despair, and then- he came back. He jumped down into the pit to save me. And then he brought me to King’s Landing with him, and… He defended me from accusations of murder, he told me to find Sansa Stark, for she’d disappeared by then, and he… he gave me this. Oathkeeper.” She tentatively touches the sword at her back, then draws it.

It’s a beautiful blade. Jory feels a strange lump in her throat just looking at it. Valyrian steel, pure and gleaming in the firelight, rippling silvery grey and red, and a snarling lion at the hilt. “House Lannister lost its Valyrian steel long ago,” she recalls.

“This was once part of Ice,” Brienne says quietly, and Jory inhales.

“Ice?” Her hand hovers over the blade. “They… they melted down Ice? Ned Stark’s blade? House Stark’s….” Ice was over four hundred years old. It was not just a weapon, it was a relic, a shining example of a bygone era. The old gods have no holy artefacts, but if they could have made a blade divine, blessed the way the Seven are said to bless things… Ice would have been it. Ice stood taller than her, and shone dark as the night sky in snowshine and sunlight. It was not just a pretty sword. It fought a thousand battles and half a hundred wars. The idea of even… renaming it to some Lannister nonsense would be one thing. That she could understand. But to melt it down, spellforged steel, and then to reduce it to… to…

“Lord Tywin gave it to Ser Jaime before his death,” Brienne says, “but he gave the blade to me instead, so that I might see Sansa Stark to safety with her father’s own steel.”

“Tywin Lannister is dead,” Jory says. Even that could not be hidden from the inhabitants of the isle. “And his bastard grandson.” She cannot keep the venom from her words, but- “The Kingslayer gave it to you?”

“Yes,” Brienne nods tightly. “He… I can’t answer truly as to why he might have, except that he desired to honor his pledge to Lady Catelyn, that he would return her daughters to her. I know he did not do it at the queen’s bidding, or his father’s. He… he seemed genuine.”

‘Genuine’ and ‘Lannister’ are not two words Jory has ever associated before, but she does not think Brienne is lying, either. Why would she? She has no reason to make up this sort of tale when she could easily come up with a much simpler and more convincing story. She sighs, brings her knees up under her chin. Brienne sheathes Oathkeeper, then glances into the fire. “I understand if you consider me to have betrayed House Stark and Lady Catelyn,” she says after a long moment. “I can’t pretend I would not have thought the same thing, in your position. But I have not lied. I mean to find Sansa, and return her to her mother and whatever kin she has left. The Lannisters have sold an imposter to the Starks- some poor girl they captured-,”

Jory frowns, thinking, her brow creased. “...Jeyne Poole? Vayon Poole was their steward, he went south with Lord Stark…”

Brienne shrugs. “I can’t say. They were sending her north with a man called Steelshanks.”

Jory viscerally recoils. “He’s Bolton’s man through and through. I’ll kill him if I ever see him,” she says flatly. “And all his men.” When the fire in her cheeks fades, she looks directly at Brienne. “You’re not a traitor. I- I shouldn’t have spoken so to you, Brienne. I don’t- I don’t know what I would have done, had it been me, and I will never speak well of any son of Lannister, but… I believe you,” she swallows. “I think you mean well, that you want to save Sansa, not harm her.”

“I do,” Brienne leans forward slightly, earnest in an almost girlish sense. “Truly. There are others seeking her out as well- sellswords and hedge knights. If they find her, they will bring her back to Cersei, and the queen wants her dead for Joffrey’s poisoning. I only came here because I’d heard rumors that Sandor Clegane had one of the Stark girls, and he was said to have raided in the Saltpans…”

“There was a raid,” Jory shakes her head, “and they say it was the Hound, but- if he did have Sansa or Arya, surely he would have tried to ransom them back as soon as he could instead of dragging them through farmlands.”

“The Elder Brother told me Clegane never held Sansa. That he had Arya instead, but there’s been no news of either of them for months on end, only that the Brotherhood was on their trail. He’s not convinced it’s the same man who was raiding in the Saltpans.”

“If he had Arya, he would have tried to bring her to Riverrun. If Riverrun was taken at the time, mayhaps Seagard,” Jory shrugs helplessly. “But Sansa should be easier to find. She’s got that ruddy hair, and she’s older- a girl Arya’s age could pretend to be anyone. Sansa was always proper and sweet.”

“She was last seen at Joffrey and Margaery’s wedding,” Brienne frowns. “With the Imp, her… husband. But she was gone by the time he’d been arrested.”

“Any lord could have arranged to secret her out of the city,” Jory wishes desperately that she had a map before her. “She could be anywhere- Dorne, or the Reach, or the Vale…”

“I don’t think she’s in the Crownlands,” Brienne points out. “It’s too close to the capitol by far. And the Tyrells are still in bed with the Lannisters,” her tone darkens, and Jory supposes she still holds a grudge for them turning so swiftly after Renly Baratheon’s death. “If she is in Dorne… The Lannisters are desperate to keep the Martells from allying with anyone else.”

“We stand little and less chance of tracking her in Dorne,” Jory rubs at her face, ignoring Brienne’s mouthed ‘we?’. “We’ve no connections there, and they’ve no love for Stormlanders or Northerners. If the Starks are back on their feet in the Riverlands, anyone who had her might be trying to ransom her back to them- or turn her over to Randyll Tarly.” She scowls. “Who does that knight of yours serve?”

“Ser Hyle is not mine,” Brienne says sourly. “He was in service to Lord Randyll, but he left to join me on my search. I’ve little intention of letting him. If I could leave him off at the next town, I would.”

“Do you think he would sell you out to Tarly, if you find her?”

“I don’t know,” Brienne glowers. “But I’ve ample reason not to trust him, no matter how pretty his words.” 

Jory wonders how she could be won over by Jaime Lannister, but supposes he’s a smoother tongue on him than an insignificant hedge knight from the Reach. “Then we’ll deal with that when we find her. I think we ought to try the Vale. Lysa Arryn is dead, but House Stark still has connections there. The Royces, the Waynwoods- we could appeal to them for help, surely. And House Redfort wed into the Boltons- they might feel they’ve a duty to assist Donella Bolton’s good sister.”

Brienne frowns. “You think Sansa could be in the Vale?”

“It’s as good a wager as any,” Jory retorts. “And at least we might get some answers. It’ll be winter soon, the Elder Brother says. In several moons’ time you might be snowed in with nowhere to go and no hope of ever reaching her.”

“Lord Baelish wed Lady Lysa before she died,” Brienne recounts, standing with a tired groan. “They say he rules there now, in her son’s name.”

“Another Lannister craven,” Jory shrugs, as if it were no matter, although truly she knows next to nothing of the man beyond him being called Littlefinger and purportedly good with coin. “We’ll keep out of sight as much we can, and try to appeal directly to one of the houses under him. She stands as well, feeling strangely energized by this discussion, as if she could just go charging out into the night dressed like a shepherdess. Perhaps there is some hope after all. If she can help return Sansa Stark to her family, restore a princess to her kingdom, then surely they’d speak of her as someone noble, worthy, not just an embarrassment or a one-note tragedy that ended at the Twins. Mayhaps the crawling sensation of shame will lessen some.

“But what about the King- Ser Jaime and Lord Randyll? What do they mean to do about the Starks now that they’ve reclaimed Riverrun?” she amends, noting Brienne’s pained expression. Gods, she really does care for him, doesn’t she? Of course they always said he was so handsome, but Jory can only recall the grimy, flea-ridden man held prisoner at Riverrun, his famed blonde locks gone lank with grease, grinning at her in the moonlight during his escape attempt. She felt no allure then, only a sharp, piercing fear, because she knew he would kill her, knew she was no match for him. She’d consoled herself afterwards with the thought that men as strong and skilled as Jaime Lannister were few and far between.

And then she was undone by a few runty Freys. She flushes again. Mother would be aghast. 

Randyll Tarly, Hyle Hunt gladly informs her the next morn, is very reluctant to leave Maidenpool, which he’s had a comfortable position at for months now since the Battle of Duskendale, but will dutifully rouse himself in due time at Jaime Lannister’s insistence. Lannister holds Harrenhal with Brax, and the Freys still control Darry. Jory would be concerned about being caught out on the road by any one of those three groups, only Brienne professes to have a letter penned by the Kingslayer claiming she goes about the King’s business and thus has House Lannister’s blessing to go where she likes. 

Jory doesn’t know if notes of passage are worth all that much anymore, but she will admit that by traveling with this group, she’s like to be a good deal safer than she would be striking off alone for Riverrun. And Brienne does not advise her against accompanying her to the Vale, suggest she remain on the Isle, or advise her to try to make for Raventree or some other river lord stronghold loyal to the Starks. Perhaps she believes Jory will face enough of that from the Elder Brother, who she admits has already told her to return to Tarth, to lay down her weapons and be done with war, not because she is a woman but because she is young and already so tired and broken by it.

He takes much the same tact with Jory, who stubbornly wears on him until he gives her tunic and breeches to wear once more, and a thin mail shirt that once belonged to one of the younger brothers who joined their order as a former squire. Jory faces him once more feeling both like more herself than she has ain a very long time and strangely guilty to. She owes this man her life, and he has been nothing but kind and generous with her, has demanded nothing in return, has tolerated her illness and injury and dark moods, has only ever wanted her to be safe and, if not happy here, at least content with her new lot in life.

He looks at her now and she sees for a moment not the Brother but the man he was before all this, a man who went to war for his king and who suffered terribly for it, a man who might have hoped to someday wed and have children of his own, a family gathered around him by a hearth. Jory isn’t blind. Most people long for family, for family is all they have. The men who see themselves as lone objects in the world are few and far between. Most believe they are branches on a tree that will keep growing long after they are gone. Jory believes that. Even if she never has children of her, she still means something because she is part of a greater whole. A she-bear of the island. That’s who she is. She’s never been ‘just Jory’.

And the brothers here, and the women… they are his family. Even the animals and trees and the stones on the beach. The Isle is the Elder Brother’s home, and these are his people, even if he does not rule as a lord does, or lead a clan. “You should not go,” he says, shaking his head. “You have been away from war for a long time, Jorelle. You are not ready to return to it. You are too young to keep on like this.”

“I can’t stay here,” she says, rooting her fists in the worn tunic, adjusting the fur-lining of her winter cloak. “You know I can’t. I have people waiting for me.”

“So did I, once.”

“I’m grateful to you,” Jory steps forward to him, has to to truly stare up at his grizzled old face. “Truly. You saved my life- and- and my spirits, too. You kept me from… from giving in. It’s because of that. I’m stronger now. And my heart’s hardier than it was before,” she puts a hand earnestly on her chest. “I know you think I’m young, and weak-,”

“You are not weak,” he says. “You are seven-and-ten. Let yourself be a child a little longer. Winter is coming. There won’t be many children left then. You can seek out your kin in the spring.”

“I’ll be an old woman come spring,” she laughs ruefully, and she sees the sadness in his shrew dark eyes. 

“You would be alive come spring,” he says. “But I will not keep you here against your will. The Maid of Tarth has a good heart and a strong sword-arm. I pray it will be enough. The world is growing darker by the day.”

“I know,” she says, and then she puts her slight hand on his veiny red one. It’s rough and warm. It reminds her of her father’s. “I will come back south when it’s summer again, and visit you and the other brothers. And I’ll bring as much gold as I can, for the order.”

“We don’t seek coin,” he says with an almost dry edge. “The best rewards are in the next life, not this one.”

“But you could use it,” she replies with a small smile. “You could buy more books,” she gestures to his shelves with a hand, “Thank you. You took someone in who doesn’t worship your gods, and you healed her, and you asked nothing in return, not even my faith There are northmen who would not do half as much for a southerner as you have done for me.”

“There are good men everywhere,” he says after a moment. “I pray you meet the best of them, and not the worst.” 

Brother Rawney, to her shock, gifts her a wooden shield before she leaves. It’s simply crafted and small, the perfect size for her, but strong. Jory is almost overcome then, and embraces him around the neck as though he were her real brother. He pats her back silently. As for her sword… Shella Whent comes to her as she is sweeping out her cottage for the last time, holding Jocelyn Dedding’s hand, with something bundled under the other arm. 

Jory smiles to see them, but it vanishes when Lady Shella unwraps the bundle. “Jocelyn found it washed up with the tide,” she says. “We thought it might serve you well, dear girl.”

The sword is fine. Not as nice as the one Jory had before, the one her father forged for her before she went, which he sacrificed for in the godswood and prayed would guard her faithfully in the wars to come, but as nice as one might expect a sword from the river waters to be. It’s not rusted or warped, and it has a good weight to it- she can wield it with one arm, although she can tell she will have to practice constantly, so her muscles might be used to it again. 

“Thank you,” she says hoarsely. “Be safe, please.”

“Pod says you’re going to rescue a princess,” Jocelyn chirps, before she looks crestfallen. “I wish they’d let the dog stay here, but the septon’s taking it with him.”

“There’ll be other dogs,” Jory says, but she kisses the girl on her head and the old woman on her cheek. “Look after the brothers, won’t you? And the sheep, and the bees, and… and if your lands are not restored to you in the winter, I will come back and fight for you, too.”

“My lands are lost to all but the damned,” says Lady Shella, and it would be funny except Jory absolutely, chillingly believes the look in her watery blue eyes. Harrenhal is no home she expects to return to. Perhaps she is almost glad to be rid of it at last. 

“Will you come help me claim mine?” Jocelyn appears delighted by the thought. “We could hang the western lord they gave it to. I’d like that.”

“I don’t see why not,” Jory says, and straps the sword to her belt and the shield to her back and refuses to look back at the gathered group of them, watching as she scrambles down to the shore.

“It’s about time,” Hyle Hunt says dryly as she approaches, kicking up loose sand. “Thought you might have decided you’d rather guard sheep against stray wolves.”

Jory is tempted to kick some sand in his smug face, but decides against it, as he seems the type to be encouraged to speak more the more often he’s given a response. She turns to Pod instead. “Will you spar with me, when we make camp tonight?” He’s clearly not had a growth spurt yet, but he’s not so diminutive that he wouldn’t stand a chance. 

He stares at her, wide-eyed, then glances at Brienne as though she were his mother. Brienne gives a tiny nod. 

“Yes, my lady,” he says in a voice squeaking with youth.

Jory claps him on the shoulder. “Jory.”

“But you are a woman?” Hyle inquires. “I just thought I’d make sure, before-,”

“Before I break that nose of yours for you again?” Jory replies without batting an eye. This, at least, she is used to. She rode south with northmen, who were never known for their restraint. She’s heard every comment, flirt, and insult possible under the sun, even if much of it was said behind her back. “Keep it up, Ser, and it’ll be a long winter of breathing through your mouth. You oughtn’t to mind, though, seeing how much you like to use it.”

Septon Meribald blinks. Dog barks happily, nuzzling at her legs. Brienne sighs, and gestures towards the mudflats. “Can we be off? Before the tide comes back in?”

“This is why I had to be sure,” Hyle Hunt is saying to no one in particular, as Jory strides ahead after Brienne and the shockingly spry old septon, “for if you were a man, I’d have to knock loose a few teeth for a comment like that, but seeing as you are a woman, I’ll content myself with the knowledge that you’ve spent time dwelling on my face.”

Dog, seeing their pace quicken, barks again, and races off ahead, paws flashing over the sand and silt and mud. Jory glances back once, watching the isle begin to recede behind her, and feels a pang of loss. She wonders if the Elder Brother is watching them go from the high peak atop his cave. Then she turns back towards the pale winter sun bathing them on the horizon, far out to sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this probably felt like just filler, but I felt that I should establish Jory joining Brienne's little party and also do some background set-up for the fact that Jaime's out there seeking reinforcements from Maidenpool, presumably to try to put down the river lords one last time.
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Next chapter we'll be back to Nell. I'm going camping this weekend and leaving Friday so we might hear from Nell next Tuesday instead. If I can get an update out early Friday before I go, I will.
> 
> 2\. Our time in the Riverlands is quickly coming to an end, something I am very relieved about, and I'm sure most of you are too. At this point in a fic you begin to understand the allure of time skips. Anyways, things are being set up for what seems like one final clash (as the winter weather is approaching) between north/rivermen and Lannister-Tarly forces (and we all know Jaime-Risen!Robb-Randyll is not the ideal combo for deescalating things peaceably) 
> 
> 3\. I wanted to sort of work through Jory's reasons for joining Team Oathkeeper. In the end she mostly feels that she can redeem herself through this and that she might be a valuable in as a Northerner who is at least aware of much of House Stark's history and political/social ties in the Vale. 
> 
> 4\. When you try to type up an abridged version, the Jaime and Brienne saga sounds fucking crazy, as it turns out! I also thought it'd be good for Brienne to finally have some center-stage solidarity with another female warrior. 
> 
> 5\. 'Is it possible to physically beat respect for women into Hyle Hunt?' Who knows, but an effort might be made!


	60. Donella XLIV

300 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell has very little appetite on a night like this, but she finds herself sitting down at table anyways, her posture stiff and rigid, one hand clenched around her cup of wine as she listens to the waters lap around the castle and the wind pick up to a keening howl outside. The windows are beginning to be covered in frost most mornings now, and the ground of the godswood and gardens is solid and frigid. There’s been no raven from the Citadel yet, but reports of snow flurrying up and down the coast at Seagard, so it is only a matter of time before the winter weather truly arrives.

By all rights she should be, if not joyous and reveling in her newfound freedom and restored position as Queen, at least satisfied. The Lannisters have been forced to rethink their entire strategy in the Riverlands once again. The remaining river and northmen have pulled off a seemingly impossible victory; they hold Riverrun once more, and the lords and ladies of the Riverlands have united behind House Stark and House Tully once more. Robb Stark, Brynden Tully, Tytos Blackwood, Jason Mallister, Harrion Karstark and Daryn Hornwood, Clement Piper and Hendry Bracken and both Vance branches- only House Frey, the minor families sworn directly to them, and the Mootons held prisoner in their own keep at Maidenpool remain out of their reach. If this is a desperate last stand, at least it has thus far been a united one. 

But she is not content nor satisfied, of course, because they are still pinioned here. Within the next few weeks they expect to see some sort of battle against Jaime Lannister, Randyll Tarly, and their combined forces. Estimates vary, but Nell has reason to believe they should see at least eight thousand men striking against them from Harrenhal, Darry, and Maidenpool, carving up the River Road once again. There is little their own forces can do. She may not trust Harry Karstark, but he had the right of it when he noted that they could not afford to divvy up their men again. Holding Riverrun and keeping a united defense is all that matter. The Riverlands aren’t geographically suited to any other plan. If they try to spread out too far and too thin they will be consumed one by one again. Holding keeps such as Raventree means nothing if they lose Riverrun again. 

She wants to go north. She has to go north. But they cannot go north until they face what is coming from the south. Everything will have been for nothing if they leave the rivermen to their ragged struggle alone. There’s been no word out of the North, but they have every reason to suspect that her father’s forces have likely finally broken free of the Neck and are past Moat Cailin by now. Had they failed, had they all been slaughtered during some surprise attack by the crannogmen or the Fingerflints, they would have heard by now. It means nothing to the majority of the remaining northern lords and ladies whether or not there are Starks in Riverrun who still mean to clash blades with Lannisters. 

It means everything that there are no Starks in Winterfell. It means they could proclaim far and wide that her father speaks nothing but lies, that Robb Stark grappled with death and won, that they have the true Arya Stark- what of it? They aren’t there. Their men aren’t there. There may be many loyal people in the North, but they are not going to rise in some grand resistance against her father when the would be leaders of said resistance are leagues and leagues south of them, holed up in Riverrun once again, warding off yet another attack launched by a lion of Lannister. It’s been the same endless cycle for the past two years. That is what frustrates here. How many times have they played this game? First with Jaime, then with Tywin, then with Addam Marbrand, now with Jaime again. The players change faces and the pieces change places, but without any hope of reinforcements from the North or the Vale, they are still fighting with their backs to the wall. 

Even if they do manage to kill the Kingslayer or Randyll Tarly, something she can only dream of with fevered longing, it’s not as if the capitol or the westerlands are bereft of men, and now that they are firmly allied with House Tyrell… The truth is, killing Jaime Lannister might taste sweet, and might feel like justice, but Kingslayer or not he is still Cersei’s beloved brother and the West’s beloved heir apparent, and if they do destroy him, such a cry and clamor will go up that they will spend the winter being slowly starved to death when the Lannisters and Tyrells shut down all the roads and demand no mercy for rebels. 

The only thing enviable about their situation is that they have hostages, and that is what no one can agree on. How to use said hostages. The most prominent of said hostages are Genna Lannister, of course, Ryman Frey, Raynard Ruttiger, Leslyn Haigh and Forley Prester, and Fair Walda, Zia, and young Waltyr Frey. And Daven Lannister, but in weeks since they retook the castle his wounds, already grave, have festered. It is a testament to the man’s vigor and strength that he is still clinging to life as it is. The chances of him recovering from this, even if they took off a limb or two, are very slim. 

“If he dies in the sickbed they will claim we had him dead from the start,” Daryn Hornwood had pointed out not a few days past. “If we wish to bargain with him, we’d best do it soon, and let him die in their camp, not ours.”

“Daven Lannister is the only real knight of merit that we hold hostage,” Harry Karstark had snapped. “Genna Lannister is a woman. I’m sure Kevan Lannister has no wish to lose another sibling so soon, but unless Cersei Lannister has some great love for her aunt, we’d be fools to try bargaining with her. There is also Forley Prester, but the Kingslayer will care more about his cousin than the heir to bloody Feastfires-,”

“We have plenty of Freys,” Brynden had put forth, scowling. “What is the use in keeping them here fed and clothed if we are not willing to test Old Walder’s mettle? He can surrender his remaining forces and the Twins to Jason Mallister, or his son Ryman can surrender his head to us.”

“Use Ryman as you see fit,” Nell had said coldly, “but I would suggest we deal with Lannister and Tarly first. Lord Walder knows his days are numbered. He has enough of a garrison to hold the Twins, but no more men to trouble us with. Bad enough that we wasted time with the Greatjon and Bloodborn-,”

“That was not my idea,” Jason Mallister had started up angrily, “Jon Umber was insistent on getting his son back, and Bloodborn is a common criminal, high birth or not. Mad for vengeance, the both of them. A waste of men, moreso than time. We stand our ground here. No more running about playing outlaws with the Brotherhood. We are made of sterner stuff-,”

“You would not be sitting under this roof were it not for the Brotherhood,” Alesander Frey had retorted. “Men most of you would not deign to spit at, and now you pretend this victory was yours alone- common outlaws won you back Riverrun! Common outlaws helped save the queen!”

“Believe me, I am grateful to them,” Nell had interjected. “But they have scattered to the winds, most of them, and we cannot expect them to fill our ranks as soldiers. They care for the smallfolk and readying for winter, not making war.”

“If we do not ready for winter as well, there will be no war, just starved corpses-,”

And now Nell sits here, eating alone in a darkened room, with the steady, throbbing pain in her chest. It seemed so simple when she was a captive. Escape, reunite with her allies, save Riverrun, save her daughter. Four out of five parts finished. She wants nothing more than to saddle a horse, order the drawbridge lowered, and go riding north for the Neck. She’d ride around the Cape of Eagles to avoid the Twins and the Freys, forge into the Neck… and then what? She is not just Lysara’s mother. She is a queen. She has duties here. She promised to protect the people of the Riverlands as her own. She cannot abandon them now and march her remaining men into uncertain territory while the Lannisters gain ground once again.

Her men. As if they were ever that. They were Robb’s, not hers, and now they are Karstark’s. He’s ingratiated himself quite well. She’s not blind to the way Robb relies on him. A stone heart does not equal a stone mind. Robb’s memory is tattered, full of holes. He remembers her. He remembers his mother. Sometimes she thinks he even remembers Arya, when he sees her dressed as a girl, similar to how she must have looked during their childhood at Winterfell. But the rest… If most of the river lords knew the extent to which he’d been… damaged by this, it would shake them. Their faith in him. In her. 

Better they think him brooding and vengeful, impulsive with rage and loathing, than to have them think him addled or reduced. They need cohesion. The northmen look to Harry Karstark with well-earned trust and respect, and because he professes loyalty to Robb, so do they. There are no murmurings or dissent that all this could have been avoided had things gone differently in the West or at the Fords. If she is not careful with Harrion Karstark and his influence, that could all change, and quickly. So she sits here, in the castle she birthed her daughter in, a queen without a crown and without her child, a queen with a husband who sometimes seems more beast than man, who goes out alone to hunt at night, who watches her sleep, restless, from his seat by the fire. 

She sits here, waiting for yet another battle, so they can continue to fight a war that started because a dead boy king took Ned Stark’s head. She has no grievance with Tommen Baratheon, bastard that he is. She doesn’t even have much grievance with Cersei, whether she ordered Bran’s fall or not. Bran is dead. He was killed by Theon. Who she encouraged Robb to send back to the Iron Isles. Where he turned cloak. And now her father has the North, because she would not let Tywin Lannister back into the westerlands. And Catelyn released the Kingslayer. Who now holds Harrenhal. And Arya is back but scarred from the inside out. And Sansa is missing, likely dead. 

Nell is tired. She’s just tired. Were it not for Lysara… Were it not for Sara… Robb is not the only being propelled by what often feels like bloodlust alone. Rumors dance up the roads that Sansa had some part in Joffrey’s death, that she is a Northern witch who turned into a flying bat or bird and simply soared away after murdering the little bastard. Nell wishes for witchcraft. Had she wings, she would fly home to the Dreadfort, burn it to the ground, and claw her father and brother’s eyes out. She would spatter their blood across the snow and peck out their guts. Then she would tuck her daughter under her wings and find a warm place to nest for the winter. Well away from all of this. 

Her courses have finally returned. Mayhaps that explains her dark moods. She is doubtful. Every day she watches Catelyn break her fast beside her daughter, and she knows she should be happy, should be grateful- it is miraculous that Arya made it back to them under these conditions- but Arya is not her daughter, nor her sister. Not the way Dana is. Not the way Sara was. And it is very, very difficult to be surrounded by that kind of steadily returning familial love and affection when her one- her only chance- they took it away from her. Lysara was going to be different. She was going to know a happy home and a loving family. A father who would always protect her and a mother who would never abandon her. 

Nell failed when her child was barely a month old. Even her own mother lasted longer than that.

She is staring down at her mostly untouched meal when the door opens with a faint creak and Robb slips into the room. He was never the most obtrusive of boys or men, but now he walks with a quiet grace that often disturbs her, even when he is wearing armor. He is not wearing armor now, although his clothes, well-tailored and pristine though they may, constantly seem slightly mishappen on him, either too baggy or too tight. His hair is growing long and wild again. She wishes it had the rich auburn sheen in the sunlight that it used to. But it dulled along with his eyes. 

He is still beautiful to her, diminished and wan though he might. She still wants him. She still loves him. She would have loved him still had he come to her with a face as badly scarred as the Hound’s, if he had come to her without a nose or hand or missing an eye or ear like Daryn Hornwood. She would have loved him still however she found him. She dreams about him, sometimes, and they are not all nightmares. But it is not as it was between them. Aye, they share a bed, but not in the sense that they used to. She is long since healed from the birth now. With Lysara’s fate so uncertain, it is expected that they would begin trying to conceive another child again in earnest. A son would give their lords renewed hope and determination. 

But she’s no appetite for lovemaking or heirmaking at a time like this, and Robb’s appetites… they tend towards bloodier things than the marriage bed. She kissed him the night before last, deeply and sadly, sitting up in bed beside him in the morning, she’d just leaned down and pressed her lips to his, and they were cold as grave dirt. After a few moments he’d returned the gesture, but there had not been what there once was between them, as if he were learning how to kiss all over again, as if he were trying to remember what it once felt like, how he ought to react to her. Then he’d put his hand in her hair but pulled too hard, and she’d broken away from him with a gasp of pain, and he’d held her instead. This new husband does not offer much in the way of apologies, but she still wants to be held by him. Part of it still feels good and right. 

“I’m sorry,” she’d murmured into his chest, closing her eyes to block out the stinging pain in her scalp. “Did I startle you? Were you sleeping?”

“No,” he’d said, and then pressed his cold fingers against her head, so the pain faded away. “No.” He’d tucked his chin against her temple, and that, at least felt so much like the old him that she’d begun to cry. He’d seemed genuinely baffled by that, and had haltingly kissed her tears away, carefully pressing his mouth to the warm, wet tracks on her cheeks, holding her by the upper arms like a child or a doll. “You used to only cry when you thought I was asleep,” he’d said then, suddenly thoughtful. 

“I didn’t want you to think I was weak.”

But you are weak, his eyes had said, but it had not been a look of contempt or pity. It had been frank and matter of fact. You are weak, his grey gaze had said, because you are what I once was. You are just flesh and bone. Your blood is still warm and rushing in your veins. Mine is slow and sluggish, and my heart has gone to stone and my eyes have gone to grey and my mind has gone to winter, all barren bark and shriveled leaves. If you were like me you’d have no need for tears. 

“Tell me how to hurt them,” he’d said instead. “I’ll take Grey Wind to the Twins and tear it down stone by stone. I’ll put my sword in their chests and their corpses in the river. I’ll build a new bridge with them.” It was not an angry vow or an immature boast. This Robb really believed he could, with enough time and unending energy, do such a thing. She still loved him for it. 

“I don’t want a bridge of dead men,” she’d whispered into his chest, bowing her forehead against his sternum. “I want our daughter.”

He’d gone silent after that, and a terrible fear had filled her, a fear that returns now as he takes a seat. There is food laid out for him as well, and wine, but Robb barely eats and she has yet to see him touch any wine or ale at all. He’ll drink water, greedily lapping it up after coming back from a hunt, and he’ll eat meat if he eats anything at all, but spirits or sweets or breads have no allure for him. There are twigs in his hair, the barest shadow of the crown he once wore. 

“You were hunting,” she says. The old Robb might have dryly corrected her, said he was scouting, urged her not to worry, told her to eat more.

He examines the food, then pushes the plate away, a faint look of revulsion on his pale face, as if it had been writhing maggots. She can smell Grey Wind on him, but the direwolf is not here. Grey Wind doesn’t trust him as he once did. They don’t seem like near twin souls in separate forms anymore. When Grey Wind lays his head in her lap, Robb walks away as if he can scarcely stand the sight. When Robb takes her in his arms and puts his cold mouth on her forehead, Grey Wind vanishes out the door, or moves to a corner, watching, unblinking and wary. Who should she put her faith in? The man or the wolf? Who does she owe more to?

“I didn’t find any scouts,” he says. 

If he had, she’s sure she’d smell blood on him.

“Good,” she says. “That means they’re leery of tangling with us just yet. Perhaps Lannister does not have all his reinforcements at hand. Let them wait at Harrenhal and rot. We will not stir.”

Robb doesn’t nod or frown, just looks at her. “You’re angry,” he notes. 

“Not with you,” she says swiftly.

“Who?”

“Myself,” she leans back in her chair. “I am angry with myself. I thought this would be easier. I’m used to waiting.”

He says nothing.

“Do you remember her at all?” she blurts out.

He just looks at her again.

“Lysara,” she whispers it as if it were a dirty word.

His lips do not move. There is no flare of pain or anger or sorrow in his eyes. It is like staring into two grey pools. 

“You don’t,” she says, and digs her nails into the table. “Gods, you don’t, do you? Do you- you held her. You named her. For my governess. For Sara Snow.”

“Snow?” His brow furrows as if pained.

Her hand comes up to her mouth, and her belly roils. She is so sorry, and so furious, and so tired. “How can you remember me,” she chokes out, “and not her? Your child. You- you love her. I know you do. You told me, you- you were so happy. You loved her instantly.”

“I remember the smell of her,” he says slowly. “I remember the weight. But not the face. Not the name. She was yours.”

“She was ours!” Nell stands, shaking a little. “You have to remember, Robb! You have to try! You’re her father! She- she was a child- she is our child! How can you not….” She is going to vomit if she keeps looking at him like this, the unceasing unknowing of him. She could strangle him. She could gouge out his eyes. She turns away, keeping a hard grip on the back of her chair. She hears him stand as well.

“My father took her away,” she says through her teeth. “You remember him. You remember Roose Bolton. I know you do. You remember your murderer. You remember the man who betrayed you but you don’t remember your heir.”

“Then I’ll kill him and take her back for you.” He is standing just behind her now, his breath cold as frost on the back of her neck. Goosebumps ripple down her spine like scales. “Will that make you happy?”

She whirls, lit up with rage, flushed as though drunk. “I don’t want you to make me happy, I want you to- to fucking want her back! As I do!” She slams her open palm into his chest, as if she could jolt something back into place, some loose part. “I want you to- to be as you were! As you always were! She was your daughter and someone took her away. As they took me from you. Doesn’t that make you angry? Don’t you want to hurt them? Make them suffer?”

“Marbrand would have taken you from me,” he recalls that much. “I killed him.” Something in his face tightens. “He called me a beast, and a craven.”

“He called Grey Wind a beast,” she corrects tiredly, although she wants to scream. “You remember their names. Their faces. But not hers.”

“I hated them,” he says, as if that should come as no surprise. “They took and took from me. They took my sword and my helm and my men and you.” He seems as though he wants to say something else they took, but cannot.

“They took her too. My father took her. You hate him, don’t you?” She puts her hand on his cheek again, and feels a muscle spasm under it, something seize and tighten like a cord.

“Jaime Lannister sends his regards,” he recites, and she sees a flash of something in his eyes then. Something dark and fleeting, like a raven against the winter sky. “Soon I’ll have Lannister’s head too. Then his. They can rot together on our wall.”

“I don’t care about the Kingslayer,” she snaps. “I care about our daughter. That’s what you must remember. Everything we do here, we do for her. We must resolve things quickly and carefully. If that means we have to treat with them-,”

He wrenches away from her. “They’re going to die. All of them who betrayed me. Plotted against me. Hurt you.”

“Robb,” she hisses, “listen to me-,”

He turns round too fast and his hand is like a vice on her arm. Not hard enough to bruise, but a solid enough grip that she knows she’d have a hell of a time breaking free of him. “I try,” he says, “to listen. I want to remember. I want to want what you do, Nell. But I can’t. I can’t want everything. When I went into the river I only wanted one thing.”

Was that me, she wants to ask, or revenge? But she can’t. She’s too craven.

“You can learn,” she says in a more subdued tone, soothing him. “You can remember how to… to want more. I’ll help you. This is a second chance. For you and I both, Robb. I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“This is the only chance,” he says, letting go of her, and that terrifies her more than the dark look in his eyes or his dead man’s grip on her wrist ever could.

She goes to visit Arwyn’s grave the next day. Catelyn has taken Arya out for a brief ride into the nearest village, and Dana accompanied them at Nell’s own urging. Dana has her own griefs to tend to, and it doesn’t feel right to make her play nursemaid to Nell’s. Besides, she gets along so well with Arya. Nell wishes she had that sort of easy banter with Robb’s little sister, but while Arya is polite enough with her, neither of them have the least idea of what to say to each other, and Nell would not say that an eleven year old makes for easy conversation.

They buried Arwyn in the godswood. Walda told her Freys were typically weighed down with stones and sunk into the river beneath the Crossing, generations upon generations in the muck and mud at the bottom, the very foundations of the Twins full of the bones of their ancestors. But Arwyn does not deserve river mud. She deserves sunlight, Nell thinks, and a patch of dry land. So this is where she remains. Nell had a mason carve her small, smooth grey headstone carefully; HERE LIES ARWYN OF HOUSE FREY, A MAID OF FIVE-AND-TEN, WHO DIED IN THE YEAR 300 AFTER THE CONQUEST. WELL-LOVED SISTER AND COUSIN. LADY IN WAITING TO A QUEEN, AND BRIDE OF DAVEN LANNISTER, A KNIGHT OF THE WEST. The wreath laid out across the freshly turned soil is already beginning to molder. Nell picks away some dead leaves, then wipes her hand on her glove. 

She wonders if Rodwell Flint and Ellery Vance’s bodies will be brought back here, or buried at Seagard. The Greatjon attempted to force a hostage exchange with the aid of Aegon Bloodborn, after they successfully broke the siege of Seagard and allowed the Mallisters to come down to help defeat Ryman Frey’s camp that had been besieging Riverrun along with all the others. He wanted to trade Raymund Frey and Martyn Rivers for his son the Smalljon and Lucas Blackwood. The Freys, being both crafty and stingy, decided to try to spring a trap for the Smalljon’s small force and Bloodborn’s outlaws, and made as if they were going to trade Roddy Flint, who is yet another cousin of Dana’s, and Kirth Vance’s brother Ellery instead.

She’s not clear on the specifics, but it went badly for both sides. Merrett Frey and Petyr Pimple, who were sent out to spring said trap, are both dead. Bloodborn was badly injured and incurred heavy losses of his band of outlaws, and Raymund, Martyn, Rodwell, and Ellery were all killed outright or mortally wounded in the ensuing skirmish. The Freys didn’t get what they wanted; the Gretjon survived, reportedly even more enraged than before, if that is possible, but neither did the northmen. The Greatjon has been ordered to return to Riverrun with his men immediately. If he defies that order, Robb will likely execute him. 

They cannot afford to keep killing their own lords. Nell still feels bound by years of ingrained decorum. These habits aren’t easy to break. She was raised to never contradict a lord husband’s ruling decision. One might discuss such things in private, attempt to reason or persuade behind closed doors, but it would be a massive breach of every ounce of social etiquette she was ever forced to swallow to intervene when Robb gives a command right then and there. But she may have to. That, or speak to Harrion Karstark privately beforehand, ask him to reason with Robb. As much as… as much as the man Robb is can now be reasoned with.

The thought of going to Karstark for help prickles at her, and the prickling increases all the more when she spots him cutting across this stretch of the godswood towards her. It’s not that she loathes the sight of him. She owes him her life, her freedom. As does Arya. As does Catelyn and many other people. He’s an able commander, a formidable strategist, and men intrinsically seem to respect him, as much as they did Robb. As they do Robb, she reminds herself. They still love him. He is their king. She is their queen. The people will not forget that-

“Your Grace,” he hails her. The son is much more respectful than the father ever was. Harry Karstark has a temper, and she has seen in it action; two of his men were brought up on charges of rape recently and after the testimony was heard and witnesses were procured he had them both gelded, then executed them himself. One begged for the Wall. “Shall I send you there in a barrel across the Bite?” he’d jeered back. “So you could join up with Bolton and his mongrel son, grow fat off their spoils of war? I don’t see the wisdom in that.”

“Lord Karstark,” she says, as if she’d not raised her voice at him in a meeting two days past when he spoke rudely to Brynden Blackfish. 

Karstark looks a good deal like his father; he has a craggy, prematurely lined face that makes him look much older than he really is- and she knows he is in truth no more than one-and-twenty, not much older than her- and his dark beard is beginning to pepper with a few strands of grey already. He’s also tall and rangy, as all Karstarks are, and his eyes are the same blue-grey as his father’s, although she thinks close-up they lean slightly more blue. 

“I just came from Lady Genna’s… chambers,” he says, in a voice that suggests dry amusement, for it is in fact a cell, albeit one of the nicer ones. Nell has not visited Genna. What would be the point? To gloat over the death of the woman’s husband and beloved grandson? To interrogate her for information about the Kingslayer? Nell would want to be left alone in her position.

“I’m sure she was most pleased with your company,” she replies.

“I dodged the cup of wine she threw at me,” he comments, “but like or not I still reek of it.”

She does smell a bit of Dornish red to his faded doublet. “And what was the purpose of this visit?”

“To inform her that her niece, in her infinite wisdom and grace, has decided to rearm the Faith,” he says, straight-faced but tone frigid with sarcasm.

They got the word of that a week ago. “Yes,” says Nell, “to pay off debts owed, most likely. It’s no concern of ours what nonsense Cersei Lannister thinks passing for ruling. What matters is that she is not flooding the Kingsroad with more troops for her brother.”

“Perhaps she has greater concerns at the moment,” he says, “such as septons wielding swords and railing against sin in the streets.”

Nell sniffs. If the royal court in King’s Landing wishes to tear itself apart on the basis of religious morals, she wishes them well. It seems as though it will be a good distraction. The Tyrells were never known for their piety, after all. “Why did you feel the need to inform Lady Genna of this? To twist the knife a little deeper?”

“No,” he says, “I’ve no bad blood with Genna Lannister.”

Nell stiffens. “Her nephew slew your brothers.”

“Thank you for reminding me, Your Grace,” his tone is frigid again, and not with mere sarcasm this time. “I wanted to hear what she had to say about it. According to you the woman is no fool, unlike the family she married into. She laughed herself silly. But mayhaps that was the wine. And she inquired after Daven.”

“Does she know the… extent of his injuries?” Nell refuses to let him see her look uneasy or uncertain. She is not about to show weakness in front of Harry bloody Karstark, not when she outlasted Black Walder and Addam Marbrand.

“No,” says Harrion. “She suggested we save ourselves the trouble of trying to arrange a time and place to treat with Jaime Lannister or Randyll Tarly, and instead negotiate Daven’s release and possible terms to a representative of House Banefort, along the Tumblestone.”

There is a moment’s pause. The wind ruffles the wreath on Arwyn’s grave. “How charitable of her,” Nell says. “But it reeks of-,”

“A trap, yes,” Karstark interrupts. “I surmised as much. Like or not she is anticipating some reprisal from the west. Not anytime soon,” he adds, at the look on Nell’s face, “they will bide their time and wait until we are facing enemies to the south, then try to strike at us from the mountains. We need to rethink the lines of defense that have been drawn by Lord Brynden. If we adopt a triangle-”

“A triangle,” she mutters-

“Yes,” he says curtly, undeterred. “Three points. Riverrun, the Kneeling Man, Acorn Hall. To try to guard against incursions from the West at Wayfarer’s Rest is folly. They’ve tried that already. And we need to accept everything south of High Heart and Acorn Hall as already lost for the time being.”

“The Pipers won’t like that. Nor the Vances. They already think you think them beneath you-,”

“I’ll reconsider my respect for them when they prove themselves in defense of their own fucking kingdom,” he snaps, and she sees the flash of his slightly crooked teeth. 

Nell lifts her chin slightly, and folds her hands in front of her, sliding her gloves back on.

“I apologize for the foul language, Your Grace,” he says.

“I spent months in the company of Freys,” she scoffs. “Do you think they held their tongues often in my presence?”

“It must have been a novel experience for you,” he replies evenly.

“You mock me,” Nell narrows her eyes. 

“No. I know what it is like to be a prisoner. I was captured by a hedge knight at the Green Fork. A man half my size who bashed me over the back of the head with his shield. I got word of my brothers’ deaths while trussed up like a pig to slaughter in the back of a farmer’s cart on the way to Harrenhal. I had to look Tywin Lannister in the eyes while he sent the Mountain back out to reave some more. Your father’s men liberated me. Do you think that was a relief to me? Knowing I owed my freedom to Lord Leech? Taking orders from the great Roose Bolton, suspecting all the while-,” he cuts himself off, and shakes his head roughly. “But that is in the past now.”

They are not so very far from where his father was executed. Nell feels another chill down her spine, the second in the past day. “A great many things are.”

He nods slowly, and then seems to take a moment to collect himself. “We need to be rid of Daven Lannister before he dies in our care. I am going to propose we send him with half a dozen envoys flying Stark banners down the Red Fork to the Crossroads Inn. He’ll never make it on horseback. It will be public knowledge that we made an attempt to restore him to his kin and parley in good faith. They will be forced to respond, and if he dies in route we can blame it on the poor weather.”

Nell is about to be forced to admit that it’s not a terrible idea, when the howl starts up. Grey Wind has not howled like that in some time. Karstark’s hand falls to the hilt of his sword, reaching behind his back with ease. “Behind me,” he barks, as if he were telling a dog to heel. 

Nell glares at him incredulously, then sees Grey Wind loping towards them. Karstark starts to draw his blade; she grabs his arm and digs her nails into his wrist. “Are you mad? He would never harm me.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but then relaxes slightly as Grey Wind’s pace slows. The wolf comes up to them, barely panting despite his speed, whining. “What is it?” Nell asks. She hasn’t heard the gate. “Are they back? Is Catelyn returning-,”

It’s not the return of Catelyn, Arya, and Dana. Nor is it some surprise attack being launched from the south or west. Nell follows Grey Wind, Harry Karstark not far behind, through the godswood, all the way to the slender weirwood, where Robb is bent over his work. The new steward greets them with a palpable nervous twitch. “Ser Daven took a turn for the worst this morning. His Grace ordered he be brought out here, so he might have some fresh air before he passed. I suggested the sept, but-,”

Harry Karstark curses long and hard under his breath. Nell stands very still, a gloved hand rooted in Grey Wind’s long fur. Daven Lannister lies almost peacefully on a stretcher beneath the shade of the weirwood, the wind ruffling his blonde locks. He is paler in death than he ever was in life, a shrunken husk of the great strong young man he once was. His throat is neatly slit open. Robb traded his sword for a blade, the same sort of blade she would sacrifice animals here with, when she was praying during her pregnancy with their daughter. “His death will serve twice over,” he says, barely looking up. “Once to honor the gods, again when I send his head to the Kingslayer. Along with my regards.”

“You gave him the gift of mercy, Your Grace,” Karstark shows admirable restraint, shifting from fury to passive indulgence in the span of mere moments. “It is an honorable gift to give to one’s enemy.”

“Mercy,” echoes Robb, as thought it were a foreign word, and for the first time since Nell has seen him again as not the King in the North, but the King of Winter, he smiles in a shadow of genuine amusement. And she sees now why Grey Wind had to howl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a ton of hiking this weekend and I'm still exhausted so I'll try to keep this short and sweet.
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Waiting sucks. Waiting in fics sucks even more. We're not going to be doing much more of it, as we are now very early in the fifth month of 300 AC, and the pot is starting to finally boil over. I promise the number of chapters left at Riverrun is dwindling rapidly. I also did not want to suddenly throw away some 30+ chapters of developing the Riverlands and its people to just fuck off back to the North and leave them to deal with things by themselves. Much like Dany's whole crisis of 'should I stay or should I go', Nell can't just leave at a moment's notice when they're essentially all on their own here. But I also didn't want to gloss over her feelings of frustration and hopelessness. Things may be looking better for the Starks but that doesn't mean things are guaranteed to run smoothly from here on out.
> 
> 2\. Daven's dying for most of this chapter, and Nell and Harry both really, really don't want him to die under their roof as one of their most valuable hostages. Unfortunately, while Robb might have seen the political reasoning of this, Stoneheart has other priorities, as he makes very clear to Nell in this chapter.
> 
> 3\. That Risen!Robb does not really remember Lysara or the emotions he felt for her is not meant to indicate that Robb didn't love his daughter before his death. He did, very much, and died trying to make a last ditch appeal to Roose to not harm her or his wife. However, much like Lady Stoneheart in canon, this Robb is not the same person he was before his untimely death. He is driven by different motivations and has different desires. Revenge being primarily one of them. As much as Nell also wants revenge, she also wants her baby back, and it's extremely upsetting to her when she realizes this Robb hasn't even really been thinking of their child.
> 
> 4\. You know who shouldn't handle hostage trades? The 'just lost a fucking finger, gonna laugh hysterically about it' Greatjon. I love the Umbers, but... it's just not really their specialty.
> 
> 5\. Nell does not trust Harry Karstark. Harry Karstark does not trust Grey Wind. Grey Wind does not trust Robb. I still had a very fun time writing Nell and Harrion interacting, given their similar lack of any kind of filter and their similar desire to kill Roose with their bare hands.


	61. Jorelle III

300 AC - CROSSROADS INN

Jory lasts perhaps two giddy days before the doubt sets in. At first it is very easy to focus on nothing but the cold, wintery mornings, the long, dark nights spent by the campfire, and the familiar sway of being back in the saddle. It’s been months since she rode, months since she saw anything but the familiar landscape of the Isle, and she almost feels as she did when they first moved south past Moat Cailin, for she’d never left the North before then. Traveling with Brienne and her odd companions is nothing like the comfort of being with her own family, of course, but she feels purposeful, at least, as she did when she went south with her mother and sisters, believing this would be her chance to prove herself, to properly come of age. 

Other highborn ladies had grand feasts when they came into their majority, with singing and dancing and gallant lords waiting in the wings. Jory’s sisters had brawls and battles and nights of drinking in her mother’s hall. It was not that they reviled fine gowns or joyful music, but that they were Mormonts. They had their own way of celebrating, just as they had their own way of living, their own way of making babes. Everything they had they had earned. Bear Island had been a gift from Rodrik Stark during one of the great wars between northmen and Ironborn. 

Legend holds the Ironborn had never forgotten the shame of losing the isle to their ‘inferiors’ in a wrestling match, and that’s why they’d fought so bitterly to reclaim it in the centuries since. But they never had. The Greyjoy had launched a thousand fleets to take it back, her mother would brag, and not a single one had ever succeeded. Sometimes they had slaughtered fishermen and reaved saltwives, but no Mormont had ever surrendered to the likes of a squid. 

Mayhaps she would have been of better used had they left her behind at Winterfell to guard the little princes. Jory would have hated it, she knows, would have wept bitterly to herself after everyone left, to think herself playing nursemaid to two little boys and their wolves, but in the end it might have been for the best. She would have stopped Theon Turncloak from taking the castle, she’s certain of it. Her kin have never let themselves rest easy in their own keep, are used to always keeping one eye on the horizon, lest they see a kraken in black and gold come into view. 

She would have been ready, and she would have fed Greyjoy one of her knives for dinner and flung his crew from the walls. Of course, the wishful bragging rings a little hollow now, as does everything else. She can pretend all she likes, but the truth is she failed. She failed in her duty and she failed as a warrior. Instead of fighting to return to the battle she let the river carry her away, like a craven. 

So while for the first two days her spirits are high enough, back on the mainland once more, eyes on the horizon, waiting to see the massive mountains of the Vale come into view in the distance, after that it all begins to sink back down, like clothes hung out to dry being weighed down with fresh rainfall. She’s not some noble shieldmaiden off to restore her lost honor. She’s a weak, frightened girl who let others die in her place. And she was a fool to agree to this. She should have at least had the sense to live and die unknown on the Isle, where only a few knew of her shame. Now she’s clawed her way back into the game, and for what? Brienne seemed so earnest, so passionately truthful when she was telling Jory her tale, but what if it was all an act? Or what if she believes in it for the wrong reasons? This could all be some ruse of the Lannisters’. 

This Hyle could be a spy, or even the boy, Podrick. The only one of them she really ought to trust is the septon, and that’s only because he’s a holy man without any stake in any of these wars. Would Dacey have believed this? Would Aly or Lyra? Doubt gnaws at her when she wakes in the morning and shuffles into the woods to relieve herself, and it keeps her up at night, even with Dog’s steady snuffling in his sleep to comfort her. Mother always said she could be naive and gullible, too willing to believe the best in people. 

“You get that from your father,” she told Jory gruffly once, after she’d had a few drinks in her. It was never Mother’s way to openly acknowledge any of her lovers, past or present, but it was clear enough to most of the household that the ‘bear’ who’d sired Jory was Theo, Mormont Hall’s blacksmith. Jory had his look; Theo was a lean, almost unusually slight man for a smith, but his back and arms were as strong as a bear’s, and he could hold his own with hammer or sword in hand. The story goes, Aly once told her, that their mother fell into bed with him when she came home from Robert’s Rebellion, and considered Jory her reward for a war well-won; one last spoil. 

There was never any discussion of it. Jory knows better than to directly ask either of them about it, but Theo always treated her differently from the rest of her sisters, and she began to spend more time around the smithy when she was a little older and could understand how things went between men and women, and that no, they were not ‘really’ wargs. He never called her ‘daughter’ and she never addressed him as ‘father’ or even ‘da’ or ‘papa’, but now she thinks… Well, if she ever sees him again, she would go to him and call him that and embrace him, just the once. He made her a pin for her cloak before she left, and reinforced her shield with bronze, but she lost both in the river. 

Theo could use a sword, but he’d never ridden to war. “My place is here,” he’d told her once, when she asked why. “Some men are better suited to crafting the steel than wielding it.” Then he’d admitted, in between grunts while he worked the bellows, “I never liked killing much, either.” Jory, perhaps twelve then, had wrinkled her nose at that and gone back to scratching the cat that lurked around the smithy under its grey chin, unable to comprehend why anyone would reject valor and glory in battle. 

“One day I’m going to ride to war with my mother like Dace and Aly,” she’d told him proudly, “and I’ll kill a thousand men and bring back their swords so you can melt them down and make new ones.”

“Aye, m’lady,” he’d acknowledged, and then before she’d gone had made her help him sweep the floor, ruffling her hair briefly and almost guilty, as if worried someone might walk by and see.

She’d wished her father could have been someone greater and bolder then, something like the fabled king Robert, war hammer in hand, who people wrote songs about, had been privately disappointed that he was ‘just’ some insignificant, common smith, who could only read and write well enough to sign his name, who boasted no grand bloodline or victories in war. When they’d left Bear Island for Robb and Donella’s wedding she’d visited briefly to say goodbye, but had not tarried long, as if he were any other faithful servant to the family, respected but kept at a distance. His eyes had been sad behind his shaggy hair and beard, and he had stayed behind his worktable with his arms folded across his sweat-stained chest.

“Goodbye, Theo,” she’d said gaily, oblivious. 

“Safe travels, Lady Jorelle,” he’d said, and he must have wanted to grab her and order her home, as he could have had he been her lord father, and not a bear her mother met in the wood. He must have wanted to say, “No. You are not going anywhere, because you are my child, and I will not see you put in danger.” He must have wished she were his daughter for true, the same birth as he, and then she could have stayed behind to help him with his work, running to fetch water for the well and holding casts still for him and playing with the kittens under the stairwell. 

What would he think of her now? What would her mother? Maege would likely reason that perhaps half or even three quarters of Brienne’s tale might be vaguely true, but all those strange details- jumping into the bear pit at Harrenhal? The sword called Oathkeeper, of all things? The claim that Jaime Lannister truly intended to honor his oath- and oath Jory was not present for, and could be entirely invented- and return Sansa, at least, to her mother? Brienne might have genuine intentions in rescuing Sansa, but that does not mean that the likes of Jaime Lannister has stopped lying. Brienne could have fudged details or mended things in her telling to Jory, to make him sound more noble, more honorable, like a changed man and not the scum of the Seven Kingdoms, a golden dog with a vile, rotten heart. 

Lannister might have given her the armor and the sword with the intention of her in fact returning Sansa to him and the queen, and she only decided against it out of devotion to Lady Catelyn. Or this man of Tarly’s might be some sort of spy he discreetly installed on this quest of theirs to turn the tables at the very last instant. Brienne might believe she is doing this to reunite Sansa with her family, but the real truth could be much more complex. And now if Jory is unwittingly part of it- well, they could all be hung as traitors to the Starks now, she supposes. Honor might have demanded she attempt to kill Brienne as soon as she laid eyes upon her, knowing what she’d done.

But Jory might be naive, she thinks, and she might be earnest and gullible, but she’s not so much of a fool as to truly believe she could defeat Brienne of bloody Tarth in single combat. What was she going to do, jump down on her from a tree and try to knife her in the neck? Borrow a silent brother’s staff and beat her over the head with it? She could have just spit in their faces in disgust and stayed on the Isle, but then absolutely nothing would have changed. 

She would have resolved to spend the next decade or more tending sheep, watching the tide come in and out, and hating herself. At least she’s doing something, even if it is the foolish thing, or the wrong thing. And this way, well- if everyone but her has bad intentions, at least one person in this strange group does intend to keep Sansa safe. Even if she dies in the attempt. She can at least defend the princess, if it comes down to it.

Unlike the last Stark princess you swore to defend, a nasty little voice in her head jeers. That went well, didn’t it?

Their travel upriver is uneventful until they reach the Crossroads Inn. For a week they follow the river that will grow into the prongs of the Trident, watching the burned and sacked Saltpans melt into a greyish brown blur behind them. Jory did find two throwing knives from a pile of the corpses, so that was some success. Whenever they come across the dead, be they westermen or rivermen or northmen, Meribald insists they stop to bury them, although he holds his tongue when the corpses are searched for anything useful first. And it almost worth it to, to see the look of dismay on Hyle Hunt’s face whenever he has to dig a new grave. Jory would swear little Pod complains less than he; Hyle Hunt, untrustworthy and rude as he is, is far from stoic. If he has something to say, inevitably they are all going to hear it.

Jory finds Hyle difficult to pin down. With Brienne of Tarth, what you see and hear is what you get. Brienne often doesn’t speak unless she finds it necessary, doesn’t wander off by herself or tell rambling stories or crack japes, and Meribald is a traveling septon, devoted to the poor and his dog, and Podrick Payne is, well… According to Hyle, who often speaks just to take up time, he once served as a squire to the Imp and survived the Battle of the Blackwater. Jory is not sure if she believes that, as Pod doesn’t fight very well. That is to say, whenever they spar she usually disarms with ease almost immediately. He is growing a little bolder, though. By the time the inn comes into sight he no longer stiffens up like a corpse whenever they cross blades, and Brienne says his parry is improving.

But Hyle Hunt is another matter. Jory used to think she had a good intuition about most people, but she is genuinely unsure of him. He laughs and smiles easily, but while he has a nice laugh and a warm smile, it seldom reaches his dark brown eyes. He’s a good swordsman and a good horseman, and a decent hunter as well, although she supposes he’d have to be with that surname. He’s also a frequent complainer, a middling singer, and, she is willing to wager, and honorless rogue. Then again, what southern knight is not? The only southern man who her opinion of improved over the course of this war was Edmure Tully, and he never looked twice at her. Jory doesn’t hold it against him. She was still half a child then, and while her family may be well respected in the North, that hardly holds true in the South.

“You wouldn’t happen to be the eldest Mormont, would you?” Hyle inquires as they ride up on the inn, warily scanning the treeline all the while. Jory can hear birds chirping and the trickle of rainwater, which she takes for a good sign. It’s when the woods are silent that you needs be careful. “I’ve heard tell your’s is an island ruled by women, my lady.”

“I’m the fourth born,” Jory says plainly. She avoids speaking with Hyle when she can help it. He may be traveling with two women who carry sword and shield, but it’s blatant that he has little respect for either of them, or perhaps anyone at all, and she is old enough to know that you can’t argue a man into thinking a woman worth more than a sack of grain or a herd of sheep. Men like Hyle are all the same, whether they be born kings or butchers. The only woman they’ve ever seen as more than something to tumble or sneer at is their mother.

“And your sisters, they yet live?” 

Jory tightens her jaw and ignores him.

“Well,” Hyle sighs, “you can’t blame a man for trying. I’m sure your people are desperate for a lord. Mayhaps you could put in a good word for me with one of the elder ones-,”

“Dacey would lop off your manhood with a single look, Aly would break your neck while her children watched, and Lyra would sooner bed a boar than a man who thinks her little more than a brood mare,” Jory rattles off without turning round in the saddle. 

Brienne exhales audibly, which could almost be a chuckle. Podrick is bright red in the saddle. Septon Meribald and his mule have gone bravely ahead, trying to keep Dog from racing up on the seemingly deserted inn, barking happily. 

“And you?” Hyle drawls. “What might I expect from the shieldmaiden turned shepherdess?”

Jory thinks her silence will suffice. 

“You know, I had thought Brienne truly unique,” Hyle says dryly, “but now I see I’ve misjudged- your breed of women is growing, Maid of Tarth! They’re throwing their babes in the fire, plucking up swords, and joining you by the dozens.”

“Be quiet, Hunt,” Brienne says with a well-practiced lack of any tone at all.

“But they lack your sweet graces-,”

“Be quiet,” Jory snaps, as the children come out of the inn.

For that is what they are- children. Jory had expected to see some scattered peasants, farmers turned innkeepers who had taken refuge in the old stone building or its outhouses or stables, but these are all children- perhaps a dozen of them, of varying ages, grimy boys and girls in rags, most clutching a weapon of some sort. Dog comes to a halt, tongue lolling, and the septon hails them from his mule, but Jory spots the first of the crossbows clutched in desperate arms and keeps a hand on the hilt of her sword. Between the hollow-eyed, blank-faced children, the dreary, wet weather, and the amount of moldering corpses hanging in the trees, Jory has half a mind to suggest they just leave them be and ride on, but their horses are tired, and even if most of the beds here are broken or mildewed, it has to be better than another night out on the road. Besides, they’re hardly the most intimidating of parties, despite Brienne’s size and armor.

Still, the children fan out across the porch, weapons raised, and when Jory catches a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye, she whips her head around to see a boy far older than the rest of the orphans, a leather smock covering his front and a long spear in hand. He’s not really a boy, she realizes after a moment, not anymore- he must be at least sixteen, and he’s big, twice as tall as any of the other children, taller than Pod or her or Hyle Hunt, at least as tall as the septon. His square jaw is coated in uneven black stubble, and his hair hangs dark and greasy and tangled over his eyes; he pushes it out of the way with a large hand, adjusts his grip on the spear, and glowers. 

Brienne takes note of him as Meribald clambers off his mule to reason with the orphans, and Jory watches her eyes widen and her face pale in confusion. Does she know him? Hyle sees him as well and stiffens, obviously taking him for far more of a threat than any of the hardened but leery children gathered on the ramshackle porch. But the boy makes no moves towards them, remaining where he is, although he does seem to relax slightly when Dog comes over to him, tail wagging. 

The leader of the orphans, who reluctantly introduces herself as Willow, one of the last Heddles left alive after this war, agrees to put them up for two nights in exchange for food and protection from any other travelers… or worse. The smocked boy seems to disapprove of this, but in the end he just marches back to what Jory suspects is the smithy. He’s got the muscle for it, and that smock is either for forging or butchery. 

The inn itself is still largely in ruins, dark and damp and full of dust, cobwebs, old bloodstains, plenty of scuttling mice and rats, and heaps of broken furniture. But Willow, who is small, brown-haired, and skinny, stalks about like she is the queen of it, ordering the other orphans to help clear space or bring food in and out of the kitchens. A few fires in the hearths are started, and Jory lets herself sit down on a battered wooden bench, wondering if she might get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in weeks. Even on the Isle, her dreams were rarely contented and peaceful. 

She avoids looking at Willow Heddle because Willow is of an age with Lyanna, and thinking about Lyanna is painful. At least Lya still has Alysane. Jory would not like to think about her all alone at Mormont Hall, even if she were safe and sound. Lyanna may be the youngest of them, but Jory has always thought her the most like their mother; hot-headed and stubborn but brutally practical and mature beyond her years. Jory might have been the older sister, but often as not she felt like Lya was the one scolding and lecturing her, and not the other way around. She always tolerated it because Lyanna was the youngest and smallest and needed someone to order about that wasn’t her pony or a dog. Jory misses the sound of her voice, high and strident, and the way she would jut her chin out when she was angry, hands clenched in small fists at her sides. 

They eat their makeshift dinner quickly and quietly, for the most part- when Meribald prays over the meager meal, a few of the children bow their heads obediently, some stare confusedly at him, and others are already beginning to tear at the bread with filthy fingers. The smith- Gendry, Willow Heddle calls him- does not suffer to hear the prayer- he bundles his food up in a linen and takes it back to the smithy. “Gendry prays to the Red God now,” Willow informs the newcomers.

Hyle snorts derisively, Brienne is as impassive as ever, and Pod looks somewhat frightened. Jory tries to remember the last time she prayed to her gods. She was never all that devout in the first place, but her belief never wavered, only her… her confidence in them, she supposes. She feels a jab of guilt now, even if she did not participate in the prayer to the Seven. She stifles it by eating her dinner and drinking her ale- the inn still has plenty of drinks, she’ll give them that, even if they are running perilously low on food and other supplies- and ignores Hyle’s snide comments on the setting and the company, pounds Pod on the back when he eats his pie too quickly and begins to cough, and exchanges a small smile with Brienne when some of the children grow a little braver and begin to ask questions. 

“We’re looking for my sister,” Jory says. The lie comes easy enough. She’s always been noted for her honesty, but she never had much trouble with fibbing as a little girl, mostly because she only did so when she found it absolutely necessary. “Dacey Mormont. She was with King Robb when the Freys turned. We heard rumors she escaped the battle.”

If only. Had Dacey she escaped, she would have found some other survivors, rallied them to their king, and plunged right back into the thick of things. Or tracked down Jory, or Mother and Lyra in the Neck. Lying may be a sin according to most faiths, but this lie hurts her more than anyone else, she’s certain of it. Having to pretend at hope when there is next to none. 

The children want to know what Dacey looks like. “She’s got red hair,” Jory says, conjuring up an image of Sansa Stark as a little girl in her mind, trying to imagine how she might look a few years later, “and she’s tall and willowy. Big blue eyes. She looks like our mother. I look like my father.” In an instant the feeling shifts from grief to a queer sort of amusement, thinking of anyone describing Maege as ‘tall and willowy’. Mother might not be any renowned beauty, but the men who faced her in battle never forgot her look, nor the sound of her roar- “HERE WE STAND.” 

HERE WE STAND. It was carved into the great black pine hearth in their feasting hall, framed by small bears on either side, standing up and roaring defiantly. HERE WE STAND. Aly taught her to bellow it in the training yard, chided her when little Jory had flushed pink in embarrassment. “What, are you ashamed?” she’d demand. “Let them be shamed to face you. Come on, yell it with me- you’ve got to yell, that’s how you keep the fear at bay.”

Yelling did help. So did cursing, and spitting, and letting yourself feel the pain and then keep moving, instead of trying to mimic a stone statue. The truth was, no one had time to feel foolish or awkward in the middle of a real fight. You were constantly on the verge of pissing yourself, you likely couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of blood in your ears, and no one was taking a moment to give their opponent a critical look-over before they charged into the fray. Knights only goaded each other with clever insults for hours in ballads. In real life, they just kept swinging.

The meal is finished very quickly; the children eat like starving dogs, and Hyle says as much, ignoring the scowl Willow gives him and the way Brienne stiffens. “They are our hosts,” Brienne says, as she stands up from the table, armor clanking. “You’d do well to respect them, Ser.” Her sarcastic inflection on the last word is lost on no one, not even Meribald, who looks almost pleased with her defense of the children. 

Hyle snorts, as is his habit, and once again Jory wonders at the root of Brienne’s obvious loathing of him. It can’t just be his little comments and mockery. She has been facing that all her life. He must have done something else. But it cannot have been so egregious, for he still draws breath. So bad enough for her to hate him, but not so horrible that she would attack him on sight. Still, if she were to, Jory certainly wouldn’t spring to his defense, and she doubts Pod would either. The squire might not show much emotion other than timid acceptance of every day as possibly being his last, but it’s clear he has little love for Hunt, either.

Dog doesn’t mind him, but he’s a dog, so that’s to be expected.

They ate as soon as they came in, and there’s still some light out, so Jory goes out to where there used to be pigs and chickens kept but is now mostly compacted, dry mud and trampled grass, Pod obediently trailing after her. She enjoys his company, most of the time. Hyle thinks him simple, and Brienne is often frustrated with his tentative nature and fumbling words, although she tries to be kind, but Jory finds it almost refreshing, even if he did use to serve the Lannisters. He was a child. What choice did he have? And she knows he is an orphan; he has no kin nor any home to return to, nowhere to go except to follow them on this quest.

“This will be easier when you grow a bit bigger,” she encourages him as they map out his footwork and practice parrying. “You won’t have to compensate for your size anymore.” Unlike her, he can be confident he will still be growing taller and heavier well past his seventeenth name day. The gods saw fit to give men that gift. Jory is no taller than she was at four-and-ten, although she has put on a little more hard muscle in her arms and legs.

“I stayed here once before,” he admits in a voice barely above a murmur, although it’s drowned out by the noisy din of the children cleaning up in the kitchen. Dog is barking, likely because someone slopped soapy water on him, and she can hear Meribald telling a story to a few of the youngest orphans by the dirty window. “When Lord Tywin was here.”

Jory stiffens at that, and for the first time, Podrick almost disarms her. He seems just as surprised as her. “I see,” she says. “When they burned the village.”

He nods silently, and she wants to be angry, but how can she? He was just a little boy. He had no say in any of it. And he was surely not the one who hung Willow’s aunt nor put the townsfolk to the sword. “I’m sorry,” Jory says instead. “Sorry you had to be here for that.”

Pod looks as though he wants to say something else, but instead bites down hard on his thin lower lip, and comes at her with renewed energy. Jory smiles slightly at his show of spirit, and they’re off again. They finally stop when the sun has gone too far down, and they can barely see each other. Pod goes off to bathe, and Jory puts her sword back on her belt, then walks around the main house of the inn, past the falling apart stables, where a stray cat prowls hunting for mice, and into the forge. 

She’s not sure why, only she’s curious about this boy- most his age would have gone off to be a soldier or joined up with any of the outlaw groups- even if she suspects these orphans are supported at least in part by the Brotherhood, given all the hanged men in the woods nearby. Most like Gendry would not be here at this inn, helping to provide for a group of children he has no relation nor duty to. He hears her come in, she can tell from the way he pauses in his hammering, but then he continues. 

Jory takes her shield from her back, and waits for a pause in the loud ringing of metal. “Could you take a look at this?” she asks, showing it to him when he turns, square face set in a suspicious look, although when he meets her gaze the suspicion briefly flickers to something else instead. “It’s crudely done, I know, but the brother who made it tried his best. I wouldn’t mind more than thick wood between me and the next sword, though.”

He takes it from her with one calloused and sun-tanned hand, and turns it over in the light of the lamps. “It’s not bad,” he says. “For just carved wood. I could do a copper lining along the edges, maybe.”

“I can pay,” Jory brought her small pack with her, which she rifles through. Shella Whent secreted a small amount of coin into her things before she left the Isle. It’s not great fortune, but enough to perhaps get her one or two necessary things, like this. She hasn’t told anyone, because it wouldn’t have covered all their rooms at the inn anyways, not like the food did, and while she doesn’t think Brienne or the septon would take the money, Hyle certainly might.

“No,” he says gruffly, turning away. “You paid with the dinner.”

“That was the Septon’s food, not mine.” But she doesn’t press it upon him. He doesn’t look half so grimy in the soft lamplight; he’s not riddled with pimples or scars, he hasn’t got the slightest bit of fat on him. He’s handsome. She hasn’t thought that about anyone in a long time. It makes her almost… happy. Not even because of him, just to feel it again, a flicker of girlish nervousness over being near a handsome boy her age. She’d wondered if maybe that part of her had rotted dead away. 

He sets the shield on his stone table, and she’s reminded suddenly of her father’s forge, and there’s a lump in her throat, until he says, “You’re a Northerner.”

“Yes,” he wasn’t with them at dinner so he mustn’t know her house, “I’m a Mormont of Bear Isle. Jorelle Mormont.”

“A lady.” There is something dismal about his tone.

“Only a little,” she says. “I’ve three elder sisters, and my father was a bear. Dacey was… Dacey was the one who would inherit and rule, not me.”

“But you’re still a lady,” he presses the point, without looking back at her. “Why did you come south?”

“To fight for my king,” she almost laughs. “Why else?”

Now he does glance over a brawny shoulder at her in surprise. With his blue eyes so wide, it’s like a brief glimpse of the little boy he must have once been, awkwardly big and bulky for his age, all thick neck and creaky voice, with hands like hammers. “I knew another northern girl once,” he says shortly. 

“Aye?” she frowns.

“She wanted to fight too.” His tone darkens. “She’s gone now.”

Arya, she wonders, even if it sounds mad in her head. How in the world would he have run into Arya? Mayhaps it’s possible, but… 

“What was her name?” she tries to sound impassive, disinterested.

He hesitates, then settles on, “Nan.”

The only ‘Nans’ Jory has ever known have been maids. 

They settle into an, if not comfortable, at least not hostile silence while he works. The shield won’t be finished in just one night, that’s obvious, but there is something reassuring about sitting in a dusty corner, feeling the heat from the flames, watching another blacksmith bent over his craft. When he sets his tools aside and drinks some water, she hands him a rag to mop at his face and thick hair. 

“Why don’t you shave it?” she tries to jape. “It’s just getting in your way.”

To her surprise, instead of going cold and quiet with annoyance, he seems amused as well. “If I shaved my head, I’d look even more like a bloody bull.”

She arches an eyebrow and looks him up and down, then says, “Well, better a bull than a shorn horse,” indicating her own cropped hair and lanky frame. 

He laughs aloud at that, and offers her some of his water. Jory takes a sip, and watches him watch her while she drinks. She reddens suddenly, convinced it’s the heat of the forge once again, and hands it back to him. “I should go to bed. We’ve been riding since dawn.”

“I’ll walk you back,” he says, and while ordinarily she might roll her eyes at such chivalry, she does not mind at all walking with Gendry the Bull. 

When they reach the interior of the inn, she slips in ahead of him. The dining room is empty, the hearths all burned out, and just a few candlesticks left out on the stairs. “You’ll be sharing with the lady Brienne, most like,” he says, and Jory nods. 

Then- “You could have gone anywhere to serve as a smith,” she blurts out. “Why are you here?” 

He gives her an inscrutable look, thick black eyebrows furrowed, as if trying to determine whether this is some sort of criticism or not, then finally says, “They need me here the most. Willow’s just trying to live peaceably and help the others make it through the winter. Her family didn’t deserve any of it. I can bring in some coin doing commissions and shoeing horses no matter the weather. And I’m good for running people off, too. Sparrows keep coming up from the south. They’re better armed now. They say the queen’s letting the Faith carry steel again.”

Jory nods. “It’s an honorable thing to do, staying here to protect the children.” 

He scowls at that, although with no real animosity. “I didn’t do it for my bloody honor.” Then, almost hesitantly, “I am a knight, though.”

Jory’s brow furrows; she almost takes a step back, reconsidering. “Knighted by who?”

“Lord Beric Dondarrion, before he died,” he says it proudly, without flinching.

Jory doesn’t suppose any knight has ever spent most of their knighthood serving as a lowly blacksmith at an inn full of orphans, but then again, what have they been doing during this war? The same as all the rest. Raping and stealing and killing. “Ser Bull, then,” she says, hoping he doesn’t take offense, and then is seized by a yawn. 

“I- I hope you find your sister,” he says almost too swiftly. “And… I was going to go hunt, on the morrow, if you… if’n you’d like to come along. I’m not much of a horseman…” He flushes, she can tell that much, even in the dark, as if he immediately regrets admitting to it.

“Ser Gendry,” Jory adopts every bit of proper northern lady in her, straightening her posture, and looking him directly in the eyes, as if they were- as though they are equals. “I’d quite like that.”

“Right, m'l… Jorelle.” He finishes, they both half turn away, pause, and then forge ahead. He goes back towards the kitchens- he must sleep in their at nights, to guard the first floor while the others take the second- and she picks up a candle and makes her way carefully upstairs, avoiding the gaping holes in the creaky wooden floors.

Brienne is waiting up for her in the room they’ll share tonight and tomorrow. She’s removed her armor and is down to her small-clothes, but sitting straight up on the edge of the bed, boots still on, as if prepared to leap up into action at any moment. She visibly relaxes when Jory slips inside, closing the door behind her. No point in bolting it; that’s broken clean off. “I was getting worried.”

“I went to talk to the smith,” Jory says, although she is privately touched by the other woman’s concern. “I can take care of myself around a ramshackle old inn, you know.” But she knows her tone is light, almost carefree, as she removes her sword belt and begins to take off her mud-spattered boots.

“You never know who could be skulking around these places at night,” Brienne says stubbornly, although she does take off her own shoes and lie back down on the straw bed, shifting awkwardly; it’s not a small bed, but it’s still nearly too small for her. “You won’t…”

“Mind sharing?” Jory gives her a smile, although she’s not sure Brienne can see it in the dark. “I grew up with four sisters. I’m used to being kicked and elbowed all night. Besides, you can’t snore half as loud as Aly does.”

“I never had anyone to share with.” Brienne sounds terribly sad again, as she does sometimes, and Jory exhales. 

“Lucky you. Sisters are awful sometimes. Keep you up half the night whispering and giggling.” But she amends, “But I do miss them. Do you… miss your father?”

She knows that is the only family the Maid of Tarth has left to her.

There is a long silence, and when Brienne speaks again, she could be a girl even younger than Jory, not the fearsome Maid of Tarth, armored with stoic silence and plate mail. “Every day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter had to be cut in half once the first part exceeded 6000 words, I'm sorry! I promise we are at the Inn at the Crossroads for a reason, and that we will get to the Vale in due time, I swear. 
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Some doubt quickly sets in for Jory; she does want to trust that Brienne has good intentions, while taking a step back and acknowledging that she may have been very eager to accept this wild tale, and some of it could be embellished or just lies to make Jaime look better. On the other hand, she doesn't feel as though she's in imminent danger from any of Brienne's companions, nor does she want to abandon this quest to find Sansa, reasoning that at least this way one of them actually has real loyalty to House Stark.
> 
> 2\. This chapter takes place only a few days after the last Nell chapter, so we haven't missed out on anything major in that regard. To children at the inn, it really doesn't matter what's going on in the larger political scale, as they're solely focused on eking out survival here through the winter. I really love the scenes from canon showing that Gendry has chosen to stay on with and protect them; I think it really speaks to his character and his sense of morality, even after all the horrible things he's been through.
> 
> 3\. We don't know any of the specifics of the father(s) of Maege's daughters in canon, so creative liberty's been taken. I liked the idea of Jory having to acknowledge privately that yes, her father is a commoner and in any other circumstances, she would be considered a bastard. Also the tenuous relationship there; she and her father care about one another, but they never really got to show that the way a father and daughter usually would due to their social classes and roles. Jory regrets this and wishes she'd spent more time with him and shown him more respect and favor as her father.
> 
> 4\. Hyle is... Hyle. He's not a monster, he's just a regular asshole, and Westeros has plenty of them. Brienne and Jory are both (sadly) used to the type. Here's hoping for some character development, huh?
> 
> 5\. I have a large soft spot for both Pod and Gendry. (I also have nothing against older!Arya/Gendry as a pairing, so the latter half of this chapter should not be taken as some sort of pointed rebuke against that.) But I did just want to write in some brief... teens being teens, even if that is awkwardly flirting and dropping hints that they've been knighted and that they are only 'a little' bit of a highborn lady. It's not meant to be a major plot thread, just some character development for both of them and some (I think) nice levity in the midst of all the other shit about go down.
> 
> 6\. Some shit is going down next chapter. And the chapter after that. And the- you get the picture.


	62. Jorelle IV

300 AC - THE CROSSROADS INN

Jory hasn’t been on a proper hunt in a very long time, and this hardly counts. Bear Island doesn’t have much in the way of fertile land or rich minerals, but it has always had plenty of fish and game. During the long summer of her childhood she must have gone out on hunts with her sisters every week. She was never half the archer that Lyra was, but she always tried her best, and she never had much trouble keeping up with them on horseback, even when bold Aly tried for the older deer trails no one had bothered with in decades, even when the sun was creeping down beyond the pines and Dacey was saying they ought to be headed home soon. 

Once they saw a wolf pack drinking from a pool, and Dacey can still remember clutching Lyra’s hand in amazement, eight years old and transfixed by the thought that they were so very close to these wild beasts, who carried on oblivious until the wind brought their scent over. Then they’d all turned, one by one, and the Mormont sisters had beat a careful retreat back up the hillside to a safe distance away. Sometimes it was frightening, but in a joyful sort of way, although she knows that doesn’t make any sense. If there was fear, it was good and necessary fear, a natural part of growing up, just like bumps and scrapes and bruises. When she fell out of the saddle or hit her head on a branch or sliced open a finger, she treasured the feeling of her sisters around her, teasing or commiserating, patting her on the back or hoisting her up onto their backs- “Where to, Jory?”

They would wrestle in the streams- Lyra on Dacey’s back, Jory on Aly’s, and the losers would have to tend to the horses when they got back to the stables. It didn’t really matter whether they succeeded in bringing anything down or not. The last hunt they went on was a fortnight before they left the isle. Lyanna came with them, and her first arrow struck true and took down a goose just as it began to flap its wings to alight from the edge of the murky little pond. She’d gaped in shock at her luck- her skill, really, and Jory had whooped and mussed her thick hair, then snickered while Aly scolded her for scaring off every other animal within earshot. 

She is dead silent now, and not on horseback, either, keeping careful pace with Gendry, who forges ahead bravely despite the barren look of the woods around them. They checked the traps first, and collected just two squirrels. Now they’re deeper in the wood, and while Jory isn’t anymore afraid than she would have been on Bear Island, she is more careful, bow in hand. She has no idea how good of a shot Gendry is with that old crossbow, but he’s certainly strong enough to pull it off. They’ve been walking for less than an hour, and while she’s not winded, she is relying on his knowledge of their surroundings- she’s not at all familiar with this part of the Riverlands, and this late in autumn the trees all begin to blur together into a jumble of grey and brown, and the ground is covered with mud, muck, and rotting leaves.

“There’s a deer pool up ahead,” he says quietly. His voice sinks like a pebble into water, not echoing or carrying on the breeze. She’s surprised at how lightly and carefully a boy built like an ox can move. In the pale morning light, his hair seems even darker against his skin, truly jet black, not dark brown as she might have thought, and the hard lines of his face stand out more. He’s sixteen, she’s learned, close to a year younger than her, but you wouldn’t think it, looking at him up close. He’s got the eyes of a man twice that old. She feels suddenly awkward and childish walking out here with him like this, despite their almost amiable conversation in the smithy the night before. 

“You know the woods well for someone from the city,” she says quietly, stepping over a moldering log. Willow mentioned it earlier this morning- Gendry is originally from King’s Landing, which explains why his accent sounds a bit different from most of the other children, and his skill at the forge- he must have apprenticed with someone truly talented. She doesn’t know why he left the capitol, can’t imagine why someone would willingly come to to the Riverlands in the middle of the war, but supposes it wasn’t by choice at all. Mayhaps he made an enemy of some lord of the royal court, or was thrown out of his apprenticeship for some unlucky mistake. 

Either way, she does not pity him. It would be willfully stupid to pity someone like Gendry. He’s not someone who strikes her as being plagued by regrets. Grudges, maybe, and more sorrows than most their age, like her, but not regrets. When Brienne heard he was from King’s Landing she looked all the more stricken, but Jory hasn’t had the chance to ask her about in it private. If she has met Gendry before, he doesn’t seem to remember her, and unless he was very small, Jory doesn’t see how one could forget meeting a woman like Brienne of Tarth. She supposes it’s possible Brienne spent time in King’s Landing as a child. Tarth, like Bear Island, may not be wealthy, but the Evenstar has always been well-respected, and the Targaryens themselves have wed into that lineage. 

“Didn’t have much choice,” he murmurs in response. “Had to get used to them, or starve.” He’s much more guarded again in the light of day. She’s glad he’s not tripping over himself with ‘my lady’ this and that- although her cropped hair and outfit likely helps- she’s hardly some renowned young beauty peering down snobbishly at him and fanning herself- but he’s not making much in the way of conversation either. Granted, these are not circumstances which lend themselves to idle chatter. She grew up hunting for pleasure, not out of genuine need. Now for the first time she is realizing how starkly different it feels when there are people counting on you not to come back empty-handed.

Septon Meribald’s food won’t last forever, after all, and she’d feel better knowing they were leaving the children behind with something more than some kitchen scraps. 

The pool comes into sight up ahead, pale grey and perfectly still, and they find a spot in between some bushes and a large boulder to wait at, crouching down and trying not to snap too many twigs underfoot. Jory lets her head rest back against the cool dampth of the mossy rock. Gendry mops at his dark hair again. “Maybe just shave the sides,” she suggests, hearkening back to their old conversation, and is gratified when he suppresses a smile and shakes his head. 

“Did you always keep your hair short?” he asks her quietly after a moment, to her surprise.

Jory stiffens, then admits, “No, it used to be very long, before I…” Her head throbs faintly. “I fell into the river and got hurt,” she abridges the entire tale in one swoop. “And the brothers who took care of me, they shaved my head to stitch me back up.”

“The brothers never did anything worthwhile for me or mine,” Gendry says after a moment. “I’m glad they helped you, though.”

“The Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle is a good man,” Jory mutters. “If… if things ever get too difficult here, if you went downriver to the mudflats, I’m sure they would help- they’ve taken in children before-,”

“I’m not a child,” he snaps, but she knows he takes her meaning all the same. “I can take care of them,” he says in a less insistent tone, a little later. “I’ve done it before, looked after younger ones. They like it here, so long as people leave us be. When the snows come, it’ll be better. Won’t have to worry about people coming to loot or kill us. I’m going to start fixing things up. Windows and doors first. Then the roofs.”

“That’s a lot of work for one man,” she replies, watching her breath mist in the air in front of her. 

Gendry shrugs, as if he’d considered and dismissed it already. “I’m strong.” 

He is strong, stronger than plenty of men twice his age, stronger than some knights she’s met, but all the strength in the world won’t save him from a broken neck or shattered arm or leg or twisted back if he slips off a roof or ladder in the middle of winter, or falls out a window. She thinks briefly of poor little Prince Bran, surviving that fall only to be murdered in his bed by Greyjoy, and winces. “Will the Brotherhood still come bring supplies, when winter begins?”

Gendry is silent for a long while, then says, “Maybe. I don’t trust them. I trust Willow’s sister, Jeyne, and a few of her friends. Not the rest of them.”

“There’s rumors they helped the rivermen take back Riverrun,” she says.

He sets his jaw stubbornly. “Wasn’t any better for us even where the Tullys had Riverrun. Lord Edmure let people shelter there, and then his uncle threw them out to the lions again. They don’t give a damn what happens to the commons, so long as they’ve got their castles standing and their armies fed.” He adds after a moment, “Jeyne promised she’d be back by now with more food, maybe even some cattle. Her and a bowman. Anguy. They’re late. Willow’s worried.”

Jory says nothing, hands suddenly a little colder than they were before. He knows she is a lady, albeit a fourth child from a small house he will never lay eyes upon. The genuine anger in his voice… But he’s right. This war has done nothing good for the smallfolk. It wasn’t begun to help them, and even when it is forced to halt for the winter, they won’t be any better off than they were before. Most of them will be worse off. The northern army may not have committed the atrocities that the Lannisters encouraged, but that’s not to say they were all noble innocents, either. Dacey would have told her that she knew of plenty of northmen who, given the opportunity, would rape and murder and steal from the poor just as any southern knight might. 

She wants to apologize, but that rings a little hollow when she is off on a quest not to help anyone in Gendry’s shoes or restore order to the realm, but to rescue a highborn lady, a princess, while stubborn little girls like Willow Heddle tend to frail orphans of war in an abandoned inn on the side of the road. No chivalrous knight or honorable northern warrior is going to arrive on horseback bearing Stark or Tully banners to rescue those children. Just the opposite, most likely. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him watching her with a mixture of familiar wariness and something else entirely. Her face and neck prickles, not from the cold. 

Before she can think to do or say anything more, Gendry nudges her silently; a deer has appeared at last to drink from the pool. They exchange a look, and slowly, he gets into position, raising the crossbow and sucking in a quick breath, narrowing his blue eyes in focus. Jory tenses in anticipation of the sound of the bolt being released, then sees something far larger than a deer moving through the foliage and stands up, nocking an arrow. “Hold!” Gendry curses in alarm; his crossbow shot goes wild, and the deer all but convulses in panic, springing back around only to take an arrow solidly in the chest from Hyle Hunt, who stares down at them with a familiar look of bemused derision from his gelding.

“Well,” he says, as the deer collapses with a bay, breathing its last, “I’d thought to do the sensible thing and track my prey, but I see you two had it well in hand playing Florian and Jonquil by a pool. If Florian was half-blind and carrying a crossbow, that is,” he adds, arching an eyebrow as Gendry lets out a long string of curses and Jorelle lets some tension ease out of her shoulders.

“We could have hunted together,” she says crossly, slinging her bow back across her back and replacing the arrow in her quiver- with her luck, her shot would have gone wild anyways- “If you’d bothered to mention it-,”

“Some things are better accomplished alone,” he remarks sardonically, sliding out of the saddle to retrieve the deer. “This might come as a shock, but I couldn’t summon up the appetite for watching you lose your maidenhead to a ‘prentice smith in the bushes.” He’s mocking them, obviously, but Jorelle detects a certain edge to the words all the same, not of any personal jealousy, but at the thought that she might willingly spend time and converse with a common boy and not him, a knight of the Reach. Brienne and her both have twice as much respect for Gendry than they do him. 

“Shut up,” Gendry says, after a moment of struggling to contain far worse. “You don’t speak to her like that-,”

“And you don’t address a knight of the Seven in such a manner unless you want to lose a hand,” Hyle retorts, as he heaves the deer’s bloodied form onto the back of his mild-mannered courser. “But I suppose you’ve already decided to tempt fate as it stands today- if I recall correctly, it’s the same penalty for laying a hand on a highborn woman.” He casts a shrewd look over Jory, who stands with her fists clenched at her sides, refusing to glance away or flush. Even if he’d caught her and Gendry lying with each other, she wouldn’t be ashamed. “No matter how willing she professes to be.”

Gendry reddens in embarrassment and fury, and Jory wonders for an instant if he might toss the crossbow down and go for Hyle with just his fists, or worse, the short sword on his back, no matter how he’s professed to prefer spear or axe. She steps in front of him, a hand on his shoulder. “Ignore him. He’s got nothing better to do than snipe at everyone because Tarly threw him out on his arse.”

That doesn’t help matters much; “You’re one of Tarly’s?” Gendry demands hoarsely of Hyle, jerking back from Jory’s touch as if stung by it. Her cheeks blaze red in mortification; she’ll be lucky if he ever speaks to her again after this. 

“Not anymore,” Hyle says, clambering back into the saddle. “Count yourself lucky, boy. I don’t particularly care who you want to fuck, but if the likes of Randyll Tarly were here you’d be cursing all the way to the flogger, if he didn’t decide to take your head for it. I wouldn’t call a quick tumble in the undergrowth worth that price.”

Jory flares; Gendry obviously wants to retort but isn’t stupid enough to provoke an armed man on horseback, and she doesn’t appreciate being discussed in passing like- like- “You miserable, cravenly little prick,” she says contemptuously, glowering up at Hyle as he finishes securing the doe to his mount. “Spitting venom at everyone because your prospects are shit and you’ve never done a day’s worthwhile work in your life. A good smith is worth a dozen middling hedge knights reduced to haranguing any passing lady into considering their suit because they stand to inherit nothing!”

For just one satisfying instant, Hyle’s Hunt near constant look of boredom shielding contempt shatters into genuine surprise, and perhaps a brief flicker of unease. Jory guessed lucky this morning as she and Brienne dressed for breakfast, and asked her upfront whether Hyle had ever bothered her about Tarth. Brienne is, after all, her father’s only child, and Jory’s surprised she didn’t consider it sooner. Brienne didn’t say much, only mentioned that she and Hyle had both spent time in Renly’s camp, but now it all makes sense. He made some ill-favored bargain for her hand, or tried to guilt or shame her into accepting him- him!- as if he were worth any woman’s freedom. Jory wouldn’t advise a milkmaid to wed him, nevermind an heiress.

But before she can relish the triumph of watching him struggle to come up with a quick retort, there is laughter, and it’s not from Hyle or Gendry. The hairs on the back of Jory’s neck prickle, and without really thinking about it, she unsheathes her sword. She still has that instinct, at least. There’s at least seven of them, all on exhausted, beaten down horses or ponies, and one of them is wearing a hound’s head helm. But they say the Hound is six and a half feet tall, and this man cannot be that tall by far, although he is still big and bulky. The only other one who stands out to her is a massive, fleshy bald man, who when he opens his mouth, reveals yellowed and broken teeth sharpened to jagged points. A few of them are jeering and muttering to each other already, but he just hisses.

They could have very well followed Hyle from a distance while he tracked the deer all the way back here. She doesn’t know if she wants to throttle him or be thankful for another sword at hand. 

“We just want the horse, the deer, and the cunt.” Jory is not sure who’s speaking now because she’s not watching mouth, she’s watching legs, trying to judge who is going to swing out of the saddle first. They’re not going to have this clash on horseback, not on those pathetic beasts, and there’s not the space to maneuver besides. “Give us that and we’ll be on our way, Ser.”

This is the second time Jory’s heard Hyle Hunt referred to as ‘Ser’ mockingly, but this time there is no trace of a smile, smirk, or sneer on his plain face. It’s like a slate wiped completely blank; there is no fear in his dark eyes or rage twisting up his mouth, just steady acceptance. She will give him that. She called him a craven mere minutes ago, but she readily accepts her mistake now. Hyle Hunt may be a miserable, greedy, venomous little prick, but he is no coward. 

Gendry is adjusting his stance behind her, and Jory immediately realizes from the way he has moved it is so he can shield her with his height and weight from the side that she would normally carry her own shield on. Both she and him are very lightly armored, compared to Hyle or most of these men, but she is willing to bet they are faster. These outlaws look starved, exhausted, and above all, desperate. They are going to make stupid mistakes in their hurry to keep this fight brief. 

Hyle’s only response to them is the rasp of his own sword sliding out of the sheath. Gendry levels the crossbow. The man in the Hound’s helm laughs, nasal and bitter. Jory was worried she might freeze up in panic, but this is not the river, and these are less than a third of the Freys she faced there. And she is learning that she is very eager to make amends, even if these men had nothing to do with that. She wants to kill them, she realizes with a start. She’s eager for the fight. She wants to prove she’s still worth the sword and the shield that Gendry promised to fix for her. 

“Least they already caught the deer for us,” one of the outlaws reasons, clambering down from his panting horse and reaching for his axe. 

“I want her first,” someone else says. “Don’t let Biter get to her before me, it’s been weeks-,”

Gendy’s second bolt does not miss this time, and it begins all at once.

Jory’s never been the tallest and she’s never been the strongest, but she’s always been quick, the fastest of her sisters on foot or on horseback, and when she fell into the Green Fork that dawn it was the first time since childhood that she had ever lost her footing during a fight. She kills her first man in months almost immediately; he charges straight for her, assuming she will flinch back or run at the last moment, and pays for it when she moves towards him instead, lunging forward with a practiced slash to his unprotected neck. 

She’s always had that to her advantage. Men see her as a woman first and foremost, unless they’re on a battlefield and take her for just another adolescent squire. And because they see her sex first, they don’t consider her much of a threat. She’s not horrifically scarred or burned, she isn’t missing hunks or hair or her ears or nose- even in men’s clothing she doesn’t look like a hardened fighter, she looks like a maid, and these men are used to overpowering maids without much thought. 

The second man she makes to kill, Gendry smashes his crossbow into his face, having apparently given up on getting off another lucky shot with it. Jory finishes him off as he staggers back, her sword wrenching up into armpit and back out again, and Gendry wrests his axe from him, feels the weight of it in his big hands, and then whirls with a bellow- Jory ducks, and he takes the head half off of the man who’d been swinging a mace at her back. 

Hyle is fighting two men at once, and his horse is screaming; Jory sees that he’s backed into the pool, up to his knees in water, and on the verge of being overwhelmed. She moves towards him- for all that she dislikes the man, he is still her ally in this fight- only to be flung to the ground; with a muffled shout, she lands hard on her side, then rolls over immediately, narrowly dodging the slash of a sword. Gendry is on her assailant then with another shout, but as Jory clambers to her feet a boot connects with her back, sending her back down on the soggy ground with a gasp. She still has her sword in hand, but when she rolls over again she sees the Hound’s helm leering down at her, and even as she starts to scramble backwards she recognizes that she doesn’t have her shield and the next swing of his sword is going to either grievously injure or kill her. 

She picks up a rock in her other hand and flings it at him, trying to buy any time at all; it clatters harmlessly off the rusted and dented helm, and she hears his laugh echo again. “The cunt has teeth,” the outlaw says mockingly, “are you going to snap them at me, pretty-,”

Pretty what, she never finds out, because there’s the sound of hoofbeats, loud and close, and then Brienne of Tarth bursts out of the trees in full armor, Oathkeeper unsheathed, with a scream of pure fury, and Jory breaks into a delighted grin, and scrambles out of the way as she cuts down the Hound’s helm where he stands, her mount kicking up a great splash of muddy water that crests over them all. She’s not alone- a wholly unfamiliar knight decked out in striking black and white armor, with a brown bristle to his round helm, and his axe sinks deep into the big bald man’s back. He wails and jerks to and thro on the end of it like a great white fish, and Jory dashes out of the way as a few more men follow suit- there must be at least a dozen of them, a small enough party to move quickly, but more than enough to make short work of the remaining outlaws.

The pain of her scrapes and bruises and a fresh cut on her cheek only sets in once the shouts of killing have been replaced by the moans of the dying. Hyle is soaking wet and his horse has run off, likely dragging the deer behind it. Gendry has a burgeoning black eye and a slash on one shoulder, but is otherwise no worse for the wear, leaning warily against a tree, the axe he took from the outlaw still in hand. Jory joins him, and they share an awkward sort of once-over glance, before sinking into an almost comfortable silence. If he is angry with her over Hyle’s earlier comments, that seems to have paled after what just happened, and her head is still buzzing as though a swarm of bees had been released into it. 

These men sound western, but they don’t seem to be wearing Lannister or Tarly colors. Their leader has a great, booming voice, and when he removes his helm, reveals a face somewhere around twenty five or twenty six, red and meaty but more so with muscle than fat, and bristly dark brown hair and beard to match the plume of his helm. He’s big all around- perhaps two inches taller than Brienne, with massive broad shoulders and a barrel chest. Part of her instincts are screaming at her to urge Gendry to run, then follow suit- these men may have just saved their lives, but they are no allies to House Stark or House Tully, and if they discover she fought for King Robb, or that Gendry was knighted by the man who once led the Brotherhood-

“Ser Lyle,” Brienne says, loud and sharp, when she can finally get a word in- Ser Lyle talks very fast and most of what he is saying is comprised of various insults regarding the manhood of the dead outlaws all around them- “This is Master Gendry, who smiths at the Crossroads, and Lady Jorelle Mormont, of Bear Island. Gendry, Jorelle, this is Ser Lyle Crakehall.”

Well, so much for concealing that. Jory understands Brienne’s plight, though- they can’t think to hide Jory’s Northern accent for long, and she’s hardly going to pass for some innocent peasant girl when she was just found battling outlaws with sword in hand in the middle of the woods. Sweet courtesy and a winning smile it is, then. Jory bows her head respectfully, and says in her best imitation of Dacey when she used to host guests on Bear Island while their mother was gone, “Thank you for your help, Ser Lyle.”

Gendry averts his gaze to the forest floor, his grip still tight on the axe. 

“Thought they’d kill and rape some more today, did they?” Lyle Crakehall replies, gaily enough, which sets her a little more at ease that he is not immediately suspicious. “Mormont, was it? I rode against a Mormont in a tourney once, at Lannisport. Your father, mayhaps?”

Jory feels the old sting of shame they have all come to associate with the Slaver. She was just shy of ten when truth came out. The only thing that stayed her mother from killing him herself was kinslaying and the knowledge that Ned Stark would be there soon to take his head for it. The craven fled in the night, though, and it can’t really still be kinslaying to kill the man if they ever see him again, can it? He was no true Mormont. Uncle Jeor was thrice the man her uncle could have ever hoped to be. “My cousin, Ser,” she says quietly. “My mother rules Bear Island now.” No need to mention the more recent history of House Mormont killing westermen by the scores. 

“And how came a young maid so far south this late in the season?” She gets the sense Crakehall is more curious than anything else; blood on her sword or not, he mustn’t see her as a threat, or just be unwilling to think of a woman, and a young one at that, as an enemy, a rival soldier to be put down. 

“My sister Dacey marched south with Robb Stark,” Jory says honestly enough. “She’s missing now, Ser. I only wish to find her and return home in time for the winter.”

A shrewder or more paranoid man would have pushed harder at that, gotten a straight answer from her as to whether she actively rebelled against her ‘rightful’ king, but Lyle Crakehall is not that man, and for that she is grateful. The plight of some obscure Northern maid is of no particular concern to him so long as said maid is not being defiled by outlaws before his very eyes. He instead begins to congratulate Gendry on his talent with an axe and demands to know where he trained at arms. Gendry mutters some response, Hyle cuts in inquiring as to whether or not someone might spare him a horse, or failing that, a dry pair of boots, and-

To her surprise, they make it back to the inn without further incident. As far as Jory can tell, Ser Lyle and his party arrived an hour or so after she and Gendry set off on their hunt, searching for remnants of the Brave Companions to bring to justice. Brienne and Septon Meribald must have convinced them that the orphans at the inn were simply innocents caught up in the folds of war, and then Brienne volunteered to lead them around the surrounding area to prove none of the smallfolk were hiding outlaws from them. 

Had things gone differently, Jory knows now that the fight at the deer pool might have been far more brutal. The man who was wearing the Hound’s helm- her hunch was right, it wasn’t him at all, but some man Brienne called Rorge. And that Biter… Her and Gendry and Hyle might have managed to cut down the rest, but they would have been worn down and injured by the time they faced down those two, the most dangerous of the group. So she may very well have a western knight sworn to House Lannister to thank for her life. Yet another awful wonder. She decides not to dwell on it long. At least she didn’t humiliate herself, or take a bad wound.

She’s ravenously hungry by the time they return to the inn, as are most of the others. Many of the orphans seem to be missing- hiding, Jory assumes, from Lyle Crakehall’s men, and with good reason, after their experiences- but Willow bravely brings out food and drinks for the men with the help of Jory and Septon Meribald, and Jory catches onto Brienne’s intent quickly enough, even as Hyle sulks by the hearth and Gendry vanishes back to the forge with the Hound’s helm- keep these men in a good mood and plied with food and drink while they’re here, then send them on their way as soon as possible. 

Brienne has a note of passage from the Kingslayer himself, and Jory doesn’t think these men liable to turn and attack them at any moment, but she keeps her sword within reach for the next few hours and is careful who she turns her back to all the same. Guest right is worth less than cow shit these days, and men who’d saved your life just hours before could just as easily take it in the night. Dacey fought side by side with Freys in the West, and how did they repay her? Jory considered herself good friends with Oly Frey, and his brothers still tried their best to murder her.

Mostly, she nurses her mug of ale and keeps her mouth shut. Lyle is openly baffled by Brienne’s choice to go about in sword and armor, and some of his men derisive, but he still doesn’t pick half as many arguments as Hyle might have, and once he’s had a drink or two he’s very talkative, going on about how Ser Jaime and Lord Randyll are gathering their hosts at Harrenhal and Darry to face the rivermen and reclaim Riverrun once more. The savage northrons, as luck would have it, may have once fought to use common outlaws and bandits as their spies and scouts, but Randyll Tarly has been brutally ferreting them out bit by bit. 

“These Brave Companions were no friends to House Stark,” Brienne points out coldly at one point, but Lyle waves her off. 

“They’re like flies drawn to rotting meat. They’ll go where the wind blows so long as there’s corpses. Lord Tarly captured five of them not a week past- a woman among them,” he lowers his voice slightly, as if it were some sort of scandal, and Willow Heddle freezes in the kitchen doorway, a pitcher of wine clutched tightly in her hands. Jory pauses mid-sip of her ale, and Hyle looks up from his spot by the fire. 

“Did they have names, these outlaws?” Brienne asks after a moment.

Crakehall nods. “Once they were dragged back to Darry in chains, they confessed readily enough. They were almost proud of it- some men beg, you know, or lie until the very last. This girl couldn’t stop telling them all her name. Jeyne Heddle,” he says, “and Anguy of the Marches. Brave, I’ll give them that. Treacherous and rotten, but brave in some sort of way.”

“Girl said she’d scalped half a hundred Lannister men, and she was only sorry she couldn’t take more to her grave. The boy just prayed to the Red God, and sang marcher ballads on the way to the gallows. Lord Tarly had them all scourged first, but nary a sound-,”

The pitcher shatters onto the floor, and Willow disappears back into the kitchens.

Septon Meribald slowly rises to his feet and follows her. Dog, lying at Pod’s feet near a window, whines softly to himself.

Brienne is silent, as is Jory and Hyle. She’s glad Gendry isn’t here. She’s not sure what he’d do, and she doesn’t want to know. If Lyle Crakehall is aware that he sits in the inn that the Heddle family used to run, he doesn’t make mention of it, and by late afternoon when his men have sobered up, starts them on their way back to Darry, quite pleased with his success today. Jory does not relax until the cloud of dust the riders have kicked up have passed. 

“You didn’t hear all of it,” Brienne says, when all is quiet once more. Faint, wrenching wails can still be heard from the kitchen. “Tarly is scouring the surrounding lands for outlaws, yes, and they are gathering a host to march up the River Road. But Ser Jaime attempted to send terms to Riverrun a fortnight past, to negotiate for the release of hostages from the Twins and Riverrun.”

Jory feels a sudden deep sense of foreboding, if she hadn’t before. She never met Jeyne Heddle. But she’s afraid she will come to know what it is to lose a sister, sooner or later. “And?”

“Before there had even been time enough for a raven response they had gotten back Daven Lannister’s head, and a note proclaiming that Robb Stark still rules as King of the North and the Trident,” Brienne says. “Ser Daven would have been one of their most valuable captives, along with Lady Genna and her husband, or some of the other western lords there. If they are executing them…”

“But Robb is dead,” Jory’s voice sounds small and worried, even to herself. Should she not be overjoyed? If there is any chance her king could have survived the massacre, should this not be a good sign…

“Alive or dead, whoever truly rules from Riverrun is out for revenge, not a parley,” Brienne is regarding the long table of discarded dishes and cups with an inscrutable look. “There’s little hope of making peace between the two sides now. Ser Jaime promised me-,” she stops, then closes her mouth, swallows, and exhales. “Ser Lyle offered to bring me to him, when I showed him my note that I went about the king’s business. Said he would welcome any ally at a time like this, grieving his cousin, fearing for his aunt.”

“Brienne, you can’t,” Jory snaps. “For the love of the gods- they could very well hold you at Harrenhal, or the Kingslayer might compel you to fight for him-,”

“I’m not,” says Brienne, and while she has often sounded very young and very sad to Jory, she seems older now, a woman in truth, hardened and weary, not just a battered girl readying herself for another impossible fight. “I cannot. If I thought I could convince him to somehow… to resolve this peaceably, I would. But House Lannister is not who I swore an oath to. And the promise I made him in turn was that I would find Sansa Stark and keep her safe. That’s what I will do. What we must do. We’ve lost enough time already. If the weather worsens, entering the mountains could be near impossible.”

“Then we can leave tomorrow morning,” Jory starts to gather dishes up, for want of something, anything to do with her hands. Don’t think about it, just don’t. The war here can’t be her first thought anymore. They know their quest and that’s what they mean to see through to the end, not this endless battle between wolves and lions. Once they’ve found Sansa, they’ll worry about the rest, figure out a way to get her to allies in the North if the Riverlands are gripped with full-scale war once more. White Harbor, the Manderlys, perhaps. There is nothing she or Brienne can do now, here. 

Pod helps her scrub dishes for the next two hours. Her hands are red and raw by the time they’re done, more battered by the simple chore than the fight that set her blood to singing. “Lady Ser Brienne wouldn’t let me go with them to help you,” Pod informs her dolefully. “I wanted to, though. I’m stronger now.”

“You are,” Jory feels a sisterly sort of affection for him, sty under the eye and all, and ruffles his dark hair. “Go to bed, Podrick Payne. We’ll be riding out early come morn.” 

Afterwards, she stands in the dark kitchen, then sun having long since set, then steps outside, around the main building, looking towards the stables and the forge. She can see the lantern in the window lit from here. Jory hesitates for a few moments, wiping her wet, soapy hands on her blood-stained breeches, then wipes at the cut on her cheek, and walks across the frost covered ground towards the flickering light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Nell next chapter.
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. I feel like this chapter is pretty straightforward but here's the gist of it: I still wanted some sort of confrontation with members of the BC. There was zero chance of this living up to canon standards simply because we have not actually seen the Brave Companions directly through the eyes of any POV characters in this fic, and I didn't want to even attempt to rewrite Brienne's remarkable scene from the book (which, by the way, 'no chance and no choice' is I think not only the best Brienne scene overall, but one of the best written sequences in the series and really speaks to ASOIAF's themes of doing the right thing even when the odds are shit). I figured why not get Lyle Crakehall in there, given how passionate about hunting down outlaws he is in Jaime's POV. 
> 
> 2\. And, of course, the overall news of the.... dire diplomatic relations between Team Stark and Team Lannister/Tarly. Will Randyll Tarly's scorched earth strategy against the Brotherhood help matters? No. Has Robb's 'give 'em back to the gods' strategy as seen with Daven Lannister help matters? No. I have nothing against Brienne/Jaime as a ship/coupling and I am really fond of their relationship arc in the books, but ultimately this is not a story about that particular relationship dynamic, and I felt like a detour to Brienne trying to talk Jaime out of going to war against Tullys again was just going to stall the story out and be pointless/unnecessary overall. We know a clash is going to happen regardless. Sunk cost fallacy and all. And it's not as if Jaime 'we'll put the baby in the trebuchet' Lannister was really sticking so hard to that oath in canon regardless. I mean, he orders Forley Prester to kill Jeyne Westerling and Edmure if they try to escape their armed escort to Casterly Rock towards the end of AFFC.
> 
> 3\. Leave it to Hyle to ruin a perfectly nice date. In the end it's less about Hyle himself and whether he really cares what Jory does with who, and moreso the hard line of the society Jory and Gendry live in. Jory might talk the talk about how she's 'just' a fourth born daughter of a 'minor' house but she is still a lady and Gendry is still a commoner, and in any other circumstances in Westeros, had they been found alone together like that, whether it was innocent or not, it would have ended really badly for Gendry in particular. Bear Island, Jory is reminded, is not the entire world. On the other hand, at least Jory gets in some good insults when she does briefly snap there. 
> 
> 4\. Jeyne and Anguy's Bonnie and Clyde act caught up to them, and I mean that with the utmost respect. I felt like I needed to show some kind of real human toll, and unfortunately, we have met Jeyne Heddle through Dana's POV, even if Jory hasn't, and we got a look at her dedication to revenge against House Lannister and westermen in general there. I'm not sure a peaceful retirement from vigilantism was ever in the cards for her, and notably, this happened after she parted ways with Grey Wind at Riverrun. 
> 
> 5\. In the opinion of the ladies of House Mormont, Jorah was a punk-ass bitch and if they ever see him again, it's Kill Bill Sirens on sight. I'm sorry (not really).


	63. Donella XLV

300 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell spends the three days before they see battle attempting to teach Arya how to sew. More accurately, attempting to teach Arya how to sew in a manner that will not result in anyone losing their temper and throwing their embroidery into the fire. It’s too cold now to spend much time in the godswood, and while they’ve yet to see what Nell would deem any significant snowfall beyond some flurries on the wind, there is a gradual sense that it is coming. 

Riverrun is congested and crowded once again; even with the battle lines drawn and men disposed to the Kneeling Man and the lands between High Heart and Acorn Hall. A triangle, as Harrion Karstark put it. They are flanked on three sides, with the best of their knights held back, as Edmure held them back during the Battle of the Fords, so they can be sent here or there for reinforcements. Still, she has to fight back a wave of tension every time she so much as glances at the maps, constantly wondering if this is the wisest course, if they could have done things differently-

But they’re not likely to find themselves exchanging pleasantries under truce banners anytime soon, not after Robb sent Lannister and Tarly Daven’s head. On the other hand, they were able to at least coordinate some attempt to herd the smallfolk to safety before enemies came up the River Road. Most have fled over the Red Fork towards Oldstones and Fairmarket, now that they are no longer under Frey control. That is one of Nell’s few solaces; they need not fear another stab in the back from the Crossing, because the Freys simply can’t afford to extend themselves in such a way again. No, they’ve hunkered down in their castle to wait for the dust to settle. No doubt they’ll come crawling back out at the end of it, either to congratulate the Kingslayer on a hard-earned victory, or to beg mercy from the Starks.

If we just push them back, Nell keeps telling herself, push them back and make them think twice of invading yet again, they might retreat back to Harrenhal once winter’s begun. They might be summoned back by the queen or Kevan Lannister to attend to other matters, like the mad Sparrows, or Stannis’s remaining forces on Dragonstone. There’s been rumors the Tyrells sent men there to wrench it back, under Cersei’s command. Nell can’t imagine why. What does the Iron Throne want with Dragonstone? 

Stannis fled to the Wall, everyone knows that by now. She’s trying not to think about it herself, trying not to consider what she might find if they- when they- finally make it back into the North. It would be the cruelest jape to find her father and his men defeated at the hands of a Baratheon then perfectly willing to take what should be Lysara’s inheritance, her kingdom, and give it to a bastard uncle. Would Robb even recognize Jon Snow, were he to lay eyes on him again? Would Jon Snow recognize him? 

Now she’s laying eyes on Arya, who, aged two years and slightly taller and even gawkier, if that’s possible, looks so strikingly like her bastard brother that it’s hard to think of much else. She wonders how Catelyn feels. It must be torturous, at times. First to arrive to find a bastard with your husband’s look installed in the household, while your own son, the trueborn heir, took after yourself, and then to finally bear a child with the ‘proper’ Stark look, only for that child to look more like their bastard brother than any of her trueborn siblings, or even yourself. Nell doesn’t know what she would have done, had she learned that Robb had sired some bastard in the West while fighting there. Let alone what she would have done had he brought the infant back with him, and expected it to share a cradle with Lysara. 

Arya has managed what is supposed to a bird. To be fair, it looks better than the fish she tried to embroider the week before. Nell has found that the best results occur when she simply doesn’t say anything to Arya while embroidering, beyond idle chatter. The more she makes of Arya’s handicraft, even if it is a gently worded reminder or the occasional praise, the more flustered and self conscious Arya become, and then she inevitably makes some mistake and compounds it in an attempt to correct course before Nell notices. Nell found no such well of patience in Sara Snow when she was learning how to embroider properly, but then again, her mistakes as a child were the result of laziness or pouting because she wanted to go outside. It’s not that Arya doesn’t try, it’s just… 

Well, not every lady need be a talented embroider. When it is simple construction of a garment, more akin to the work a common seamstress would do, Arya tends to fare a little better. And she is making marginal improvement with her music lessons; Nell is teaching her on the same harp Roslin once taught her and Arwyn on. She fidgets less with that, even if her notes are often tuneless and haphazard. She has come to enjoy dancing, though, because Nell lets Dana take the lead on that, and it’s impossible to feel awkward or self conscious when dancing with someone like Dana, who laughs at herself just as much as everyone else. 

Occasionally Zia will join them, although she often retreats in the face of Arya’s glares, not out of genuine intimidation, but likely a desire to avoid provoking any attention from the Starks in general. Fair Walda, Zia, and Waltyr Frey may not be held in dungeon cells, and are allowed to walk the castle freely, but they all seem very aware that this could change at any moment, depending on their kin’s actions. Or Robb’s inclinations.

“Those are the wings,” Arya mutters, as Nell leans over to inspect her work. She jabs a skinny finger at the outline. “It’s a hawk.” She hesitates, then adds, “Mother said I could learn to hawk, if I do well in my other lessons.” 

Nell’s not surprised Catelyn’s given in and decided to start using honey instead of salt. Hawking and hunting are both popular pursuits for noblewomen; no one would insinuate otherwise, even if some would argue that is no excuse for a highborn maid to ride astride instead of a more demure and chaste side-saddle. Granted, these are not ideal conditions for which to propose that Arya be allowed to go riding off at any hour of the day, but the Whispering Wood could perhaps still be considered safe enough. 

Besides, the entire point of making some attempt to educate a child is under the assumption that the child will live long enough to use the education. They can’t go about every day throwing up their hands and saying ‘oh well, it doesn’t matter, we’re still at war’. Nothing would get done otherwise. They must assume that eventually- soon- gods willing- there will come a time when they are not at war or in immediate danger, and when that time comes, Arya will likely be flowered and near an age to wed, and so she ought to be prepared for such an event. 

Nell has not dared so much as say the words ‘betrothal’ or ‘wed’ or ‘marriage’- she might not know Arya so well, but she knows enough to not provoke that particular sore spot- but that is the underlying assumption. She is a Stark. Sansa is missing, assumed dead, and even were she recovered, she is still legally bound to Tyrion Lannister unless the marriage can be declared annulled by some sort of religious authority. Bran and Rickon are dead. Lysara is missing, possibly- No. But the fact remains that if they need someone to wed again, it may very well be Arya. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not even a year from now. She is only eleven. But someday.

Nell knows she will likely be the one to arrange it. Her or Catelyn. Robb is in no state to be negotiating betrothals. She has made peace with the matter- it may be that she has the choice of whether or not to take on the responsibility, and thus the blame, for the marriage in order to preserve Arya’s faltering but still recovering relationship with her mother. Catelyn has just one child left to her, in truth. Better that Arya loathe Nell, her distant and often cold good sister, for a husband she mistrusts or despises, than her own mother, her flesh and blood. It would be a final, terrible blow for Catelyn, and Nell has decided that if it can be avoided, it ought to be. Plenty of people hate her. What is one more?

Perhaps she is exaggerating. Perhaps Arya will change, soften to the idea of marriage once she’s flowered. Perhaps there will be some lucky coincidence and she will genuinely enjoy the company of some lordling whom happens to be the best political match. She might come to accept the idea of it, at least, to learn how to leverage it to her advantage, as Nell certainly did. Not all girls are alight with dreams of handsome husbands and sweet little babes. Nell had no such inclinations. But she understood she had very little choice in the matter, and she then thought about how she might use it to her own gain, and she adapted, and she prepared herself-

And then she got that very same lucky coincidence; she was to wed Robb, and he was very difficult to dislike, and even before she loved him, she trusted and respected him. But that is not every marriage. It is not even most of them. She doesn’t know what to do. Arya is not her daughter. Should this not be Catelyn’s responsibility? Yet Nell is her queen, her elder sister by marriage, and she still has some duty to the girl, to teach her how to conduct herself and how to negotiate in a world full of men who will often do their level best to crush her underfoot, even inadvertently. 

So she says, “Very good. I can see the wings, of course. And certainly you must learn to hawk. We could have a winter riding habit made for you, would you like that?”

Arya is wearing a dress now, albeit a slightly ill-fitting and very plain one. The debates over clothing have been endless. Arya has conceded to wear dresses most days, except when she is practicing her swordplay with the Blackfish and Ned Dayne. Occasionally Harry Karstark will join in to offer some advice, even if Arya often rebukes him for it. In terms of shoes, Catelyn has given up; Arya can wear whatever she wants on her feet so long as they are clean. Hence the near constant presence of the riding boots. It looks a little ridiculous with the dress, but with her hair growing back out again, Nell at least can tell herself her good sister doesn’t look half a boy anymore. 

“Not if I have to ride side-saddle in it,” Arya says dubiously, looking less than convinced in Nell’s faint praise. 

Nell sets down the sewing frame, then massages the brim of her nose. “I think we can manage that. Why don’t we set this aside for now, and go out to practice shooting before the daylight’s gone? You did quite well yesterday; your arms are getting stronger.”

Arya feels at one of her lanky arms with a sheepish look, then steps back eagerly as Nell stands. “I’ll have a bow of my own someday. Not just Needle,” she says firmly. “That way I don’t have to wait for people to be so close before I-,” she mimes a jabbing motion. 

“I’d rather see you shooting arrows at people from afar than trying to get close enough to stab them, yes,” Nell says dryly. “As would your mother, I’m sure.”

“Lord Harry says his sister had a hunting bow too,” Arya tells her as they leave the small sewing room. “He said she’s almost as good a shot as you.”

“Lord Karstark flatters me,” Nell intones with no small amount of sarcasm. With Robb so… inaccessible to her at present, Arya seems to have taken Harry Karstark in particular for a stand-in elder brother. Nell wonders if it has anything to do with his faint resemblance to Jon Snow, before she pushes the thought away. They hardly look all that similar. Both tall and lean and dark-haired yes, but so are a thousand other northmen. And Jon Snow never could manage much of a beard, from what she recalls. 

But she mislikes the influence Karstark might have on her. Arya’s family has been whittled down to her mother, her brother, her good sister, and a direwolf. The last thing they need is for her to feel more akin to the Karstarks than them. Nell isn’t worried about Harry Karstark making any sort of offer (or demand) for Arya’s hand at the moment- the situation here is too fragile, he’s a decade her senior, and she’s not yet flowered, but it could certainly be a possibility in the future. Worse men have demanded far less for their loyalty. 

Just thinking about it makes her feel faintly ill, not because she genuinely believes Harrion Karstark has any such sinister designs on a girl of eleven, but because these things will have to be considered eventually. In the next few years, at least. There is not a rich crop of northern lords around Arya’s age. Jojen Reed, perhaps, if he still lives. One of the younger Umber sons. Perhaps some boys from the Flint branches or the mountain clans. She may be wed to a river lord instead. Nell has no idea how she might feel about that, but there’s no way to tactfully broach the topic, not at present. 

Arya is too fragile. Not physically, of course, but what Catelyn said about a dog huddled in a corner, guarding her food, watching the doors, is not entirely wrong. She’s been through horrific events. She’s seen things no child should have to witness. Even referencing marriage as something far in the future might set her off, and on top of everything else, Nell does not want to have to worry about Robb’s little sister running away for the hills to join up with some outlaw band because she’s convinced they’re about to wed her to a Piper or a Mallister. 

“When we do return to the North,” she tells Arya as they walk to her rooms to collect their cloaks, “you will have other girls your age for company. Much better than here. I know it’s not easy, without any other children-,”

“I like Lacey and Myrtle and Finn,” Arya blurts out in confusion, and the two of them stare at each other, before Nell realizes she’s speaking of the children of servants and smallfolk. Of course. They’ve been her- well, not her playmates, perhaps, but that is who she’s been surrounded by for nigh two years. Of course she sees them as her peers, her equals. And it is not- Nell is not so blind as to suggest that they are of no worth or value- yes, there is wisdom to be had in recognizing that men and women can rise from very low stations to very high ones, that merit does have some place, and that the smallfolk are not one undistinguished horde of unwashed, uneducated, weak-willed halfwits. 

But the fact remains that they are not the first choice of who Arya should be surrounding herself with. One day she will be a lady of some great household, and the people of it must respect her as their mistress, not their friend or confidante. Barbrey taught Nell that. She was never raised to be cruel or thoughtless with servants or tradesmen, but there was supposed to be some degree of separation. But what can she do? Chasten Arya for making friends of them now? After what she’s been through? Order her to sit alone in her room and sew? 

They could all be dead in a week. 

“I’m glad,” she lies badly instead, although she can tell Arya knows at least a little of what she’d just been thinking, for the girl’s face reddens and pinches into a little scowl. “You shouldn’t spend too much time alone.”

“Like you?” Arya snaps, and then seems to immediately regret it, closing her mouth and glancing around as if expecting her mother to materialize and dress her down right then and there. 

Nell stops walking completely, as much as she wants to stride through the flare of shame and embarrassment and exhaustion. Arya’s not wrong. She does spend much of her time alone. Alone or with Grey Wind. Or with Robb. And she feels most alone when she is with the latter, for all of the temporary comfort being able to see and feel him might bring her. She has Dana back, and of course she is grateful and thrilled for that, but Dana and her went through very different things these past months. 

Things no less difficult- she won’t pretend Dana, running for her life through the woods, crossing rivers, hiding in flooded keeps, had some easy time of it, but that was the longest they’d ever been parted. Things are different now. She fears for Lysara. Dana fears for Marianne. They both are at times frightened of Robb. It’s not so simple as just pasting themselves back together again. 

Nell’s arms feel very empty. It shouldn’t be like this. She should have her daughter with her, right now, at this very moment. Instead she has nothing but cold, damp air, the wind picking up outside, and Robb’s trial of a sister looking at her guiltily, waiting to be shouted at or perhaps smacked like a misbehaving puppy. “Yes,” she says at last. “Like me. When I was your age, I was alone much of the time. I had my aunt and my governess, but they had other duties to tend to. I had myself. My horse. And my hunting bow. And I was not a very pleasant little girl to be around.”

“I didn’t mean it,” Arya says, fidgeting with her hands. Her nails are dirty again, and chewed down to the quick. At least she’s stopped chewing on her lips. It was getting to the point where Nell was concerned they were about to start bleeding, should she give a rare smile. “I- I’m sorry, Your Grace.” She hesitates, then adds, “I’m sorry about your baby.”

Nell goes very stiff and very cold, then looks away; it is the only thing she can do, because she cannot stand to stare down at that long, earnest Stark face for a moment longer, those sad, honest grey eyes and that petulant Stark mouth. Lysara’s eyes were light. They could be grey now. “You shouldn’t be sorry,” she hears herself say in a crisp, distant voice. “You’ll be seeing her soon enough, when we retake the North from those who betrayed us.”

“Nell! Arya!” Dana is coming down the corridor, smiling a little stiffly, Harry Karstark on her heels like a very stubborn shadow. 

Arya shuffles back against the wall to let them pass, but Dana comes to a sudden halt instead. “Arya,” she says, extending her hand. “Come along, we’ll get your things while Donella speaks with Lord Karstark.”

“About the battle?” Arya asks sharply, jerking her head round, even as Dana leads her away. That she lets herself be led at all, Nell thinks, is a testament to how much she trusts Danelle. She’s seen Arya when she does not want to be led. The girl could twist out of anyone’s grip, bound away like a wild cat. Instead she reluctantly follows Dana, although she calls out, “Don’t go without saying goodbye! Tell Robb! And Grey Wind! They can’t leave without saying goodbye!” Her voice sounds high and girlish as it fades, not the hoarse little rasp she sometimes uses, as if she had rocks lodged in her throat. 

Nell turns to face Harrion, trying to wipe the last of the grief and unease from her expression. “Is there something you wanted to discuss?”

“Yes,” he says mildly, but not here. “The godswood would suit better.”

Because it is bitterly cold out and most of the men are near braziers, warming their hands, Nell assumes. She sends a passing maid for her cloak, then follows Harry Karstark out-of-doors once more, bracing against the wind. The godswood looks wilder in its decay than it ever did in full, polished bloom of early autumn. “Is everything in order? Do we know when we should expect to see combat?”

“I’m riding out on the morrow for the Kneeling Man,” he says. “His Grace will depart for Acorn Hall. The Blackfish will lead the men positioned along the Tumblestone. Any day after that, I should say. They’re coming up the River Road; if they can break past to siege us from the east, they might stand a chance. But they won’t,” he finishes with a confidence she does not feel. “We’ve spiked and caltropped the Red Fork, and we’ve got archers a-plenty ready to rain fire from High Heart. Whether they try to come at us from along the riverfront or over the land to the south, we’ll be ready.”

“And if one side fails-,”

“If one side of the defenses fail, the other two will fold in to accommodate for the lost ground.” He sounds so sure of it. She searches his face for some trace of forced boldness, but finds none. “I’ve spent the past year fighting on these lands. And Brynden Tully knows his way around a command.”

“I know,” Nell says. “He is the reason why Riverrun lasted so long against the Lannisters in the first place.”

“That and geography,” Harry snorts. “They built this keep in the best location they could. One of the only natural defences for leagues and leagues,” he gestures to the walls, and beyond them, the distant sound of the river. “The rest of the holdfasts are just sitting a-field, waiting to be taken. No mountains. No valleys. No coastline, except for Seagard. When I was a boy my maester at the Karhold taught me that the Riverlands were all but designed to be conquered.”

“Encouraging conquest at an early age, I see,” she remarks with little humor.

He smiles faintly. “Sometimes learned men like to live vicariously through others. The North has attempted to conquer the Vale before, you know.”

“With nothing to show for it in a thousand years, not even the Three Sisters,” she retorts. “Have you brought me out here for a geography lesson, my lord? My aunt kept no maester, but I was taught all the same.”

“A governess, you had,” he recalls. “I remember. Some Ryswell bastard, was it?”

There is no real derision in his tone, just frank statement, but she could slap him all the same. “Her name was Sara Snow.”

His brow furrows slightly, as if he were about to ask something more, but he remembers himself. “I wanted to speak to you about the Vale.”

“You would be better served speaking to Catelyn about it. Her sister ruled it for years. Or the Blackfish. He served as one of their household knights. Now Littlefinger has it, and you know the Tullys have little love for him,” she warns. “Nor my good mother. He claimed to be a friend to her husband, then stood aside twiddling this thumbs while they charged Ned Stark with treason.”

“I’m more interested in his son by marriage, not Baelish himself,” Harry says. “Although we will have to treat with one to reach the other. Baelish wed Lysa Arryn, for what cause? Lost love? No. The Lannisters wanted the Vale in their pocket, but what’s come of it? They’ve delivered no forces to assist in retaking the Riverlands for the Iron Throne.”

“You think Baelish has abandoned his loyalty to the Lannisters?” Nell frowns. 

“I think he’d rather spend the winter growing fat at the Bloody Gate, not trying to wrestle the knights of the Vale into submitting to the Iron Throne. You think they have any great love for the Lannisters? That they don’t suspect some sort of conspiracy, after Jon Arryn’s death? They may want to fight, but I doubt it will be for Cersei and her kin.”

“We have appealed to them time and time again when Lady Lysa lived for aid,” Nell has had this conversation too many times, she feels. “It is not coming. There is even less of a chance of it now that she has died-,”

“Not if we offer them something better,” he says sharply. “We appeal directly to Littlefinger’s arrogance. Offer Arya’s hand in marriage to the boy, Robin or Robert or whatever they call him. They’re of a similar age-,”

“Catelyn says he is a sickly, frail thing-,”

“Then Arya shall be cheered, if he dies before the wedding,” Harrion scoffs. “We are proposing a betrothal, not an immediate marriage. We include that in our letter, emphasize how desperate we are, how grateful we would be for his support, we tell Petyr Baelish that Brynden and Catelyn Tully would be forever in his debt, whatever it takes- Even five thousand men, a mere fraction of their fighting forces, could make all the difference.”

“He will toss the letter into the fire, most likely.”

“There is a chance he will think himself a kingmaker, and agree. As it stands, Arya is Robb’s heir-,”

Nell holds up a hand in warning. “Do not. Do not dare-,”

“Gods be good, Your Grace,” he snaps sarcastically, “you know my meaning.”

“I take your meaning for what it is- that you have always been more than willing to write my daughter off as a loss, that you would barter away Catelyn’s daughter, Robb’s sister-,”

“Don’t pretend at naivety, it doesn’t suit you,” he all but snarls. “I am working with what we have. Do I think we will lose this next battle? No. But the one after that? The one after that? When they regroup, when more reinforcements are sent from the capitol, or the West- I don’t intend to spend my winter fighting other men’s wars for them when my own home, my people, my birthright, is at stake.”

“You and a dozen other lords!” she spits. “You have no concept of- the Karhold yet stands, does it not? It has not been taken, no one has usurped you-,”

“My uncle holds it, and gods only know his intentions for my sister,” Harrion nearly shouts. “My sister, whose betrothed is here, fighting as well! You worry for your daughter- well, I can assure you, you are not alone in that, Your Grace! Alys is my responsibility-,”

“Then perhaps your father should have left a son behind to defend her virtue,” Nell sneers back at him- the wind howls in a sudden gust, and he steps back, likely so he does not spit in her face, something that might very well cost him his head.

“I would strongly advise that you consider sending the raven,” he says, the fury replaced with familiar frosted iron. “For all our sakes. Put your pride aside-,”

“I will not be lectured on my pride by a bloody Karstark!” she hisses. 

“And I’ll not lose the skin off my back for a bloody Bolton,” he rejoins, seemingly washing his hands of the matter, and stalks off. Of course. He’d likely copy Robb’s handwriting and write the letter himself, if it came down to it. Another man who can’t decide if he’d rather play the even-keeled counselor or the bloodthirsty warrior king. 

It is almost a relief to walk back into the comforting warmth of Riverrun, to trace back the path to the galley across from the stables, and to take up bow in hand. She does better with the targets then she has in week’s- arrow in the heart after arrow in the heart, while Arya looks on, impressed, and Dana eats a shriveled little apple and sits in the windowsill. When Catelyn comes to collect them for dinner, she looks visibly surprised by Nell’s red-faced, breathless appearance, her hair escaping its thick braid, her hands sweaty.

Robb is not present to dine with them- out hunting again, no doubt, one final romp before the battle, but Grey Wind prowls the room and takes turns lying across their feet, or sticking his snout in their laps, and Nell scratches behind his torn and scarred ear and wishes she did not feel this silly guilt. She hasn’t agreed to anything. Any offer made would likely amount to nothing. But if she is going to do this, she knows she is not going to discuss it with Catelyn beforehand. She is Arya’s mother, aye, but the ultimate authority on who Arya will wed, and when, is Robb, and therefore Nell. Better Nell than a Karstark deciding it for them all, surely.

She will word the letter carefully. She’ll make no promises until they are speaking of actual figures of men and supplies. She is not going to sell Robb’s sister into marriage for a few dozen green knights. She might consider it for just five thousand men and a rich supply train winding its way down from the mountains before the snows come. It would be no immediate thing. Arya would not have to go anywhere until years from now. The boy is weak and sickly. He might be dead by then. 

She will beg their forgiveness if she has to. Later.

When Robb finally comes to bed that night, he smells of the river again. She twines her warm legs with his cold one, entangles her form with his under the furs, as if she could somehow replace his coldness with her warmth, stir some life back into him. He puts his face in her unbound hair as he used to, but even his heartbeat feels different under her palm, slow and erratic, not the steady pounding of a drum that it used to be. “I miss you,” she says, although she meant to say, “I will miss you, when you go tomorrow.”

She should be heartbroken, teary that he is leaving again, even if only temporarily. What if he falls in battle a second time?

 _Then you will summon Thoros of Myr to bring him back_ , a little cold voice says.

Would he remember even less, then? Less of her? 

_What does it matter? So long as he can wear armor and lift a sword. So long as he gets you back to Winterfell._

She suffocates the voice inside her head. It feels like treason, like a betrayal, like he ought to throttle her for even thinking such a thing. And he could. One-handed, even. He’s stronger now. She makes a fist with her other hand and clenches it to her chest. Her own heartbeat feels slower as well. Mayhaps she’s not warming him; he’s just making her colder. As if to reassure her, or motivated by some very old memory, he kisses her neck, just under her earlobe. She rolls over neatly into his embrace, or what should be an embrace. He settles an arm over her hip, and she listens to him try to lull himself to sleep. It doesn’t work. It so rarely works. He will spend most of the night lying here like this, half-awake, unable to let go of the world, and then he will rise before dawn with Grey Wind, and go pick out the horse he thinks least likely to panic and throw him when it smells the death that clings to him like woodsmoke. 

“I miss you,” she says again, hollowly. _Come back. Please come back to me_. She’s said that before. In a dream, maybe. _Don’t go_.

“I’m here,” Robb replies, but his voice is not. She can hear Grey Wind’s panting in front of the hearth. He doesn’t come up on the bed with them anymore. 

She shuts her eyes to it, and lays her head down on his chest, next to the black hole of a wound that still weeps rot and ruin on occasion. Where her father’s sword made a home. It never really left. It is still there, in bed with them, like some leech. She digs her nails into the skin, waits for him to react, to even wince or flinch or grow angry with her for causing him pain, however minor. There is no response. His breathing does not even hitch. She closes her eyes. Behind her eyelids, the hole magnifies, a black pit in the snowy ground, not his pale chest, and a thousand worms and maggots writhe under the winter sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is going to be, gods willing, last Nell chapter at Riverrun! Should also be pretty long, we'll see more of the Freys and Dana.
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. This chapter had a hard start because I'm never sure how to write Nell and Arya interacting, as they didn't spend much time together before the girls went south with their father. Arya sort of views her as a stranger, to an extent, and Nell really isn't sure how to interact with kids that age, period. She's trying to be encouraging while also keeping Arya on what she views as a 'proper path' to becoming a well-respected and accomplished young noblewoman, but there are always going to be some big divides there. Nell doesn't have an issue with Arya's weapons training, but is very aware that as Arya is approaching adolescence, marriage is going to have to be a topic of conversation, probably an unpleasant one. Nell is also prepared to sort of 'take the fall' there out of respect for Catelyn and Arya's recovering relationship- she is willing to be the bad guy so Arya does not blame Catelyn, if a betrothal does happen in the future.
> 
> 2\. It's not my intention to portray Arya as a brat or malicious kid- she genuinely did not mean to really hurt Nell in this chapter, she is just an emotional 11 year old who was upset by Nell's very blatant dismay that she prefers to spend time around 'common' children. Arya's never met Lysara so for her, her niece is really just an abstract concept, not a real member of the family. Arya is also very self conscious around Nell, mostly due to Nell's sort of forcibly projected image of being this severely dignified and eloquent northern women at all times. They don't hate each other, it's just stressful circumstances and not a great situation over all.
> 
> 3\. Harry Karstark thinks they stand a good chance of defending Riverrun and their little pocket of resistance for now, but is also trying to think in the long-term here, and given what our characters know at present, a last-ditch effort to appeal to Baelish seems like as good an idea as any. Harry thinks of himself as being very pragmatic, and as dismayed as Nell is with the idea, her issue with it mostly due to personal animosity between them- as the heir to a Great House, Sweetrobin would ordinarily be considered a good match for Arya, were his health not so poor. But Harry suggesting that Arya is really Robb's heir at the moment, not Lysara, of course is always going to set Nell off.
> 
> 4\. Lots of parallels in canon between the Harry and Alys brother-sister relationship, and the Jon Snow and Arya one. In general I think the Karstarks are very interesting and I wish we saw more of them in fics about the North.


	64. Donella XLVI

300 AC - RIVERRUN

Nell didn’t want to have a shouting match with Dana and Arya at the same time, so she is glad Catelyn is handling her daughter, while Nell tries to manage Dana’s disgruntlement. Dana is a woman grown, not a child, and so her rages are far more subdued, but she still has the Flint temper, savage and biting, and it’s been so long since Nell’s had a proper argument with her that she is almost bemused by the whole thing. Almost. Perhaps if this was over something they would have fought over as maids of fourteen, shallow and petty, it’d be more amusing and less frustrating.

“This is absurd,” Dana is struggling to keep her voice down; it’s far too cold to have this match outside, so they are in Nell’s chambers, very aware of a very similar fight behind had next door between Stark mother and daughter. “I’ve been back here little more than a month and a half, and now you seek to send me away to Seagard with the women and children? Again? While you sit here and brood and watch the fighting with a spyglass?”

“Well,” Nell says, arching a dark eyebrow. “You are a woman, Danelle.”

Dana picks up a pillow from the bed and hurls it at her, queen or not, as though they were girls again. It misses. “Don’t be clever with me, Nellie Stark. Catelyn and Arya I can understand- they’re important, they are Starks, should the worst befall us, better to have them well away from the siege and any Lannisters- what of me? I’m no great prize,” she scoffs indignantly, “no gives a damn-,”

“You are chief amongst my ladies, my most trusted friend-,”

“Your other ladies are Fair Walda and Zia Frey! Barely more than hostages at this point, who happen, I might add-,” Dana points a long finger at her in accusation, “to be staying here!”

“It should come as no great surprise to you that I value your safety more than I do theirs!”

“This is ridiculous,” Dana groans. “I cannot believe we are having this argument. No. I am staying here, with you, come what may-,”

“No, you are going to Seagard,” Nell says stubbornly, “and if I have to have your cousin lash you to a horse-,”

“Which one?” Dana retorts. “Ben’s dead-,” her voice breaks momentarily, and she closes her eyes, collecting herself, “the Greatjon got Rodwell killed during his bloody hostage exchange- that leaves Errold, Gawen, and Cregan- oh, pardon me, Your Grace, they’ve already marched off with Harry Karstark or-,” she fumbles when it comes to Robb’s name, as she always does. Nell sees the way her friend looks at him. 

She wants to be angry with her for it- Robb is still- there is still something in him, some semblance of a heart or spirit, even if it is cold and deadened, she wants to rebuke Dana for thinking him a monster, but she cannot do so without feeling like a hypocrite, not when she barely prevented Robb from calling for another execution when they had official word of Lannister and Tarly on the march. He wanted to send a message. She told him swords would serve better than heads. As if there was much hope of appealing to a dead man’s pride. That’s not what keeps him going, not anymore. But he did listen, if only because she was near undone with a combination of panic and fury in her haste to keep him from doing something so unsound. 

Part of her worries the only reason he relented was because of Harrion Karstark’s silent presence, the tension in his voice when he urged Robb to reconsider, to prove his mettle on the battlefield once more, not with more blood in the godswood. “Let your men have someone to draw strength from out in the field,” he’d said quietly, “rather than more death here. I think the rivermen have seen enough bloodshed in their own castles.” So was it really her frenzy that stayed him, her pleading and wheedling, or Karstark’s iron? 

Dana fills silent, arms locked under her breasts, glowering at Nell, who glares back. “Don’t make me command it.”

“If you really do lose Riverrun, there’d be little hope for Seagard-,”

“No,” Nell snaps. “Jason Mallister would find a ship, any ship, to see you back to the North.”

“What, so we could rally an army at Flint’s Finger?” Dana barks incredulously. “Do you hear yourself? Will you not just let me be here with you? I’ve endured worse-,”

“You have,” Nell cuts her off coldly, “because of my misjudgments. My failings.” She swallows; it is painful. “It was my fault you were even there at the Twins that night. My fault you were almost killed, or captured-,”

“I knew the risks when I came south with you,” Dana shakes her head, but her blue eyes are wet with sorrow. “Nell. You cannot blame yourself. You could not have known-,”

“I should have,” Nell turns from her. “I should have. I was careless. I put my faith in men who were only too eager to take advantage of it. My father-,”

“Nell,” Dana comes to her, puts her arm around her in an expression of sisterly comfort. Nell doesn’t shake it off, but she almost feels she should. Dana should resent her, at least a little. Part of Dana should hate. Were Nell the one who’d been dragged along on this wild goose chase- two years of unchanging civil war- she’d be furious. She’d be bitter. She’d be longing for home, for peace, for anything but more running and fighting. “You couldn’t have known. Not even… Robb didn’t know-,”

“I was his daughter. I am his blood,” Nell imagines clenching her heart like a fist in her chest, stopping Roose’s blood from flowing in her, however temporarily. “I should have been more cautious. I should have suspected something after Duskendale, if not sooner. Alerted Robb. I should have gone to Seagard with you and Catelyn and Lysara from the very beginning.”

“Then come with us now,” Dana squeezes her shoulder.

“No,” says Nell. “I’ve never abandoned Riverrun before, I will not do so now. The Blackfish and Karstark, most of the river lords as well. Someone has to hold down order here, keep the smallfolk appeased, be here to answer or send ravens. And I don’t have Lysara anymore, so-,” she coughs so it doesn’t turn into something mortifying, a cry of grief and anguish. “I am staying here.”

“You’re being very stubborn and very foolish,” Dana says shrewdly. She sounds like Barbrey for a moment. “You could just as easily be a beacon of defiance from Seagard. Don’t cleave to a castle.”

“Someday I mean to cleave to Winterfell, and never leave it again,” Nell steps out of her reach now, watches icy rain pelt the window, a wavering shroud of grey outside. Grey Wind is down in the godswood below. She feels as though she could smell him or hear his snuffling from here. “Do you know what is my worst shame, Dana, when I think of you? Not even that you could have been killed, that it is a gods-send that you escaped all of that with your life. That you could have been captured, taken, without a powerful family like the Brackens to stay the Freys’ hands from going too far. That you could ever have been at the mercy of a man like Black Walder or my father.”

“You and I and all our sex have always been at the mercy of men like your father,” Dana says after a moment. “It doesn’t matter what family we are born into when they can sell you just as easily to a cruel master. Do you know what my shame is? I never told Marianne Vance I loved her, and now she is in the company of Roose Bolton and perhaps his whelp as well. Her name means very little in the North. It would not stay much.”

Nell does know what to say to that besides the pit of anger bubbling away in her belly.

“So when you kill them, sire and spawn both,” Dana says, “I want to watch. I want them to know what it feels like to be at anyone’s mercy. You know I’ve never had any taste for vengeance, but just the once, I think I could stomach it very well.”

“I’ve always had the stomach for it,” Nell says, thinking of the white slivers of stretch marks across her belly and thighs, how much blood it took to bring Lysara into the world. She would go through it again a thousand times just to hold her daughter in her arms, and this time, swear to never let her go and keep that oath. 

“I know.” 

When she looks back at Dana, they hold one another’s gaze for a moment. “Think of it this way,” Nell says at last. “I’m doing this more for others’ safety than your own. Should the Kingslayer try to take the castle again, I think you might climb up onto the ramparts to abuse him from above. It would be a severe hindrance to any sort of parley to have you throwing buckets of boiling water down on him.”

“I call you Stark now, but you are still Bethany Bolton’s daughter,” Dana scoffs, although she does chance a small smile. “As if you would not be standing by the gate with an arrow nocked and ready to release all the while.”

In truth, Nell is not even as concerned now about Riverrun being retaken as she was when they fought to keep Tywin’s men from crossing the fords. The odds in terms of numbers are far more even in their favor this time around, and Randyll Tarly has never fought any battles in the Riverlands before. As for the Kingslayer, well, he’s spent the majority of the war imprisoned, and he let Riverrun slip right through his fingers the first time around, did he not? Then Marbrand couldn’t manage to hold onto it long enough to restore it to Lannister rule. The castle itself might as well be a trout, it seems so hard for anyone but the Tullys to hold onto.

But she is nowhere near as confident in the future this time around as she was back then, either. Then she was pregnant, eagerly awaiting a son, full of high spirits after all of Robb’s victories in the West. They’d really seemed to be winning. Stannis Baratheon had seemed on the verge of taking the capitol. She’d allowed herself to hope that this would all be over by the time their babe celebrated their first name day. Well, Lysara will be six moons old by the end of this month, and whether they are fighting Lannisters or Freys or Boltons by then, they will still be at war.

So Catelyn and Arya and brave Dana Flint ride north up the coast to Seagard with an escort of fifty men, moreso for fear of outlaws than of Freys, and Nell stays, which she is used to by now. Staying. Waiting. Watching from afar. Mayhaps it does not even rile her much at this point. What is she going to wish for? Things to move more quickly? Randyll Tarly’s men to materialize on the horizon? No. If the last two years were supposed to be a lesson in patience, she’d had her share of brutal tutors. 

Karstark takes the men under his command to the Kneeling Man, spanning up and down the Kingsroad and the Red Fork between the inn and Riverrun. Brynden Tully commands the troops outside Riverrun, concentrating them primarily at the intersection of the Tumblestone and the Red Fork. Nell grows used to watching their fires from afar every night. Them or the caravans of smallfolk fording the Red Fork to make camp in the Whispering Wood. Unlike the last great battle, Riverrun is no safe haven for them. Nell knows what they must think. Her Grace was welcoming enough before. Now she bars her gates and leaves us and our children to freeze in the woods.

And Robb brings his men down between the peak of High Heart and the small keep of Acorn Hall, a deliberate goading attempt. If they take the onslaught of the attack, more men can easily be shipped down the Red Fork to aid them, and the Blackfish can send knights out across the lands between Riverrun and there as well. So long as these three points hold, Riverrun should never fall under siege. They should be able to maintain control of the Red Fork and the River Road north of Darry.

The first day they see battle is when Randyll Tarly drives four thousand of his men off the River Road as though they were cattle, descending west towards Raventree and Stone Hedge. They burn the former, seize the latter as a base of command, and Harry Karstark receives the panicked occupants of both keeps at the Kneeling Man. Thank the gods Ella Blackwood had the sense to already send her young children up to the inn; she abandoned Raventree without much fuss when she realized Tarly’s intentions. The Brackens, too, have joined them there. The idea of the two feuding families cooped up under one roof could almost be amusing. Nell is just glad she does not have to endure them here.

Refusing Tarly’s obvious bait, Harry Karstark does not stir, refusing to stray from his position along the river, waiting Tarly out instead. Meanwhile, Jaime Lannister takes five thousand men and encircles High Heart, meets with heavy casualties from the archers there, and spends three nights in a row trying to take the hill. Then he turns his attention to Acorn Hall, and the wolves waiting there. But Nell does not hear the news of that until later.

Suffice to say, when Karstark and Tarly do battle, it is a long, grisly affair; three days in a row of brutal, pummeled by half-rain, half-snow, as Tarly strives to break Harry’s lines and send them running back to Riverrun or across the river. It doesn’t work; Nell orders knights from Riverrun to aid them herself, and time and time again, Tarly is forced to retreat back to Stone Hedge in frustration. Meanwhile, Brynden Blackfish sees no action, and waits patiently, something Nell can admit the man in his age is quite good at. 

In the midst of this, without much word from Acorn Hall, and Tarly likely debating the merits of trying to march his men parallel to the River Road towards Riverrun instead, bypassing the inn and its rigorous defenses entirely, although it might very well leave him vulnerable to assault from the south, were Robb and his men to thoroughly trounce the Kingslayer and Strongboar-

Well, Nell almost welcomes the distraction of Fair Walda requesting- demanding- a private audience with her. For the past month Nell has led a largely separate and secluded life from the women- girls- she once counted among her ladies. Walda and Zia may not be in chains or mistreated, but everyone is very aware of their family name, and although Nell has spoken frankly of their efforts to assist her while she was a prisoner at the Twins, and even of Walda’s killing of Black Walder, it’s done little to endear them to the river lords, nevermind the remaining northmen.

“They mistrust them even more for it,” Dana had told her brusquely at one point. “They look at them and see traitors twice over. First to you and yours and their fathers and brothers, for staying silent at the Twins. Second to their own kin. The likes of the Greatjon and Harry Karstark might loathe the Freys, but they’ve even less respect for Walda and Zia. They think a woman who could plot against her own blood even less worthy of their trust.”

“I don’t need Umber or Karstark to trust them,” Nell had replied dryly. “Although I may need them to marry them.”

That had been mostly a jape on her part. Yes, Walda and Zia will have to make good, loyal marriages, but Nell would very bold indeed to try to foist either on Karstark or any of the surviving Umbers. Most of the northmen would not stand for it. The riverlords and their sons may be hardly welcoming of them either, but at least many of their families have wed into the Freys before, and they share a faith and culture in common, have some history together that was not all ill. 

Consigning Walda or Zia to life as an angry northerner’s unwanted bride, to live out their days in a cold and strange keep, surrounded by their husband’s suspicious kin, would be an especially cruel punishment. Men might think it a mercy, but that is because they are men, and they spare little thought for how isolated and crushing a woman’s life can become when she is deprived of friends or family and has nothing to do with herself but make handicraft and breed. 

In all honesty, Nell commends Catelyn for finding happiness at Winterfell in the first place. She was afforded no ladies from the Riverlands when she came to the North as a new mother, she barely knew her husband, and she had not even a sept to pray in at first. And for all his virtues, no one could have ever called Ned Stark very forthcoming and genial. It was likely a cold, quiet marriage for much longer than Nell’s ever was, even if they did find love and warmth for each other after some time together.

“I want a wedding,” Walda tells her. She sits dainty and ladylike on the edge of her seat, perched like a little blonde bird, her head tilted just so, her pale, delicate hands clasped in her lap. Nell struggles to reconcile this Walda with the one who’d just shoved Robb’s sword into Black Walder’s chest, spattered with blood, red-faced, panting and disheveled, voice raw and cracked in half-mad rage and fury. “The sooner, the better.”

“That might be difficult at present,” says Nell, “you may have noticed the vast majority of our men are off fighting.”

“When they return,” Walda wrinkles her nose, as if Nell is being purposefully obtuse. “They’ll win.”

“You sound very confident.”

“They’ll win,” Walda sniffs. “Do you really think Randyll Tarly enjoys sharing a battle command with Jaime Lannister? It’s like two stags locking antlers while the wolf pack circles up around them, ready to bite.”

“What a lovely turn of phrase,” Nell says. “Although perhaps better applied to the Baratheons-,”

“They’re all men, aren’t they? And they all want to rule. How bloody different could it be?” Walda snaps. “Trust me, Your Grace, I’ve seen every variation possible. I’m a Frey. There’s not many different breeds of ambitious, proud, and cocksure.”

“Alright,” says Nell, growing antsy because there could be a raven coming in at any moment with crucial news. “You want a husband. I’ll give you one. But you must allow that you are-,”

“Tainted?” Fair Walda appears unfazed. “Defiled? No, I’ll do you one better. Whorish? A slattern, throwing herself at any passing cock, whether it be related to her or not? Do I seem especially fragile to you?” she demands, removing her hands from her lap and digging them into the arms of her chair, as if to propel herself forward, although she does not dare rise while Nell remains seated. “You think I care what people say of me? I’ve heard it from my own brothers. But it’s not as if these men can afford to be very particular. Maidens are hard to find in these lands as of late, what with the Mountain and then all the outlaws.”

“You are not my friend, but I don’t wish to subject you to a… volatile union,” Nell chooses her words as carefully as she cares to. It’s not as if she needs worry about offending the Freys anymore. “Nor do I wish to subject some unsuspecting man to you, Walda. Can we be frank? What do you want?”

“I want the Twins,” says Walda with a small shrug, as if she asks for no great boon. “I want power. I don’t want to be a lady Frey. I want to be Lady Frey. Unquestioned. If you plan to raze the Twins to the ground, you will spend all winter pulling it down. It wasn’t built to burn easily,” she smiles without showing her teeth. “And you will have far more troubles to deal with if you seek to strip us all of our lands and redistribute them to whoever you feel is deserving. That will just open up debate among your own men as to who deserves what? They’ll fight over them like dogs for table scraps.”

“So you suggest I keep your family in power over the Crossing and let you keep all your lands, your coin, and your titles, while you swan in as the new mistress of the place?” Nell asks with a derisive edge.

“Oh, you can do what you like with the coin. I promise you we have more ferreted away than you’d ever be able to route out. And you can take the tolls from us as well. You can draw up the maps however you like. You can hang and gut and drown whoever you like as well,” Walda says as though they were discussing a menu for an upcoming feast. “I want the keep. If you’re planning on trimming my family tree down some- more so than you already have- you’ll have no complaints from me. Marry off the girls. Send the unwed boys to be wards. But you’ll give the the Twins and a husband. I’ve done great services to you. If I were a man I’d have a knighthood and a wife already.”

“What is to stop me from willing the Twins to a child of Edmure and Roslin?” Nell asks sharply. “Or any of your kinswoman who have wed into other lines. Tyta, Alyx-,”

“Children need to grow up first in order to rule,” says Walda. “And this is going to be a long, brutal winter. Babes don’t tend to fare well. Men sow their seeds, yet they don’t root as they should. Would you not rather have someone you trusted in power there?”

“You assume I trust you.”

At that all derisive arrogance and haughty posturing disappears from Walda. Her eyes flash and she raises her chin. “Black Walder would have killed you and your precious Tully goodmother right then and there,” she says. “I slew a man who meant to have your blood on his hands. I killed him myself, with your husband’s own sword. You think you Northerners are the only ones who note their debts of honor or blood? I saved your life. How do you think your king would be faring, had he taken Riverrun only to find you and his mother both dead? Would your men still have the same confidence in him?”

Nell knows the answer to that as well as Walda so clearly does.

“Who do you want?” she says. “If you think I am going to betroth to you some weak-willed boy you can run ragged over-,”

“Perwyn,” Walda says immediately, surprising Nell.

“Not Olyvar,” she comments. “He is younger. Closer to your age. I would have thought-,”

“Perwyn is the fifteenth son. He has the stronger claim. He has the stomach to see half our family dead and buried under his watch, and not wake up at night weeping for it,” Walda does not speak in admiration or revulsion. It is simply a statement of fact. “Olyvar was always kind to me. But he’s too eager to please, and he hesitates before he swings the sword.”

“If Perwyn refuses the match-,”

“He won’t,” says Walda. 

“You think he would wed you solely for the offer of claiming the Twins?”

“No,” Walda brushes a stray piece of dishwater blonde hair behind a small ear. “He feels guilty, for never intervening with Black Walder and I. They grew up together. He tried to speak to me once about it when I was five-and-ten. I wouldn’t hear a word against Walder then.” She smiles that same thin, humorless stretch of a smile. “He’ll marry me for that. And he’ll take the Twins out of duty, not greed.”

They have word of Tarly abruptly pulling his men back towards Darry the next day. Brynden sends a messenger to tell her that he believes Tarly means to attempt to cross the Red Fork near the Crossroads Inn, then come scything up between the Red Fork and the Blue Fork, to hit them from the north this time, force a battle there instead, where he will have the advantage. Yet he retreats towards Darry, then… halts. For two days. 

Everyone seems befuddled by it. What in the name of the gods is he planning? Has there been some disagreement with the Kingslayer as to how best to approach this? Have his men been attacked by outlaws? The Brotherhood? But that would be nonsensical. Randyll Tarly has near eight thousand well-trained men. What is he afraid of? That almost unsettles Nell more than anything else that has happened this week. 

At least until Daryn Hornwood comes up from the Kneeling Man with more news. He’s soaked to the skin from rain and there is ice in his unruly hair when Nell greets him, but he doesn’t care to dry off first, stumbling over his words the way he used to when he was still Donella Hornwood’s gawky boy, only this time it is not out of nerves, but out of-

“He’s taking them back to King’s Landing,” he finally spits it out. “All of them. He’s marching them back to the capitol-,”

“No,” Nell isn’t saying so out of horror, for once, but sheer shock, “why would he- that has to be wrong, Daryn, they may not have secured any victory here yet, but he only lost a few hundred men to Karstark. He can’t mean to go back for reinforcements-,”

“He’s not going back for reinforcements,” Daryn looks as though he wants to grab her by the arms and spin her around in a circle, his hands are shaking. “He and his men are the reinforcements.”

“King’s Landing is under attack?” Nell feels as though he might as well have just told her that the sky was falling. “By who?”

“It’s not under attack,” Daryn all but beams. “The Lannister woman rearmed the Faith.”

“Yes, I know-,”

“They’ve imprisoned her and the Tyrell girl. On some grounds- adultery and treason. And murder.”

Nell doesn’t know if she should laugh or shout. She raises a hand halfway to her mouth, where it hovers above her chest. “You are certain? Tarly is retreating to-,”

“To deal with the Faith, aye. Mace Tyrell’s summoned him, no doubt, or the old woman herself. They’ll fill their streets with Reacher soldiers, lest the Sparrows try anything rash, and the westermen-,”

Nell could kiss him. This- this is it, as if delivered to them by the old gods themselves. Westermen and Reachmen- their real concern is what is happening in King’s Landing now, not the Riverlands. What do they care for Riverrun, when the Faith itself threatens to unravel their seat of power in the capitol? With any luck, these charges and trials will drag on for months and months. With any luck, they’ll see Jaime Lannister dragging his men back to King’s Landing on Tarly’s heels, so he can play the noble hero to his sister turned lover. 

They are withdrawing. She could all but sing it.

No one wants to act rashly. Harry Karstark does not immediately bring his men back to Riverrun, nor does Brynden Tully break up his encampment facing the West. When a raven finally comes from Acorn Hall, it simply states that with Tarly’s sudden departure from the scene, Lannister has less than three thousand men left to him. He must know he stands little to no chance trying to fight his way up the Red Fork towards Riverrun to save his aunt. But he seems intent on giving it a try nonetheless, to everyone’s surprise. Nell would have expected him to immediately flee south to start taking Sparrow heads for his imperiled, precious Cersei.

Perhaps that love affair has finally faded out. That really would be a grand jape. They did a good deal to help start a war with their cuckolding, but now when Cersei Lannister stands in genuine danger of losing her own head- as so many have lost theirs at the hands of Lannisters- the Kingslayer seem in no particular hurry to save her golden skin from a thousand little sparrows pecking away. To his credit, he did manage to evade Robb’s forces at Acorn Hall, even if he reportedly lost three hundred men to archer fire alone. He leads them a chase up towards Stone Mill, north of Pinkmaiden, then tries to cross. Much as the Mountain once did.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that where Gregor Clegane breathed his last, Sandor Clegane, although he may lack his infamous helm, breathes new life to the sort of fear that has always followed him. If anyone knows how Lannister men fight, it would be a Clegane, Nell will begrudgingly admit. She’s no fondness for the likes of Sandor Clegane, and even less respect. He’s a butcher with an occasional taste for the just thing, the way some men occasionally enjoy a certain sort of stew or meat. She can recognize that he saved Arya’s life several times, that he willingly came into their service and has not betrayed them since, but that does not mean she has to look at that ugly, scarred face and feel anything but faint contempt. 

That said, he is the only reason she lays eyes on Robb breathing and upright in the saddle, afterwards. Once, what seems ages and ages ago, Jaime Lannister carved his way through Robb’s battle guard in an attempt to end him right then and there, screaming his name. This time, it is Robb Stark carving his way through Jaime Lannister’s battle guard with a wolf at his side, screaming his name, and while he cuts down several men- Flement Brax, Melwyn Sarsfield, Steffon Swyft among them- he fails to reach the Kingslayer, although some claim Grey Wind meant to take a hunk out of his arm, but bit the false hand instead. 

It is Sandor Clegane who pulls Robb back, as Lannister retreats with his remaining men, for the King of Winter had already taken two arrows and a nasty blow to the head by then, and if he’d been allowed to keep after Lannister, he might have truly killed him, or at least hacked off the other hand, but he likely would have bled out in the saddle himself in the process, or taken a mortal fall from his warhorse.

Nell watches them all come flooding back from the ramparts, sees the banners on the wind, and wonders if this is what a reprieve feels like, for the first time in months. They are eating themselves alive in King’s Landing. A third invasion of the Riverlands has failed. And somewhere, far from here, Tywin Lannister’s corpse is rotting in a dark crypt, his daughter is rotting in a cell, and his legacy is in nearly literal tatters. So when she comes out in a small boat to greet the returning men, before she sees Robb’s hastily bandaged injuries and the way he’s slumped in the saddle, she is smiling, and if Harry Karstark looks surprised and perhaps a little wary to see a pale, thin-lipped Bolton smiling again, he does an admirable job of masking it. 

“Your Grace!” Perwyn Frey hails her. “The Riverlands are ours once more.”

Nell opens her mouth to make some reply, give some warm greeting, reassure them that this is just another victory in what is going to be a very productive winter, when the heavens open up above them. Everyone braces for more pounding rain instinctively, pulling at cloaks and raising shields. Nell blinks, holds out a gloved hand. A fat snowflake lands in her palm. Then another. Real, proper snow, the sort that sticks, not little flurries or rain turned hail or ice. Another. And another. The air swirls with it, and a hushed silence falls, besides the rushing of the river. A snowflake tugs at her eyelids. One crests her nose. Another settles on her forearm. Some of the younger squires are looking around in delighted shock, their memories of snow are so faint and distant. 

She exhales, watches her breath mist in front of her, and allows herself a very brief moment to take in the sight of a single grey-on-white Stark banner flapping through the wind and snow. It’s not something she’s seen in a very long time, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Majority of next chapter is going to be moving beyond Riverrun. We're heading north, baby (slowly but steadily)!
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. You have no idea how long I spent painstakingly trying to align the timelines of this fic and canon so that the dates would match up for when I needed Randyll Tarly to suddenly, uh... remove himself from the equation due to more pressing matters. Yeah. Things are not going well in King's Landing at the moment. Well, in general across Westeros, things are not going well, but I mean we've reached A Dance With Dragons level of political and social dysfunction.
> 
> 2\. On the one hand, I get it if this chapter felt a bit anticlimactic. On the other hand... progression of the plot! Stuff's moving along! Words cannot express how done I am with the Riverlands. I love the Tullys. I think we've come to appreciate many of the Freys. And of course, the Paeges. But we're moving back north. The chapter after next will be a Beth POV, because it's been ages since we heard from her and we need to check in on the Dreadfort and some other northern events.
> 
> 3\. Fair Walda wants what she wants. Nothing is ever that simple, of course, but next chapter we will be largely dealing with the Freys. I can't promise mass death and destruction and a happy little revenge romp through the Twins, but I can promise some very satisfying moments and some, frankly, sick-ass insults. Also, Edmure and Roslin. And the Mallisters! And more snow. 
> 
> 4\. General note: I've tried to be pretty clear throughout this fic that it's focused on the North and primarily Northern characters, that we won't be seeing any in depth looks at King's Landing or Highgarden or Sunspear. I get that if you are looking for a more well-rounded picture of things, that is probably disappointing. But right now it's beyond my capabilities as a writer to branch out to that extent where we start jumping all across Westeros. I've already got a lot of balls up in the air. A lot of big events that happen in the peripheries of this fic, we will never actually see through any of the POV characters. Sorry. We will see some cool stuff go down at Winterfell and the Long Night will last more than one actual night, if that's some kind of consolation. There will be witchcraft. There will be dragons. There will be Mormonts. What more could you want? I also have a general desire to finish this fic by the summer, and that's not going to happen if we suddenly pivot to 'Oberyn- Chapter 1' or 'Dany - Chapter 1'.
> 
> 5\. UPDATE: I'm sure most of you know the current international shit-storm going down due to the virus. I am overseas at the moment and have had to abruptly change travel plans to get back to the US as soon as possible. Because of this, chances are we won't see a new chapter until *next* Friday when I am back home and have my shit together again.


	65. Dana X

300 AC - SEAGARD

Dana reckons they’d find better hawking in the woods, but Seagard lacks much forest outside its fortress walls, and the bluffs overlooking Ironman’s Bay are safer by far. No Freys or outlaws or wolves to fear. There’s always Ironborn, of course, but they’re busy making war with Stannis Baratheon in the North or closing in on Oldtown, Dana imagines. There’s rumors that mad Euron Crowseye has grown particularly bold, now that they’ve named him King of the Isles. And everyone knows the Tyrells are too busy trying to keep poor Margaery the Maid’s head attached to her neck to worry much about the woes of the Citadel. 

Still, they claim that on a particularly clear day you can see Ten Towers, home to the Harlaws, far off in the distance from Seagard. That’s a lie, as far as Dana call tell. You could no more see Ten Towers from Seagard than you could see Blacktyde from the Flint Cliffs. But she has that much in common with the Mallisters; like every good Flint, every good Mallister was raised to curse the name Greyjoy and scan the horizon for longships, ready to ring the bells and raise the alarm if the need arose. Well, they are out on the cliffs now, and Dana has yet to see any ships. She is more concerned with watching Arya’s hawk ride the gusts of sharp, achingly cold wind coming off the grey, wintery-looking sea.

The hawk was a gift from Lord Jason Mallister’s lady wife, Meredyth Shawney, upon their arrival at Seagard near three weeks ago. Lady Meredyth’s hair is a rich chestnut brown, much like that of her three surviving children, and her eyes are hooded and almost sly, caught between drowsiness and amusement. She and Catelyn must have known one another as girls, for they easily fall into conversation of the old days before Robert’s Rebellion, before everything, with one another. Dana supposes that has been for good for Lady Catelyn, to have a woman her own age to speak to, and not just her young daughter or Dana herself, who is not a child but who still doesn’t feel much like a woman grown, most days.

Of course, there are the days when Jeffory Mallister is intent on charming her, and then she is uncomfortably reminded of it. With Patrek murdered by Freys that horrific red morning, Jason Mallister’s second son now stands to inherit Seagard someday. Jeffory is fond of forgetting that fact, which Dana suspects is because he’d spent a good sixteen years of his life as the spare, and while perhaps some part of him feels vindicated for it, he doesn’t strike her as the sort of boy to take much pleasure from a brother’s death, either. And he is very much a boy, one can be sure of that. 

It is precisely why his flattery and compliments make her only mildly uncomfortable and exasperated at times, rather than genuinely uneasy or concerned, because he carries himself like a boy, speaks like a boy, and flirts like a boy. The other day he told her that she had ‘lovely pale hands’, then went beet red and looked as though he wanted to ride his horse off a cliff when Ned Dayne couldn’t hold in his snickers. Dana is not used to receiving compliments from men in the first place, never mind southerners. Black Donnel had judged her fit enough to be his bride, but that was with the pragmatic once-over of a man selecting a new horse- strong and sturdy, he’d all but announced, I’ll have plenty of healthy babes from this one.

Jeffory Mallister is a little more starry-eyed about the whole thing, and Dana had initially wondered what the appeal could possibly be, aside from the fact that the boy had been a ward at Pinkmaiden and come home to Seagard just in time for a civil war to break out, and thus had spent the past year or so around soldiers and camp followers, not noblewomen. But she thinks she’s finally determined that it may just be the same thing Robert Baratheon found alluring in Lyanna Stark, although Dana hardly claims to be anything like Lyanna. 

She is no great beauty, she has no sparkling wit, and she goes about in hand-me-down and borrowed gowns, often ill-fitting, with her thick dark hair constantly escaping its braid, and Arya Stark or some other children at her side, chattering away and grabbing at her with warm, dirty little hands. For Jeffory, she thinks, it is more a matter of difference than similarity. She is northern and rides astride like a man and speaks and laughs loudly and prays in the rocky godswood that reeks of sea-salt and does not cover her hair with a veil and hurry into a sept to pray. 

She is rumored to have spent months among outlaws and wolves, killing Freys and stealing cattle, and she is Nell Stark’s dearest friend and closest lady but as of yet has had no betrothal or even discussion of who she might wed. She is a Flint who surrounds herself with riverfolk and she can wield a dagger well enough to cut a throat if pressed. So perhaps it is just that poor Jeff Mallister thinks he has found the wild northern ‘beauty’ he never knew he wanted in the first place, and she seems just strangely fascinating enough to excite him enough to really consider, well-

Dana is used to men suggesting that they’d like to bed her. She’s not very pretty, too tall and too gawky and too flat-chested, but when has that ever stopped any man? She was one Flint of many. It was known that her father was Artos the Drunkard and there was no real risk to propositioning her at a feast, because she had no brothers who might jump in to defend her honor, and her cousins were too busy fighting with each other to be bothered. She was used to responding to bawdy japes and thinly veiled suggestions in turn by the time she was four-and-ten, even before she met Nell. There were a few close calls but nothing very serious. 

Theon Greyjoy had wandering hands whenever he had to escort her to her seat at a feast, but he was also a Greyjoy and trusted by very few, so she knew she was in a decent position to refuse or even rebuke him without fearing the consequences of it. That is the game all women play, Dana’s sisters taught her well enough. Even when you are a lady, there is always going to be a man who is above you in rank and position, whether he means to wed you or not, and you had better learn how to wriggle out of those situations sooner, rather than later, before you found yourself with a bastard in your belly, or worse, quickly married off to someone old enough to be your bloody father just because he’d gotten ideas about a fresh young wife.

She’s not worried about Jeffory wanting to bed her. His father is Jason Mallister, and as far as most of the rivermen are concerned, Mallister is the most honorable man in the land, second to none, the height of chivalry and courtesy. Dana doesn’t know about that, but the man has raised good children. She’s concerned Jeffory might want to wed her. 

“Come on, Mors!” Arya is hollering up at her goshawk as it drifts on the current, then turns sharply in the air and begins to plummet down towards the long, dried out brown grasses wafting back and forth in the wind. She named him after Queen Nymeria’s first and most famous husband, Mors Martell, who went on to found the ruling line of Dorne by her side. Dana supposes there are worse names for a hunting hawk. Her mother called hers Blackbelly, after the rum, because it was one of the few drinks her father disliked. 

“She’s taken to it rather well,” Jeffory tells her; he’s reined his mount up alongside Thumb, and Dana offers a bland, wan smile that she hopes makes her look dull as dirt and shows off her prominent, horsey front teeth. Aye, the singers all claim love belongs to the heart and soul, not the eyes, but the singers are all liars, even the best of them. She didn’t love Marianne at once for her charm and grace, she loved her because the sun lit up her hair just so and her eyes shone in the torchlight and when she danced, it made you want to spring to your feet and move with her at once and never be left behind again. 

She does love Marianne. She has to love her, because then it is in the present, not the past, and while her sisters might remind her that she cannot even begin to afford to turn down a Mallister, Dana’s never considered herself very wise. Quite the opposite, in fact. If she wanted comfort and safety she would have hurried back to the Finger with her tail tucked between her legs and wed Black Donny as they commanded and she’d have two babes by now, one for each breast, and another on the way, while Donnel battled Ironborn in the foothills and the other clanswoman clacked their weaving looms and watched the fire die in the hearth.

Jeffory is undeterred. “Have you much experience hawking, my lady?” He’s only seventeen and so very intent about everything; he has more of the Shawney look to him, his mother claims, being two inches shorter than her and very stocky, with a mop of brown hair and his mother’s hooded eyes and his father’s aquiline nose. 

“I never had the patience for it,” Dana says, wondering if she should be more curt with him, or simply refuse to meet his eyes when they speak with each other. No, that might encourage it more. Men are always mistaking pointed disinterest for coy regard. And it’s not even just men- her sister Alysane once mooned over Robin Widowsflint, and was all the more encouraged by the complete and utter lack of interest he displayed in her, certain he was just playing the proper young lord. Well, Robin Widowsflint took a Woolfield to wife, not Aly, and Dana can still remember the fits that induced- at least until Mother had enough and rounded up a Condon for her to settle with.

She’s grateful for the thunderous crashing of the white-capped waves far below, Arya’s delighted cries as Mors comes shooting back up into the air, something clutched tightly in his talons, and the rushing of the wind in her ears. For the first time it really feels like winter, with the wind lashing her face and a mixture of snow and sleet occasionally buffeting them. There’s perhaps an inch or two crusted over and dirty on the ground, but Seagard’s maester predicts the coming weeks will bring more, and this time it will not melt down to sludge by midday. Dana is looking forward to it. There is something clean and fresh and full of promise about snow. Better that than more rain, at least.

Her cloak used to belong to Jeffory’s sister, Alicent. Alicent is sixteen and betrothed to Marq Piper, who is still held by the Freys. But now that Riverrun and the Riverlands are secure for the time being, Seagard is heavy with expectation. Once Nell and the rest have arrived, having traversed the Red Fork, Oldstones, and Hag’s Mire, all that remains left is the Crossing and the Neck. And the Freys must know all is lost for them by now. The Lannisters are busy fretting over Cersei and Tommen. Roose Bolton is certainly not going to be sending down reinforcements, not when he needs guard his back against a thousand northern knives every night. Randyll Tarly abandoned the Kingslayer and took all his men back to the capitol. 

Dana knows she should be excited, eager, and she is, of course, would be thrilled at the thought that they are so close to beginning to move back into the North- if not for this new thorn in her side. Gods be good, hasn’t she suffered enough? She knows she must sound a bit melodramatic, but she has good cause to be concerned. If Jeffory Mallister gets it into his head that he fancies a Flint wife, he will appeal to his mother and father, and his father will respectfully but pointedly bring it up with Nell when she returns. 

How could she refuse them, after all they owe the Mallisters? She could reason that Dana is a very minor member of a secondary line, hardly a fit bride for a Mallister, but Dana is also known to be dear friends, sisters, practically, with their queen. They might view her as a direct passage to Nell’s ears. Her only hope, Dana thinks, is that they will want Arya for Jeffory instead; the king’s own sister, surely a perfect match for their son. But they have two sons remaining, and the Mallisters’ youngest, Willem, is only thirteen. They could think to kill two birds with the same stone, and get Danelle Flint for Jeffory, and Arya Stark for Willem, if he was made a squire to Robb or Harry Karstark, knighted in several years, and then given appropriate lands in the North, beginning another line for the Mallisters. 

Dana wants to brush the whole thing off as a massive overreaction on her part. Jeffory may see it as nothing more than an innocent infatuation. If she titters and smiles pleasingly, he may forget her by the time they leave. She surely risks more by offending him or his family- some Flint, thinking herself better than a Mallister of Seagard, an eagle of the bay? But what if it isn’t? If he is as serious as she fears he is, than she may have come this far for nothing. Nell promised she would never betroth Dana without her express consent. But she is a queen before she is a friend or a sister. If pushed, she cannot afford to offend loyal allies, not now, not when they are so close to returning home to deal with the traitors. 

Jeffory is saying something else, but Dana barely hears him, watching as Mors lands, wings flapping powerfully against the wind, on Arya’s armguard. Seagard is beautiful. The bustling town is clean and neatly ordered, rows and rows of cottages, shops, stables and inns and marketplaces. It reminds her of White Harbor. The castle itself is impressive, the biggest keep in the Riverlands save for the monstrosity that is Harrenhal. Certainly thrice the size of Flint’s Finger. 

The Mallisters are gallant and welcoming and generous. Their people love and respect them, as the people of Winterfell loved and respected Ned and Cat Stark. The area is well-protected and they have enough stores to make it through the winter, even while sheltering the smallfolk in the keep. The air always smells crisp and fresh and salty. When the sun glints on the waves, it could be a thousand crushed diamonds gleaming far below. 

But it is not her home. They are not her people, the people she chose, the ones she loves. And Jeffory, kind and courteous as he is, is not Marianne. Mayhaps it is selfish of her. Mother would say it is. She is spitting at something fine and precious. Who does she think she is? She has been playing the brigand, the wild girl, all these months, but she is still a lady. She was educated with the expectation she would be someone’s wife, someone’s mother, even if she’d never had much hope of making a very good marriage. 

“Dana, look!” Arya has urged Craven over to them, and is happily showing off the large vole that Mors caught in the grass, even as Alicent helps her slip the hood back onto the hawk’s head. Seagard has been good to Arya as well. Alicent Mallister is every inch the perfect lady, soft-spoken and demure, talented with needlework and the harp, always well-dressed but modest, but she is also genuinely kind and open-handed, and her easy acceptance of Arya exactly as she is, hot-headed but self conscious, quick-witted but sometimes clumsy with her words, has meant much to the girl. 

Dana wonders if Arya looks at Alicent, whose rich brown hair sometimes takes on an auburn sheen in the sunlight, and thinks of Sansa, and what she might have had with her. A sister different from her as day is to night, but loving and accepting nonetheless. They could have had that, Dana thinks, after the petty grudges and fights of childhood had faded, when they were both women grown and on even ground, no longer pitted against each other at every turn. It’s a shame, it is. Sansa could be a little priss, aye, but she was a sweet girl at her core, when left to her own devices. Dana remembers her braiding ribbons and flowers around Lady’s neck, and laughing when the wolf pup leaped up to lick at her face. Now Lady is bones in the ground at Winterfell, and Sansa is likely dead at the bottom of the Blackwater.

“A fine meal we’ll make of this,” she japes, shoving the ugly thoughts away, and Jeffory laughs too loudly, still looking at her. 

“I shall ask Cook if she’s had any luck with vole stew,” Alicent latches onto the jest easily, catching Dana’s eye and smiling warmly. She looks a good deal like her mother, but she has Jason Mallister’s bright, keen blue eyes. “Perhaps it could be a new delicacy, inspired by Lady Arya.”

Arya has that uncertain look, as if she’s not sure whether she’s being made fun of or not, and Dana sees her crooked teeth worry at her lower lip, before Alicent puts a gloved hand on her skinny shoulder affectionately, yelping as the wind tugs at her hair. “I’ve half a mind to cut mine like yours, Arya- I can’t stand it blowing in my face,” she grumbles, and Arya touches her now chin-length brown hair, blinking, before she smiles. 

“You can’t cut it; it’s too pretty,” and this is the first time Dana thinks she’s heard the child give anyone who was not her mother a compliment in weeks. 

Alicent beams; Jeffory chuckles, agreeing with her, and Dana shivers against the wind. “Let’s go back,” she says, waving to one of the grooms in the distance. “I’m starting to lose feeling in my toes.”

“Race me back to the belltower, my lady, and we’ll save them from frostbite,” Jeffory suggests with a bold turn, and Dana is forced to quickly demur, shaking her head.

“I couldn’t-,” she lies, although she learned how to race horses with Nell and even beat her a few times, much to Nell’s disgruntlement. “I wouldn’t want Thumb to twist something; I’m almost as particular about my horses as your sister!”

They have word that the northern forces will be here within the next day or so that evening, shortly before dinner. Dana choose to ignores the twisting in her belly that creates while she takes her bath. Nell understands the threat of an unwanted marriage as well as Dana does. She will not- she will find some way to help Dana avoid it. Catelyn comes in while Dana is drying out her hair, having dismissed her maid. She’s horribly sensitive at her scalp, and she used to cry herself ragged whenever she had her thick hair combed out as a child. Now she can only tolerate to do it herself. Nell tried once and Dana nearly bit her head off, it hurt so much.

She’s sitting there on the bed, wincing, when Catelyn closes the door quietly behind her. Dressed in a gown of rich Tully red, trimmed with midnight blue stitching around the bodice and sleeves, her dark auburn hair bound up in a braided bun, she seems in part once again the woman Dana knew as a girl at Winterfell, calm and self-assured, eyes clear and needle sharp. There are new lines to her face and some silvery strands to her hair now, but here, free of the shadow of Riverrun and what Robb has become, she seems capable and confident once again, Arya’s loving mother, not a broken woman reduced to dreadful nightmares and a cracked voice.

“Do you need any help?” she asks Dana, surprising her; Catelyn Stark has always been polite and courteous with her, but Dana is not her child, and not even her gooddaughter. “You look as though you want to throw the comb out the window.”

She’s not wrong. Dana wavers, feeling for an instant a deep well of neediness- she misses being taken care of, she misses the familiar comfort of Nell and Marianne and her own mother and sisters, and nods before she really considers it. Catelyn comes over and sits on the bed beside her, takes up the comb in one hand, and begins to separate Dana’s hair with the other. “I will say this,” she murmurs, “with Arya’s hair so short, making sure she’s washed and combed it properly it not the trial it once was.”

Dana gives an amused murmur, even as she locks and unlocks her long fingers together, her mind elsewhere. 

“I wanted to thank you,” Catelyn says after another moment of silence. “For all that you’ve done for Arya. She’s… she’s begun to confide in me, more than before, and she… she told me how you looked after her, when you were with the Brotherhood, how she trusted you.”

“Harrion Karstark protected her,” Dana says, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. ‘I was just- I was just there, my lady. I did what I thought was right. She was all alone.”

“You treated her like a sister,” Catelyn replies. “Something you were not bound to do. He guarded her from men and ill intent. You made her feel safe. You made her feel as if she were not… dirty, or tainted, by what happened. Truthfully, you may have done more for her than I could have, in your shoes.”

There is such frank sadness in her voice that Dana almost wants to turn and embrace her, improper as it would be. “Don’t say that,” she says, wincing at the tugging on her scalp. “You- you are her mother. She loves you. She idolizes you. You should hear how she talks of you, when you aren’t there. She thought she’d lost all her kin, and even Robb… he was not what she’d hoped for. But then she saw you again, and she started to… to be a child once more, I think.”

“I hope so,” Catelyn says quietly. “If she is all that I… I failed her once. I will not fail her again.” She exhales. “She asked me about Elmar Frey, a few days ago. She wanted to know, once we treated with the Freys, if she’d still have to wed him.”

“She knows about the betrothal?” Dana is caught off guard. She did not tell Arya. She can’t imagine Harry Karstark would have. Besides, it is hardly going to be honored, whether Elmar Frey survives the winter or not. They may not be about to torch the Twins, but there is a far cry between that and warmly welcoming them back as trusted friends and allies. 

“She heard about it at Harrenhal, when she was serving there,” Catelyn’s tone twists and shrivels with dismay. “It is not- none of it is what I wanted for her. Even before- I had no choice. My daughter, wedding a Frey? A Stark of Winterfell and a-,” she sucks in a breath in disgust, “a little stoat of the Crossing? I assured her that she would not wed him, not after what his family did to us, but she still… Freys made offers for my hand, when I was but a girl. My father refused them all, of course. He always meant to make a fine marriage for me. And that is what I got. But my own daughters- they wed one of them to a Lannister who may have gotten her killed, and the other…”

“Arya is not even flowered yet,” Dana says, more firmly than she feels. “No one can insist on considering matches for her before then. And she is small. She ought to wait out the winter before she weds anyone, whether they are a river lord or a northerner, or…” She trails off. “She can- she can understand why women marry. She knows you did not consider the betrothal to Elmar because you didn’t care about her, or because you wanted her sent away. We were at war. We are still at war. Everyone must do their part.”

And suddenly she feels it now, with dreadful certainty. “My lady,” she says, closing her eyes, even as Catelyn’s combing stills. “I- I am sure you’ve noticed, but Jeffory Mallister is- that is- he has an, ah… He’s taken an interest in me. I… I want you to know, and you should tell Nell, when she comes, that I… I understand if- arrangements need to be made, for… in the interest of repaying the Mallisters for their loyalty. I know I should not presume to speak of this, but I thought I ought to… To tell you that I can do my duty, as a lady in service to your house.”

There is a very long silence then, and Catelyn sets down the wooden comb on the bed. Dana wonders if she was far too impudent. She should not have even mentioned it. What was she thinking? Catelyn may have been considering the likes of Jeffory for her own daughter, and now Dana Flint, of all people, thinks to tell her he’s fond of her, instead? The Flints were never kings. No royal blood flows through Dana’s veins. Now she has needlessly offended Nell’s goodmother, or sealed her own fate-

“Is that what you wish?” Catelyn asks sharply, and Dana feels compelled to scoot away and turn to look at her, flushed and guilty, like a child. “A betrothal to Jeffory? To stay here at Seagard, for the winter years?”

Dana says nothing, and feels her eyes sting. What can she say?”

“Answer me,” Catelyn Stark says in her iron voice, and Dana admits-

“No. I don’t want that. I don’t want to stay. I don’t want him, I don’t want Seagard. But he’s- if he insists-,”

“Then you will not stay,” Catelyn says decisively, as if that were that.

Dana blinks. “But he is-,”

“He is a boy,” Catelyn says. “He doesn’t know what he wants. He sees a maid who is fair, and young, and fierce, and he thinks he might keep her for himself. He’s a good lad, I’m sure, like his father was, like his brother. But we do not owe the Mallisters any extraordinary debt. They swore themselves to House Tully long ago, and then willingly pledged their service to House Stark when they crowned my son king. They have done their duty. As they have fought for us, we have fought for them. That does not mean we owe them a bride, not right now, mayhaps not ever. If that was true, then I would have had twenty sons and twenty daughters, in order to repay each northern house in turn,” she says with a dry edge. 

“He will be saddened to see you go, he may mention it to his father. But Jason Mallister knows as well as I do that our first concern should be preparing for winter, not snatching up brides for his sons. The Freys have many daughters. They will be paying many bride prices before the winter is over. That is the cost of treason. And you, Dana Flint, have been nothing but true, and good, and strong, when others could not be. I may not be queen of these lands, but I am still Lady Stark, here and in the North, and I will not see you repaid with an unwanted marriage for all your service to us.”

Nell arrives with some four thousand men the day after that, when it has begun to snow again in earnest. The army camps outside the town, huddled against the walls, lighting their braziers for warmth, and Nell strides through Seagard’s keep with her hair flowing down her back and clad in Stark grey-and-white. Dana breaks into a near-run when she sees her, propriety be damned, and they embrace fiercely, exclaiming and laughing with each other, until Nell extricates herself. 

“I have a meeting with Robb, Karstark, Lord Mallister, the Greatjon, and Perwyn Frey shortly,” she says. “We need to finalize the terms we are sending to the Twins. They’ll be ready to bargain, I’m certain of it. Bloodborn’s been burning their fields for weeks now, trying to goad them out of their keep. They can’t go on like this; they’re surrounded by enemies and they know the river lords would only love to starve them out this winter.”

“I’m shocked you don’t intend to simply post yourself at one end of the bridge with Grey Wind and Robb, and start screaming for them to lower Old Walder down in a basket,” Dana says, taking her hands in her own. They’re cold, as always. 

“Robb would rather we send men to scale the walls and slaughter them in their beds,” Nell says, unsmiling. “I won’t deny, the thought is tempting. But Perwyn believes they can be reasoned with, and if we can’t afford to waste any more men on this. The Greatjon is slavering at the bit.”

“When is he not?” Dana rolls her eyes. “What will you offer? A hostage exchange? They’ll be leery, after the nonsense with the Umbers.”

“In part,” Nell says stiffly. “We will release Ryman Frey, Marianne’s brothers, Leslyn Haigh and his youngest son, and Zia and Waltyr to them if they agree to surrender all the hostages they took during their assault, including Edmure and Arwyn. A child of Frey blood will someday rule Riverrun. They cannot be blind to that. I am prepared to grant Perwyn and Fair Walda the titles of Lord and Lady Frey, and to leave them most of their lands, and control of the Crossing, so long as they agree to surrender a quarter of their toll directly to House Tully. They can keep Darry if they agree to wed Amerei or a sister into another river house. One of the younger Blackwood sons, perhaps, to keep them in line.”

Dana draws back, raising an eyebrow. “Those are very generous terms.”

“Oh, that’s not all of it.” Nell glances around the busy hall, people greeting one another, servants bustling in and out of the kitchens to bring in food and mead for the new arrivals. She draws Dana down to the nearest table, in a dim corner. “I have a list of names. They will surrender those men to us, and accept that they will pay with their lives for their collective treason.”

“You expect them to deliver their own kin to die?” Most houses would rebel instantly at the mere thought of it, even if their brothers or fathers were reviled traitors. Family is everything, they are always told. Family is all that matters. 

“They are Freys,” Nell says with that grim little Bolton smile. “I don’t imagine they will find it too difficult.”

Dana flags down a servant. “You look exhausted. Did you ride the entire way?”

Nell shrugs, and then, tapping a finger on the table, recites in a low, even voice. “Walton Frey. Arwood Frey. Lucias Vypren. Damon Vypren. Jammos Frey. Whalen Frey. Steffon Frey. Bryan Frey. Old Walder Frey.”

“Old Walder will read your missive and toss into the fire before his kin have a chance to see it,” Dana mutters.

“No,” says Nell almost contentedly, shaking her head. There is frost in her hair. “Olyvar told us. Old Walder is never the first one to read his own letters. He’s near blind, anyways. The maester’s been bought off. They always are.”

“Then who reads them for him?”

“Lame Lothar,” Nell draws the name out, and Dana can hear the hate in her voice. 

Lame Lothar had just as much a hand in what happened that bloody dawn as Black Walder or Ryman Frey himself. “Lothar isn’t on the list.”

“Neither is Ryman,” Nell reflects. “That’s alright. We needn’t swing every sword ourselves.”

A serving girl comes over, weighed down with a platter of honey breadcrusts and dried fruit, bobbing into a hasty curtsy at the sight of the queen sitting down, skirts rumpled and boots still wet and muddy, like a common soldier in some corner. Dana catches Grey Wind slinking into the hall out of the corner of her eye; an almost immediate hush falls.

“Do I want to know what that means?” she wonders aloud.

“It means I can hardly wait to lay eyes on the Crossing again,” Nell says with bitter honesty, and then plucks up a dried out husk of a peach, plopping it into her mouth. She chews and swallows, but Dana can see she takes no pleasure in it, sweet as it must be. “It’s been a very long five months, after all. The water must be very high by now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. I'm really sorry about missing the past few updates, but it couldn't really be helped what with the rush travel stuff going on. Luckily I am now back in the States and settled, and what with all the quarantines and remote stuff I've got more time to focus on this fic. Airports are great places to sit and brainstorm. So we can expect a new chapter on Tuesday as per usual. Thank you for your patience, and I hope everyone is doing alright.
> 
> 2\. Originally this was going to be a more direct Nell POV, but I missed Dana and I found her very comforting to write. I also wanted to set up some stuff for the inevitable Frey showdown that will now be taking place next chapter. Clearly Nell and co. are really banking on the Freys not having any more loyalty towards each other than they do for other people. I swear on all that is holy we will see some comeuppance next chapter, even if is not on the bloody rampage level that I suspect canon might be headed towards with a Red Wedding 2.0. (Side note: ironically a not, a lot of the 'guiltiest' Freys, such as Black Walder, Merrett, Edwyn, Emmon, Tytos, etc, are all already dead.)
> 
> 3\. Dana's concern over being coerced into an unwanted marriage to Jeff Mallister might seem a bit overhyped, but I think it is a genuine concern to have given her circumstances. She has no father or brother or even her mother present to advocate for her, the Mallisters have been very loyal team players, and as well-intentioned as guys like Jeffory Mallister might be, I think we see plenty of Westerosi lordlings in canon who have never heard the word 'no' in their lives. At the same time, Dana feels guilty, not because she is uncomfortable with her sexuality or her feelings towards Marianne, but because she was raised to consider marriage as a political deal, and she thinks she's perhaps not doing her part for the Stark cause by trying to avoid it as a means to strengthen alliances. 
> 
> 4\. Let! Arya! Bond! With! Other! Women! I just wanted to show Arya being able to act like a kid again for a short while in this chapter, even if the future is still very uncertain. She has a hawk now, so that's cool! I also wanted to display that her and Catelyn's relationship is slowly beginning to improve as they open up to one another, and I thought this could be a brief break from all the political drama and tension and you know, people constantly trying to murder each other.
> 
> 5\. I apologize if it was frustrating to wait so long for an update only to have a more 'filler' chapter, but a lot of shit happens in the next chapter, which will be a Nell POV at the Crossing, and then the one after that is Beth, which, you know, the Dreadfort, always something bad going down there, and then I believe the chapter after that we will be back to Jory and seeing some of Sansa for the first time in a very long time. So don't worry, the fic is not 'stalling out' anytime soon. We are about to head back into the North and we're slowly but surely ramping up towards what I would describe as the final plot arcs. And I'm really excited about it!


	66. Donella XLVII

300 AC - THE CROSSING

Nell has to fight back bile when the Twins come into view, for all her claims of eagerness to behold them once again. It does not matter that there is a few inches of light snow on the ground and fat flakes flurrying in the air, catching at the hood of her cloak and landing on her horse’s mane. The sight of it, slate grey against the eggshell of the sky, is still enough to induce vomiting, even if it is not raining, even if the woods on the banks are not crawling with enemy soldiers. They are crawling with their men instead. They might have rode forth with a small party for the purpose of treating, leaving the bulk of the army behind, but Nell cannot afford it. They have just four thousand men. 

Once, that was the number of the entirety of the Freys’ garrison. Now House Frey has less than a thousand with which to defend their two keeps and lands on either side of the river, but they have all but given up defense on the territory on the western side, imperiled by the rivermen and vengeful northerners. And on the eastern side… well, Nell can smell the faint scent of smoke from here. Aegon Bloodborn has been busy burning fields and orchards alike, demanding his kin come out and play. Or pay; rumor has it he wants enough funds to secure passage across the Narrow Sea for him and his men, so they might take up work as sellswords in warmer climates come winter. Nell could care less; that will be one less group of bandits to worry about, if they go. Bloodborn was very useful in ending the siege of Seagard, but none of the river lords trust him any further than they could throw him, even the Mallisters.

“This is folly,” the Greatjon is snarling somewhere behind her at Harry Karstark. “We could take the West Twin in a few weeks’ time, put them all to the sword, and march across the bridge onto East Twin. Instead you would have us treat with traitors and kinslayers,” she can hear his spit land on the snowy ground, his mount snuffling in agitation. She would be too, if she had to bear the weight of a man as big as Greatjon Umber. Months of running about in the woods may have leaned him up a fair bit, turned his broad face sunken and gaunt, but it hasn’t made him any smaller or his shoulders any less broader. 

“We can’t afford to waste a few weeks’ time taking two castles we have not the men nor the reasons to keep,” Harrion retorts coolly, as composed as ever, even in the shadow of the Twins. Nell has to fight to hear him over the dull roar of the river; he’s nowhere near as loud as Umber. “And while we were in the process of trying to take them both, they would trot out their hostages and put them to the sword, mayhaps starting with your heir.”

The Greatjon curses, loud and long, until Nell and Catelyn both twist round in their saddles to glare at him. Arya is looking back from her horse beside Dana as well, although not with disapproval or irritation, but wide grey eyes. Umber looks for a moment as though he intends to argue some more, lest he come across as a little boy to be silenced by a few scolding women, but his dark gaze slides over Robb at the head of their party, and Grey Wind, ears pricked up, pawing angrily at the earth, at his side. Then he is silent. The wind howls through the trees behind them. 

Nell remembers how she smiled as they approached last time, Lysara bound securely to her chest. How pleased she was, japing with Edmure and Dana and wearing her fine iron-and-bronze crown, so confident, so assured that they could not possibly fail now. Robb was going to march up the causeway to root out the Ironborn, she was going to see Edmure and Roslin wed and then retire to Seagard, and home- Winterfell- seemed well within reach. Had everything gone as planned, she would be back there by now, watching Theon’s skull molder on a spike alongside his men’s, Lysara on her hip, her aunt and her goodmother and her friends by her side. It wouldn’t have been easy, wouldn’t have been free of worry or conflict, but it was what she’d been promised. All she’d ever wanted. She would have had Robb, at her table and in her bed and still holding onto her heart with warm, capable hands. 

He still has her heart. But his hands are never warm, and their grip is not reassuring or comforting. But she doesn’t want to be comforted right now. They took her baby. They killed men she called friends. They hurt Dana, and Catelyn, and her. They locked her in a room like a misbehaving child, made her renounce Robb and his cause, made her think all hope was lost. They meant to sell her to Marbrand and flatter and compliment the Lannisters all the while. Well, their great noble protector, Tywin, he is dead. So is his bastard grandson. So is Marbrand. So is Black Walder, and Emmon Frey, and Edwyn Frey, and Petyr Frey, and Cleos and Lyonel Frey. So are Tytos Frey and Garse Goodbrook and Merrett Frey and Raymund Frey and Martyn Rivers. She should feel gratified by this. These men did her wrong. They were murderers and oathbreakers. She certainly doesn’t mourn them. She’s glad they're dead. But the hole inside her chest remains.

The only difference between her and Robb, she sometimes thinks, is that you can see the hole in his, clear as day. Hers is hidden under flesh and bone, the rot contained but still present.

One of the many gates softly squeals open. Four thousand men behind them more or less blend into the trees, a sea of grey and brown and black, rustling and whispering angrily. Nell has seen them all at march but even in her head it is difficult to picture them lined up like wooden figures behind her, deep into the wood, rows up rows, flanking from left to right and back again. Perhaps fifty Freys pour out, first in a neat orderly line that swiftly swells out into a less organized semi-circle of men, blocking the way forward. They are all armed, but no one is foolish enough to draw steel. She doesn’t care. Let them try. She has a newly strung bow at her back and Grey Wind. Even Catelyn and Dane have knives plainly displayed at their belts, and Arya has her little sword, Needle. It would be almost amusing, under other conditions.

Due to his malformed left leg, Lame Lothar needs ride sidesaddle, like a woman, on his grey palfrey. The faint jeering from behind them is only faint due to the sounds of the river and the wind and the muffling effect of the snow. For a few moments the Freys just stare in mute shock at Robb, as he stares back, and a slow ripple of terror seems to spread through them. Harry Karstark nudges his warhorse a few paces forward, and then speaks, harshly and flatly. “As agreed upon, you will release Lord Edmure Tully and his lady wife, Roslin Tully, to us now, and we will release to you Ser Ryman Frey. Then you will let us pass through the West Twin and onto the bridge.”

Lothar nods stiffly, and the half-circle parts to reveal two faces Nell has not seen in months. Edmure looks as though he’d aged a decade since she saw him last; his beard has come in rich and full but it is greying, although the thick auburn curls atop his head or not. His eyes are not the merry and youthful bright blue she remembers; they look near identical to his sister’s, to his uncle’s now, a blue tempered by age and sorrow. Catelyn makes an almost gasping noise, as if suddenly short of air, to see him again. Despite his thin, slightly hunched frame and the obvious limp when he steps forward, Edmure keeps an arm locked tightly around Roslin’s slender shoulders. Roslin is all but clinging to him with one arm, the other cradling her belly. Nell cannot make out how far along with child she is from here, but she is obviously still pregnant. 

Thank the gods for that, at least. Ryman Frey is standing, wrists bound in front of him, mere feet from Grey Wind, whose snarl is so profound that his mouth seems to have folded into pure, yellowed teeth, strung up with spittle and flecked with blood. “Walk,” Robb rasps, without even glancing down at him from his saddle, and Ryman doesn’t so much walk as scramble forward, slipping on the wet, snowy ground in his haste to reach his kin. He nearly collides with Edmure and Roslin as the hostages pass one another, before he skids to a halt, panting, in front of Lothar’s palfrey. 

“Edmure,” Catelyn murmurs in relief as Edmure and Roslin reach them. As Grey Wind turns yellow eyes upon them and Robb turns pale grey, Edmure suddenly blanches and move so he is between his frail wife and the wolf. Or is it the man he’s afraid of? The open horror on his face as he takes in the sight of Robb is obvious; even in full armor, sitting atop a restless horse, Edmure seems to instinctively sense the… wrongness of it all. No, not wrongness. The jab of guilt below her heart stings. This isn’t wrong, it’s right. Robb’s not- she is so thankful that he is back, even like this, even if all she has left are one-sided memories. He is here, and he still knows her name, and that is all that matters.

“What-,” But for once Edmure cuts himself off, ending the incredulous question before it can begin. “Someone get Ros a cloak,” he says instead, moving her in between Nell and Catelyn’s horses, “she’s freezing, and she hasn’t felt well all morning-,”

“I feel much better now,” Roslin says in a small, strangled voice, although when she meets Nell’s eyes she looks stricken, her breath misting in front of her, before she wrenches her gaze away with either a shudder or a shiver. “You mustn’t worry so, husband- can someone please look at his leg? He took a fall a fortnight past, and they wouldn’t treat it properly-,”

“Nell,” Edmure is saying, taking her gloved hand in his own bare, shaking one. “Nell, I am so sorry, I- Cat-,” he looks between the two of them helplessly, then catches a glimpse of Arya’s stunned face, and stiffens. “Who… Catelyn, is that-,”

“Arya, yes, she came back to us,” Catelyn leans down from her horse to press a grateful kiss to his head, like a mother greeting a child. “I will tell you more later, it’s just-,”

“I know you’re all very pleased to see each other again,” Daryn Hornwood cuts in a voice that is more urgent than sheepish. “But let’s not tarry. There’s men and horses waiting to take you two back to Seagard.”

“Take Roslin,” Edmure says instantly, reddening, “I will stay, I have to stay- I promised I’d help you find Lysara, I can-,”

“Edmure, go,” Nell and Catelyn both all but command at the same instant. Nell chances a small smile. “Riverrun needs you both now. Ser Brynden has an escort waiting for you at Seagard. I leave the Riverlands in your hands, Edmure. Genna Lannister remains your captive. Guard her well, and write at the first sign of trouble from the south or the west.”

He nods, jerkily, mouth half open while he tries to catch up with all the information she’s just heaped on him, but Nell hasn’t the time to bring him up to date, nor to reassure or console Roslin that she does not blame her, that she understands now- They are all moving forward, and leaving Lord and Lady Tully behind. And she is glad. The look Robb gave Roslin Frey Tully was did not convey reassurance or comfort. He looked at her and saw a Frey. Nell digs her heels in and pushes her mount forward. The larger gate has ground open, and Ryman Frey is complaining that no has untied his hands yet, nor given him a horse.

“You’re not worthy of a bloody ass,” Errold Flint spits down at him as he passes.

Nell glances back as they filter through the gate, disappearing under the portcullis. Lothar Frey has not dismounted from his palfrey, nor is he responding to Ryman’s increasingly agitated demands. As she watches- and Robb is watching too, turned round in the saddle with only one stiff hand on the reins- Lothar nods to one of the guards without even a change in his neutral expression, and something thunks hard into Ryman’s unarmoured chest. 

“Did they just shove him?” Dana mutters in confused bemusement, then sucks in a breath as the knife is pulled back out, and Ryman sways in mute panic, before letting out a strangled moan as he topples to the snowy ground. 

Catelyn must have heard it as well, but when Nell looks at her, her lips remain tightly pressed together. 

Nell was still wondering whether Lothar would really go through with it. It wasn’t a suggestion on their part, more of a prediction, really. 

“Lothar thinks himself worthy of a lordship, after so many years as a loyal steward,” Olyvar had informed them not a week prior. “He won’t suffer Ryman to live long after you give him back. It might be a day, it might be a week or two-,”

It was not even an hour. She supposes it is in a steward’s nature to be briskly efficient in all things. The deed done, Lothar and his men follow them through the gate and under and through the West Twin, surrounded by the front and back with the northern army. If they are terrified, if they feel like rats caught in a trap, they do an admirable job of masking it. Mayhaps they feel they have little left to lose at this point.

They break free of the cloying stone keep on all sides and ride out onto the bridge, the Twins on both sides. They haven’t gone far before Robb raises a fist, and they all stop. He slides out of the saddle, as does Daryn Hornwood, several Flints, and the Greatjon and his younger son, Cregard. Harry Karstark remains astride for a few moment’s longer, speaking again in that same pinched, forcibly formal voice. “We will now collect our dead from the bridge, and release to you Ser Leslyn Haigh and his son, Ser Alyn Haigh. In turn, you will allow us to continue to cross unimpeded, and release to us Jon Umber and Lord Lymond Goodbrook.”

If Leslyn Haigh and his son have realized that Lothar Frey almost immediately had Ryman Frey killed upon his ‘release’, they either don’t care, thinking themselves safe because they are not in direct line for the Twins, or just want to get away from Grey Wind’s menacing jaws. That doesn’t stop the wolf from snapping at Alyn Haigh as he scurries out of the way, resulting in a blossoming dark stain across the man’s trousers. Nell has seen enough men piss themselves either in fear or death or both at this point that it is no longer terribly amusing or satisfying, but at least the stench of death and decay from the bridge is so strong that no one has to smell it.

It takes a good twenty minutes to cut them all down, the bodies hanging from the bridge. The Freys must have disposed of the more common soldiers or hedge knights hanging from there months ago, but they left up the highborn corpses, as some last vestige of intimidation, perhaps, even when they realized the odds were tilting in another direction. At this point, after months of decay and wind and rain and sleet, most of the corpses are unrecognizable apart from a few scattered pieces of armor. She imagines the Freys sold or took for themselves most anything that was valuable- fine swords and shields and helms. 

Dacey Mormont once commented that her mother had never quite forgiven her brother Jeor for taking House Mormont’s Valyrian steel to the Wall with him, and not leaving it for his sister or one of her daughters to wield. Perhaps it’s for the best. Had Dacey been carrying it when she died, the Freys would have gloatingly claimed that as their own as well, much as the Lannisters took Ice and patted themselves on the back for the spoils of war. Dacey’s corpse is recognizable only because of her green and brown patterned armor and the long hair still clinging to the skull. In death, she and another, shorter skeleton have all but fused together. A Norrey, Nell thinks he once was. She can’t remember which one. 

One by one, the corpses are cut down, wrapped in cloth, and bundled onto a stretcher for the baggage train. Nell can tolerate the smell, but Dana looks nearly green, Catelyn has clamped a kerchief over her mouth and nose, and even stubborn little Arya looks a little faint in the saddle, likely from holding her breath in order not to breathe in. Nell reaches over and touches her shoulder gently, trying to communicate that she knows this must be difficult for a child to bear, but Arya flinches away as if struck, and looks instead to the hulking form of Sandor Clegane, several horses back, who makes brief eye contact with her and spares an almost… familiar look, like an older brother tilting his head as if to say ‘what can you do?’. That’s more than a bit disturbing, to think that Clegane spent so much time with her that he is almost someone she’d look to for reassurance, but Nell puts the thought away.

When they are all cut down, perhaps a dozen of them, the Haigh men walk quickly back towards the relative safety of the West Twin, and entire army cranes their neck to watch as a heavily scarred Jon Umber and a nearly skeletal Lymond Goodbrook are marched towards them to their waiting horses. The Greatjon greets his son with a muffled roar of fatherly love, swooping in to clap him on the back, and the Smalljon spares a grin missing more than a few teeth up at his father, then turns and punches the Frey guard who’d been handing him off squarely in the face. 

Nell can hear the crunch of a nose shattering from here. There’s a few sharp cries of both approval from the northmen and discontent from the Frey men, but Lothar quiets them like a mother hushing her children, and the Smalljon swings himself up into the saddle as if he’d never left it. Lymond Goodbrook has to be helped, he is shaking badly, but once astride he holds himself tall and proud. Leslyn and Alyn Haigh have disappeared from her view; grouped together, these Frey men all look so similar, and the identical armor and helms don’t help matters much. Nell doesn’t care much whether they spend tonight in a warm, safe bed, or at the bottom of the bloody river. They still have the rest of this bridge to cross.

The Freys could still try to pin them here, bar the way forward and back, send out five hundred men from each castle and fight it out one more time, but while it is plausible, it is not likely. Nell isn’t deluding herself to think that. Most of their primary men are either dead, at Darry, or in the North with her father. The majority of the Twins, is, when you really consider it, women and children. They do not want more war. Many of them are likely not all that sad to see their fathers and brothers go. They want to be left alone with what stores they have left for the winter. A grand battle on this bridge might be something to sing about, but it would still be a thousand against four thousand, and the northerners have more men on horseback, courtesy mostly of the Brackens’ famous herds. 

Within the hour they reach the East Twin. Just one more keep to pass through, Nell realizes suddenly, and then they are free of the Riverlands, free of this entire mess, with the Neck in the distance. Harry Karstark glances at Robb’s inscrutable expression, and clears his throat, now back in the saddle. “We will now release Walder and Patrek Vance to you. In return, you will release to us Lucas Blackwood and Lord Ronald Vance, and allow us safe passage through the East Twin and out onto the eastern bank.”

Lothar Frey calls out the command, and the gates begin to open again. The Vance boys are just that- boys, the younger brothers of Dana’s maid Marianne, the older perhaps thirteen, the younger no more than eight or nine. About an age with Bran, had he lived. She wonders if Robb ever thinks of him. Does he remember him? She is almost afraid to ask. He has nothing but the faintest trace of Lysara in his mind, but Bran was his brother, a boy he spent years of his life with, not a mere two moons. Maybe it is kinder that he has forgotten. There is enough pain in him already. 

Dana is the one to urge the Vance boys forward; she gamely clambers down from her saddle, despite Nell’s tensing and Catelyn’s muttered warning, puts an arm around both Vance boys’ shoulders, and guides them forward the first few paces, giving an almost warning look to Grey Wind as she goes, as if to keep him on his best behavior. She cannot bring herself to look at Robb. Nell doesn’t blame her, not really. Lucas Blackwood reaches them first, with those long legs of his, and Bad Ronald is no more than a step or two behind him, scowl firmly in place. The boys disappear through a side portcullis into the West Twin, and the third exchange of hostage ends as smoothly- more or less- as the first two.

There seems to be a collective holding of breath as they pass under the final keep, as if everyone half expects it all to come crashing down on them, an explosion of wood and stone, burying them all in the river. Nell feels as though she were almost in a waking dream, but she is used to that by now. She doesn’t dream anymore. She supposes that stopped when her nightmares came to life and crowned themselves in the waking world. What warnings would Mother or Sara have left to give her? She ignored or mistook them all. She marched on blindly, believing the gods would shield her. She had her chances, and lost them all. 

They emerge on the far side, and for the first time in two years, Nell sees the familiar landscape of the eastern banks on the Green Fork, now blanketed in snow and frost. Perhaps five hundred men are clear of the East Twin when they stop. There is nothing to prevent them now from turning and without another word, charging forth towards the Neck directly to the north of them. But this isn’t over yet. There is just one large pavilion tent left standing from that wedding months ago. Now it is buffeted by wind and now, but the braziers are warmly lit, and while the prisoners there are shackled in chains and shivering wretchedly, Old Walder Frey is bundled in so many furs he resembles more a particularly small and frail bear than old man. 

Nell’s pulse pounds in her ears she takes in the sight of the old man, and Grey Wind gives a single, long growl. “Well met, Your Graces,” Old Walder calls out, voice wavering on the wind, but not from fear. No, he is still far too bold in his old age for that, still convinced he can evade the bear trap. Those eyes may be mostly blind by now, but they still see her, see them all. He flaps an age-spotted hand at Lothar as he approaches. “It’s a terrible cruelty, making an old man wait out in the cold like this. I’ll catch my death, _heh_.”

“My apologies for the delay, Father, but some things must be attended to by the Lord of the Crossing and he alone.” Lothar is all smooth, comforting smile and proper deference now, bowing his head before the old husk of a man. The Frey men being surrendered by their brethren are a mixture of silent fear and dread, angry glares, and outright calls and pleas.

“Sister!” Bryan Frey hails Fair Walda, who is delicately bundled in her warmest- and prettiest- cloak, mounted on a fine white gelding besides Perwyn. “Sister, please! Help us! I never- I never broke oath, I didn’t, tell them, I didn’t know-,”

“Shut up,” his brother, Sweet Steffon, who doesn’t look very sweet at the moment, is hissing at him. “Stop _talking_ , you lackwit-,”

“Enough,” Old Walder coughs, and even now, condemned to die, there must be some innate fear of him- or hope that he will belatedly intervene on their behalf- that silences the assembled men in chains. “Let us… finish things properly, _heh_?” He jerks his head towards his wife- Joyeuse, Nell remembers the girl’s name. She looks heavily pregnant, far too along with child to be standing out here in the cold, but at her husband’s command she hesitantly opens the small wooden chest clenched in her skinny arms, revealing two familiar crowns. Robb’s and Nell’s. Nell looks at them, glinting against the stark white of the swirling snow, but only for a moment.

“I am offering you- _heh_ \- my seed and your crowns, in return for peace, is that it?” Old Walder demands waspishly. He’s squinting in Robb’s general direction; Nell doubts he can see more than a fuzzy outline of a man. “They assured me you were dead, my king, but I can see now that I should never- _heh_ \- trust in the word of a Frey! Even my own!”

“He’s gone mad, hasn’t he?” Daryn Hornwood is muttering to Dana, who shrugs helplessly.

“I think he was always a little mad to begin with,” Catelyn says through her clenched teeth.

“Well, here they are!” Old Walder indicates the shivering prisoners with a shaking, gnarled finger. “The worst of the worst, is that it? A crop of murderers,” he coughs again, low and rattling, and blood flecks across his lips. The man won’t see more than a few more months of life, Nell realizes. He is on his way out already. Winter culls the elderly first, and he is no exception. “Rapers, thieves and traitors- I’ll make no excuses for their crimes, _heh_. For our crimes,” he corrects himself, showing off barren, grey gums devoid of any teeth at all. “We broke the faith, we did. For a good cause, or so we thought- peace, the Lannisters promised!” He descends into a high, shrill laugh that sends Lady Joyeuse flinching and Lothar grimacing. 

“Peace and prosperity! Ah, well, those lions- even less trustworthy than a Frey, I learned! Never say an old man can’t be taught a worthy lesson,” he licks at his lips, nodding. “But you’ve made up for the lost time and ground, haven’t you? We’ve done as you asked, surrendered our hostages, opened our gates! And now you’re on your way to deal with the Boltons,” he turns his gaze to Nell with sudden vigor. “Yes, young Roose. Always an ambitious little worm, wasn’t he? I’m sure you’re well aware by now, Your Grace, _heh_. It’s a sad day, when a daughter can’t trust her own father…” He coughs again. “Nor a father his sons. Very well. On with it. Give them the Piper boy and the Bracken girls. Let me see my sweet Zia and Wendel again.”

“Waltyr, my lord,” Joyeuse murmurs in a barely audible voice, head bowed so low her neck is nearly flush with her heaving chest. “Wendel is dead.”

He ignores her, and Zia walks stiffly forward, her arm around a shivering Waltyr, heads bowed against the wind. She doesn’t look at Nell as she goes- what would she say? _How could you send me back to them? How could you do this?_ What would Nell respond with? 

Marq Piper leads the Bracken sisters forward, a hand on each of their arms. Jayne Bracken’s hair is long once more, down to her waist, buffeted and rippled by the cold wind. Barbara has a recent looking bruise on her face, and there’s a mottled tint to her nose and mouth. Nell vowed to keep them safe from the Mountain, and delivered them right into the Freys’ hands instead. She feels the bile rise up again, but forces it back down. Marq, at least, looks well enough, although his face betrays nothing, and his red hair is lank with grease from being unwashed, plastered to his scalp.

“Kill them here, kill them anywhere,” Old Walder is saying of the captive Frey men. “Give the bodies to the river- Perwyn will show you how it’s done, won’t you, boy!”

“I’m not your boy,” Perwyn Frey replies evenly, but it’s drowned out by the wind.

“First, the crowns,” Harry Karstark says, fighting to be heard over it. But before he can move, it is Robb who dismounts from his frightened horse, which shies away as he walks forward, Grey Wind less than a foot behind him. 

“I’ll get them,” he says, and Nell tenses. 

As Robb approaches, some of the bound men cringe away, and a few cry out in open alarm and horror. Old Walder leans forward slightly in his chair heaped with furs. Joyeuse Frey takes half a step back, lips pressed together in terror. But Robb reaches her all the same. Nell could swear the girl whimpers as he takes both of the crowns from the chest, and no sooner has he had them then she immediately darts backwards, towards Lothar, who offers little comfort beyond wrenching the chest from her and handing it off to a servant.

Robb stands there for a moment, silhouetted by the wind and snow and the occasional shaft of pale sunlight through the grey sea of clouds overhead. He examines the crowns, one in each hand, and then, without so much as a word, tosses both far and wide. They sail easily through the air, and land in the shallow of the river below, immediately sinking to the bottom. 

“You were more of a talker before, my king,” Old Walder rasps, and then Robb takes a step closer to him, close enough that their breath could intermingle in the frigid air, and Nell sees the old man see him, really see him, see that this this is not just an injured but recovered man, a man thought dead but who was alive and well the entire time, but a dead man imbued with new life. Mayhaps he can smell it on him, if he still has that sense. Old Walder stiffens, then seizes in naked, open fear, and opens his mouth to cry out- for his wife, for his son, for a guard, Nell doesn’t know.

He never gets the chance. Robb’s sword is unsheathed soundlessly from the scabbard, cuts through the thinner furs at the old man’s sunken chest with ease, slices open his pendulous, flaps of skin throat, and the resulting warm spray of blood travels down the front of the furs before dripping onto the ground beneath him. Joyeuse gasps, Zia buries Waltyr's head in her chest so he doesn't see, men yell out, several guards move, but Lothar says quietly, “Hold,” and they do. 

Nell urges her mount forward, not quite under the pavilion, but close enough to be heard. “Now you may start to repay your debt to us,” she says, calmer than she feels. She is not shocked, not really. She knew Old Walder would not live through this, whether he died at Robb’s hand, at Lame Lothar’s, or even her own. 

“Walder Frey is dead. You will continue to let our men pass through your keep and onto the banks. We will not assault either Twin, we will not linger on your lands. You will pay Aegon Bloodborn his ransom, and he will leave you and your people be. You will surrender half of your toll price from here on out directly to House Tully. You will send all your children over the age of two and under the age of sixteen to be wards of other river houses for the duration of the winter. Lord and Lady Tully will write you with specific instructions. You will keep the rest of your lands, but House Paege, House Erenford, House Grey, and other knightly houses will no longer pledge themselves to your service but to House Tully. You may keep control of Darry, but you will wed that line into another river house through one of Mariya Darry’s daughters.”

Lothar urges his palfrey forward to the center of the pavilion with a flick of the reigns. Grey Wind circles at a distance, Robb remains where he is, sword still in hand, drenched in blood. “I am your lord now,” Lothar says, barely sparing a glance for his father’s fresh corpse, half-buried under the furs. “I am a trueborn son of Walder Frey, I have given my life in service to this house, and now I will lead it through the winter years.” He straightens as much as he can in the saddle. “I thank you for your mercy, my lords. Your Grace.” He inclines his head in a show of deference to Robb, who still does not move.

Fair Walda laughs, shrill and hard. 

“Shut your lying mouth, whore!” Sweet Steffon hollers in her direction, straining against his shackles.

“Don’t thank us just yet, Lothar,” Alesander Frey’s usually warm brown eyes are cold as frozen bark now. 

“Surely you don’t intend to take your orders from this snivelling cripple,” Fair Walda directs her sneer at the assembled guards. “A bloody steward! Scheming Lothar, always stroking his beard, waiting his turn-,”

“Be quiet,” Lothar all but growls, reddening with rage. “You insolent, brazen, _treacherous_ little cun-,”

Grey Wind makes no sound as he lopes towards Lothar’s timid palfrey- he doesn’t need to. The horse sees- and smells- him coming, sharp on the wind, all but screams in terror, and bucks once, twice, sending Lothar toppling to the hard, frozen ground with a strangled shout, then charging off out of the pavilion and into the snow. “Help me!” Lothar gasps out, but none of his men move, their eyes locked on the wolf.

Arwood Frey, the prisoner nearest to him, aims a kick at his ribs, chains jangling. 

“I’ll die happy if I get to see you go first,” Lucias Vypren hisses at him.

Grey Wind prowls ever closing. Lothar lets out a sound more like a mewl of terror than a proper shout and begins to try to scramble backwards, propelling himself with his arms and his good leg. He doesn’t get very far. “You gave us bread and salt,” Robb has sheathed his sword at last, but he walks forward. “I remember. You gave us bread and salt, and promised us safety.”

“No one- touched you- in our halls-,” Lothar gasps out, purpled with exertion in his efforts to keep away from Grey Wind.

“We were on your lands. They were your men.” He keeps moving. Nell urges her horse a little closer, but he balks at the strong stench of wolf.

“It was- _Bolton_ \- it was Bolton’s idea, all of it, his plan, he threatened us, he used the Lannisters against us-,”

“What was it you said to me, my lord?” Nell asks mockingly, cruelly, from her saddle. “When you had me brought before yourself, and your father, and your brother, Black Walder. _Your most ardent caretakers and protectors_ , you said. _In such a perilous time_. You did not look imperiled then. I’m afraid you do now.”

“ _A very generous offer_ , he called it,” Catelyn calls out coldly.

“Aye, such _needless bloodshed_ , you named the war,” Nell nods as if it is all coming back to her now. “Does this feel needless to you?”

“I’ve a terrible need to see you dead, Frey,” Karstark replies for him, then turns back to the assembled northmen and the few river lords. “What say you?”

The army is still emerging from the West Twin’s gates. No one inside that keep has any idea what is happening out here. A muffled roar of approval answers Karstark; he smiles thinly.

“Yes,” said Nell. “You said, _‘You may be our prisoner, but we need not be enemies.’_ And then you handed my daughter over to my father, and locked me in a cell.”

“We never- no one touched you-” Lothar is all but begging, eyes wild. “Joyeuse!” He calls desperately to his father’s new widow. “Tell them! Tell them- she was well treated, you saw, no one raised a hand to her, or the child, tell them we were _merciful_ -,”

Joyeuse says nothing, shaking her head, retreating to the side of one of the guards, who gives her his fur hat. 

“Merciful,” says Robb, says Stoneheart. “Where is your mercy? Where are my men? Where is my army? Where is my crown?”

“We gave it back-,”

“You can’t return some things,” he snarls. 

Grey Wind moves ever closer.

“I’m afraid you are not the new Lord of the Crossing,” Nell says in a poor imitation of pity. “That duty falls to Perwyn. You are not the lord of anything, Lothar Frey, save perhaps the dead. You’ll be following your father in that, at least.”

“No-,”

Grey Wind’s jaws clamp around his throat, and tear, and it is over. 

A few minutes later, while the wolf is still licking the blood off his snout with a pink tongue, Robb looks to Perwyn. “Begin,” he says, simply. 

Perwyn glances at Walda, then at Alesander and Olyvar. He swallows, then dismounts, drawing his sword. Even the King of Winter cannot butcher nine men, one after another, without tiring. The most Nell has ever seen him do at a time was three. Robb was exhausted after executing the Rickards with a poleaxe, and that was just two. After the first man slumps forward, Robb steps in as well, as do Marq Piper, the Smalljon, Ronald Vance, and Lucas Blackwood. It seems only fitting that they have the chance to kill their own captors. The Frey guards do not move; some of them look discomfited, others simply apathetic. They must be used to this all by now. What is at stake for them? The castles are not under attack. No one is threatening to put them to the sword. Their own families are not being menaced.

It’s hard work, and the snowfall only increases, but they’re done by noon. Old Walder and Lame Lothar’s corpses are almost entirely covered in white by the end of it, just mounds on the ground. The sound of the river is deadened by the snow, until it is eerily quiet aside from the wind. “We’ll make camp in the orchard, if you don’t mind,” Nell tells Perwyn almost casually when they are finished. He is the lord here now, after all. “I would offer our assistance in bringing the bodies back inside, but-,”

“No,” Fair Walda is toeing at the corpse of her brother Steffon with the delicate tip of her boot. She brushes snowflakes off her hood. “We were never a very sentimental family. I think it best they go straight into the river, don’t you, my lord?” She turns wide, blue doe eyes on Perwyn, who glances implacably back. It’s good that he’s not rattled by her, Nell thinks. They may be a better-suited match than first predicted by anyone, if he can tolerate getting his hands bloody, and she can learn to love him for it. 

“Yes,” he says. “Best to be done with this before dusk. We’ve busy days ahead of us.”

“Don’t we all,” Harry says flatly, watching Grey Wind navigate around the neat row of bodies, leaving red tracks in the snow. If Robb is tired from this and the cold, he shows no sign of it, walking back to his horse. He stops before Nell, as if seeking her approval, her thanks. 

She only wishes she felt sated for it. This was satisfying, she will not lie. But if revenge- justice- is a feast, it was just the first course, and all it has done is rouse her appetite. “It was well done, Your Grace,” she tells him, and her gloved hand finds his bare one. His hand flexes in her own, as if testing his strength again, and she ignores the flare of pain and pressure it exerts on her fingers and knuckles. She smiles through it, down at him, even as her horse flinches from his very presence, and the smell of rust and the sea is overpowering, just under her nose. 

“It was a beginning,” he tells her, or asks her, she isn’t sure. It’s hard to read those grey eyes in place of the familiar blue ones she trusted so instinctively.

“Yes,” Catelyn says softly. “A beginning.” 

Robb lets go of Nell’s hand, satisfied, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter should be our girl Beth!
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Most of the chapters for this fic I have to write in two parts, with a break in the middle for myself, but this is one of the few I was able to write straight all the way through. It's been a long time coming and I'm glad we got through it. I know hostage exchanges do not necessarily make for the most exciting fiction, which is why we probably don't see too many of them in ASOIAF fics, but rest assured, there are plenty of battles coming in the future of this fic to make up for the lack of action in this chapter. 
> 
> 2\. I know this may not have been the most satisfying conclusion to House Frey's.... 'shenanigans', but I don't think there's ever going to be a perfect, neat ending to something like this. In canon, I suspect the Brotherhood is going to finish a lot of them off in a Red Wedding 2.0, and the rest will probably eat each other alive come winter with their constant backstabbing. In this fic, for now, we are leaving the Twins in the maybe-capable hands of Perwyn and Fair Walda. Will they have a very successful rule? Maybe. Will they immediately be murdered in their sleep by grieving widows? It's possible. But we're heading north, so while we likely hear more about House Frey in the future, for the time being, we are leaving them behind.
> 
> 3\. In case people were confused; Lothar almost immediately killed Ryman because he was ahead of him in line for the lordship. It's not much more complex than that. He likely thought he could pass it off as 'Ryman was murdered by the Starks during the hostage exchange' or some such obvious lies. Edmure and Roslin are being sent back home because while the Riverlands are no longer under immediate threat.... they still need some people running the show, and Roslin is also in her second trimester of pregnancy by now. We will hear from them again in this fic, but again, Nell's POV is moving north and there's not much time to waste with winter about to arrive. Old Walder Frey was (obviously) misled by Lothar to believe that he was getting off with a slap on the wrist, ie. sacrificing some sons/grandsons/son-in-laws in exchange for keeping his lands and control of the Crossing. At the same time, Lothar believed that in exchange for all this selling out his own family, he was going to be granted lordship of the Twins, hence his little victory speech. 
> 
> 4\. We've finally made it out of the Riverlands, thank God, and it only took us fifty one chapters! That's right, for a fic focused on House Stark and House Bolton, we've spent the grand majority of our time in the Riverlands, dealing with river lords, fighting Lannisters and Freys. I very much appreciate everyone sticking with this fic and not giving up in exasperation thirty chapters back. This was Nell's last official chapter in the Riverlands. In fact, this was probably the last POV chapter in this fic to take place in the Riverlands, period. Next chapter we will be back at the Dreadfort with Beth, and the one after that we will be in the Vale with Jory. Thank you all for your patience and support!


	67. Beth VII

300 AC - THE DREADFORT

Beth is in the stables with Bandy and Shyra when Lord Ramsay returns without Reek. The past two moons have been almost peaceful, or as peaceful as things could ever be at the Dreadfort. By that Beth means that there were no flayings or particularly gruesome beatings or tortures for two moons. They were hardly just lying about enjoying themselves. When Ramsay leaves the Dreadfort for more than a few days he is in the habit of naming Damon Dance-for-Me castellan. Damon is no kind and patient master compared to Ramsay, he’s just lazier. He doesn’t want to be bothered, so for the most part he will leave you be so long as you don’t do anything to offend or irk him. 

Of course, that was not the case for Palla, but at least she’s not with child anymore. Beth brewed her a tea for that, strong and potent, from one of the old maester journals Arra had lent her. It tasted horrible; Beth knows because she tried a tentative sip herself, just to make sure she wasn’t poisoning Palla- but it worked, even if Palla nearly vomited it back up twice and ran a mild fever for a day and a half. She bled the babe, or what would have someday been a babe, out in a privy while Beth and Bandy stood guard. Beth’s not sure whether Damon knows or not, doesn’t know if he’d punish Palla for not telling him or for taking moon tea without his permission, but it’s been weeks now, and nothing has come of it. 

Palla still worries, though, and Beth doesn’t blame her. If she falls pregnant again, it’s so simple as Beth just brewing her a very strong dose of tea every time. It can’t be healthy to bleed so much so often, especially when she barely gets enough food or sleep as it is. Beth is worried too, worried that next time she might kill her before the babe can. “I’m four-and-ten now,” Palla had told her not a fortnight past, although she sounded doubtful, as none of them were very sure of the date. “I could have a babe. My hips are big enough. I could,” she added defensively, at the look on Beth’s dirt-streaked face. “He- Damon might like it, if I had his babe. If it were a son that looked like him. Men like it when you give them sons.”

Damon’s not a man, Beth had wanted to say, he’s a monster who only wears a man’s skin, who hides behind pretty yellow hair and a fine face. But there wasn’t much sense in just scaring Palla more. She’s always worried Damon is growing tired of her, and that when he doesn’t want her anymore, he will give her to Ramsay, and Ramsay will give her to the hunt. “But if it wasn’t a boy,” Beth had said instead, “if it was a girl-,”

“We could hide her,” Palla had been lying in the straw-strewn loft above the kennel, Beth balancing on the precarious wood ladder to speak with her. Her dishwater blonde had mingled with the straw until it was hard to tell which was which. Her ragged dress was spotted with blood along the sleeves, because Luton had struck her so hard in the mouth the day before one of her teeth had fallen out, and bled everywhere. “We could- you could smuggle her out to the village, or your witch could take her away-,”

That’s what Palla and the others call Arra, ‘your witch’, or the ‘grey girl’ because Arra really only speaks with Beth. They’ve seen her, though. They’ve all seen her. “Take her where?” Beth had snorted. “Don’t be stupid.” For once she felt like the older one, even if she was only eleven. “You can’t have a baby, Palla. They’d die come winter either way.”

Palla had sat up then, and looked for a moment as though she wanted to hit Beth. Beth didn’t care; she was used to getting hit, and Palla didn’t hit very hard. But she hadn’t, only said, sharply, “You know, they talk about you sometimes.”

Beth had tensed then, digging her long, filthy fingernails into the soft wood of the ladder. “Who?” She knew who.

“The Boys,” Palla had said. “Damon. Alyn. Luton and Yellow Dick and the rest. They talk in front of me, like I’m not even there.” She’d paused for a moment, her expression darkening, then added. “Bandy and Shyra will flower soon. They’re twelve now. They were arguing over who would get them first. But Damon said you were prettier, and almost highborn, so you’d be…” She’d trailed off. Beth had understood all the same. No one called her Beth Cassel around here anymore, no more than they called Reek Theon, but that did not mean they’d forgotten. 

Her stomach had done a series of nasty writhing flops, her guts squirming like worms. “When Damon’s done with me,” Palla had said, “who do you think he’ll want next? A stable girl, or a knight’s daughter? And that’s only if Ramsay doesn’t want you first.”

Beth had thought, for an instant, that maybe it’d be better if Ramsay wanted her first, because then she’d be dead sooner. Then she’d wrenched away from the thought, shuddering. No. No, that wasn’t going to happen. She’d been beaten and tortured and humiliated, but no one had- No one had ever done that to her, and no one ever would. She would rather be dead. If she had any forewarning, she’d throw herself from the top of the library turret. But she’d light a fire first, and hope she burned half the bloody keep down with her. See how they kept warm all winter in the ashes. 

So now, in the stables with the twins, when she hears the familiar screech of the main gates opening, she flinches a little. Ramsay left two moons past for Moat Cailin, because rumor had it that Roose Bolton was still stumbling through the Neck, harried and harassed at every turn by crannogmen and lizard lions and water snakes. Most of them had been praying he’d drown. Or get eaten. Or stabbed by a poison crannog-knife. Then again, Arra has told her a bit about Roose Bolton, and Beth had almost begun to hope he would make it back to the Dreadfort, if only because that meant Ramsay wouldn’t be the master anymore.

They said Lord Bolton could be just as cruel as his son, but more importantly, he was quiet about it. Beth might still be getting beaten and whipped, but at least there would be less screaming, she thought. The screaming was the worst bit, even when it wasn’t anyone she knew. She’d never realized the noises people made once they couldn’t scream anymore. They stopped sounding like people at all, and they began to sound like animals, and then it was a little easier to ignore them. She’d grown up in a great castle with a kennel and a butchery and stables. She was used to hearing animals in pain. Sometimes she’d felt badly about it, and she’d never liked to watch them slaughter the pigs or the lambs or the chickens, but it was not the same as watching people suffer. 

She doesn’t even feel that badly about the animals anymore. She’s killed her share of chickens by now, taking their heads off in one swift clunk of a hatchet. The first time the cook sent her to kill one her hands shook, and the chicken pecked her arms bloody, but now she doesn’t even think about, it just pinions their skinny legs in one fist and swings them down onto the stump, her left boot coming up to keep her balance, and down the blade goes. She barely smells the blood at all, now. The only bother is brushing all the feathers off her clothes, and sometimes they shit down her legs while she’s holding them still.

“Beth,” Shyra prods at her, breaking her out of her thoughts and returning her attention to the mortar full of ground up herbs cupped between her dirty hands. “This will work?”

Two of the horses have coughs and runny noses. Bandy and Shyra are supposed to go to Maester Uthor if the horses are sick or injured, or the stable master himself, but he’s a notorious drunk who spends most his days sleeping off the beer and rum from the night before. Bandy and Shyra are often left to their own devices to keep the stables clean and the horses tended to, with only a few sullen stable boys and leering grooms for assistance. 

“Yes,” Beth says, confidently, despite her unease from the clamor outside. “Thyme and coltsfoot, mashed up in their oats with some honey and sugar. That’s what the book said.”

Bandy and Shyra exchange a look; neither can read, so they’re going off her word here. Bandy and Shyra aren’t identical; Shyra is taller and skinnier, with a sharper, longer face and straight, dark brown hair. Bandy is shorter and plumper, or used to be, when they had good food, with a rounder face and lighter brown hair. But they dress more or less the same, and wear their hair in the same chin-length style, since they’re constantly getting lice or fleas, and they sound the same when they speak. Beth is sometimes envious; she wishes she had a sister right now. Bandy and Shyra aren’t any better off than her, and their parents are dead, just like hers, but at least they have each other. 

Beth hasn’t got anyone, unless you count Palla and Turnip. Or Arra. She supposes Arra is a bit like an older sister. Sometimes she reminds Beth of Sansa, in the way she speaks and carries herself, or even like Lady Catelyn. Poised, that’s the word for it. Arra never seems frightened or nervous or worried, even when the Bastards Boys are drunk or angry or there’s a fight breaking out in the feasting hall or one of the dogs has gotten loose and is attacking people.

Maybe it’s because she’s almost a witch. Arra claims she isn’t, but Beth suspects otherwise. She knows too much for an ordinary servant, even a lord’s daughter. And she’s never in any trouble- ever. Beth has never seen her yelled at or beaten or even groped at by Damon or Sour Alyn or any of the others. Even Ramsay, when he is here, doesn’t seem to take much notice of her. He looks at her, but his gaze slides over her like water. Arra is fair and slender and well-spoken. It can’t just be pure luck and coincidence keeping her out of Ramsay’s grasp. She must have done something, made something to keep herself safe. Either that or she’s blackmailing them all, or she’s a favorite of Lord Roose’s and that’s why none of them dare touch her. That’s what Palla thinks, that Roose Bolton must have had her husband killed so he could have her for himself. Damon said once when he was drunk that it was how Ramsay had come to be. Lord Bolton saw her while he was out hunting, and she was so beautiful he challenged her husband for her hand right then and there.

That’s a lie. Everyone knows it. Lords do not go out hunting and fall in love with peasant women. Only Prince Duncan and Jenny of Oldstones, and Palla says he probably ran her down like a fox because the Targaryens were always stealing people’s wives and betrotheds and fucking their sisters. Beth has never met a Targaryen, so she wouldn’t know. Maybe if there was still a Targaryen king the Ironborn would have never attacked the North and the Boltons wouldn’t have betrayed the Starks, but she doubts it. Father always said the last king was mad, and no one wanted to listen to the Targaryens after they lost their dragons. 

She wishes the Starks had dragons. Then Winterfell would never have been burned and destroyed, and they would have beaten the Lannisters in a single night. As she mixes the herbs in with the oats, she imagines a great wyrm writhing around in the sky above them, melting the dirty snow with its fiery breath, the sound of its wingbeats drowning out everything else. Horses used to scare her because they were so big, but even though she hasn’t ridden a horse in months and months, she’s not afraid of them anymore. They’re stupid, horses. A dragon would be so big it couldn’t fit in a stall. It would have to sleep alongside the Weeping Water at night. The villagers from the Dreadton would come out and gaze at it, the moonlight on its scales.

Beth likes to tell herself stories, most days. It helps her stay calm. Sometimes they are pretty stories, with dragons with silver scales like the moon, and sometimes they are ugly stories, like the ones Arra and Old Nan share, of skins and guts strewn in the trees, of wildlings coming down from the wall with packs of wolves, of the Night King and the Corpse Queen and the cannibals on Skaagos and the great ice spiders and giants so big their heads brushed the clouds and their teeth were like spears rattling around in their mouths. 

She would rather think about monsters that aren’t real than the ones she encounters here, every day.

She’s just done feeding the sick horses when Little Walder marches through the doors leading Ramsay’s warhorse, Blood. The Walders are still Ramsay’s squires, and they were very disappointed when he didn’t take them to Moat Cailin, so she imagines they’re pleased now that he’s returned once more. Little Walder is, at least. She doesn’t think Big Walder likes Ramsay much. He never says anything, though, mostly keeps to himself or takes his lessons with Maester Uthor. Little Walder never goes to his lessons; he’d rather spend time hanging aound the Bastard’s Boy’s, laughing at their stupid japes and getting so drunk he vomits in a corner. He mostly tries to push around her and the other servants, too, but Beth’s not afraid of him. He might be a lot taller and stouter than her, but he’s not very bright, and he’s a slow runner. Bandy and Shyra slink into the shadows as he enters, his faded but pristine blue-and-grey doublet gleaming in the half-light of the stables. 

He sneers at once when she spots Beth, backing away from the stalls. “What do you have there?” he demands.

“A treat for the horses from the kitchens,” Beth replies blandly. That’s the best way to deal with him. Don’t smile, don’t scowl, just stand there and look blank and boring. Blood is a fiery red stallion, and the only reason Walder’s able to lead him straight to his stall is because the horse is exhausted. Ramsay must have pushed him hard on the journey back to the Dreadfort; he’s heaving and panting and there’s blood on his sides from the spurs. And his flank, as well- Ramsay must have whipped him with a crop. 

“Is there any sugar left?” Little Walder shuts the stall door behind Blood with a bang, then rounds on her. “Let me see.”

Beth holds out the empty pestle to show him, but he just scowls at it. “I’m hungry. Go get me some bread from the kitchens.”

“I can’t,” Beth licks her lips, cracked from the cold. “I have to go collect snow for the baths. Steward’s orders.”

“I don’t care,” Little Walder shoves at her; she stumbles backward, but doesn’t fall. He’s going to have to push a lot harder than that to make her fall. She’s stronger now; her arms and legs are hard with muscle, and he might be growing, but so is she. She’s at least an inch taller than she was when she came here, and her limbs are getting longer. Beth hates to look at her reflection, only does so when she’s cutting her hair shorter and shorter, but she knows she doesn’t look like the weepy little girl who came here, sobbing for her father. 

“Get someone else to do it,” Beth replies evenly; she puts the pestle back into the pocket of her smock. “Ask one of the maids inside.”

“I’m a lord,” Little Walder informs her.

“Not of the Dreadfort,” she snaps. She’s sick of pretending that he’s scary. He isn’t. He thinks he’s just like Ramsay and Damon but he’s not. The only person who’s scared of him is Reek and some of the weaker servants. The rest just pretend to be to keep him from throwing a fit. He’s only nine. Beth is two years older. And she was born a Cassel of Winterfell. He was born a Frey of the Crossing. All his kin are traitors and cravens and they don’t deserve a lordship. Her father did. He was going to marry Lady Hornwood and Beth was going to have a mother and make a fine marriage someday. No one would have ever whipped her or shoved her or shaved her head or argued over who was going to get to take her maidenhead. 

“You’re insolent,” he says, reddening. “I’ll have you whipped, you bitch.”

“Then do it yourself, if you’re a big strong man now,” Beth mocks, goading him. She hears Shyra whispering to Bandy. If Little Walder goes running to Ramsay, this won’t end well for her. But if she can trick him into hitting her first- his meaty little fist comes swinging at her head, but he punches sloppy. Beth dodges it, and jumps out of the reach of his next furious swing as well. He abandons hope of landing a punch in his embarrassment, for he must know the twins are watching, and just charges her, like a ram. Beth skids out of the way at the last instant, and Little Walder bangs into the door behind her, rattling it. He whirls around, winded and snarling, and Beth snatches a rake propped up against the nearest stall, hooks it on the legs of his breeches, and upsets his balance.

She drops the rake with a clang as Little Walder falls onto his bottom with a curse, then pushes her advantage; Turnip told her once, all serious, that his da used to tell him when you were winning a fight was never the time to stop, lest you walk away and they brain you in the skull with a metal pitcher. Beth tackles him; his head cracks against the hard dirt floor, and presses her thumb down, hard, into his throat, making him cough and gasp and gag a little. “Don’t you hit me, Frey,” she hisses in his face, “or I’ll whip _you_.”

“I’m- telling- Ram-,” he cries out when she puts the full pressure of her arm against his throat, choking him. 

“Tell him what? Tell him Beth Cassel beat you? Go ahead,” Beth says spitefully. “See what he has to say about you getting beaten by a little girl. I bet he’ll laugh.”

She would never have done this just a few moons ago. But time and Arra’s lessons have made her bolder, if only a little. She’d never dare talk back to any of the grown men, and she doesn’t go around threatening people lightly. But Little Walder is just a squealing little pig, and she’s killed pigs before. She’s held the bucket to collect the blood, and helped hang them up by their hooves. Beth is not afraid of him. She’s given up so much, resigned herself to all of this, knows that even were she to ever get away from here, they would call her and Palla and the rest whores and slatterns, but she is not going to let herself fear a Frey, too.

He’s sniveling a little when she clambers off him; she can hear Ramsay’s voice in the distance; he doesn’t sound pleased, and if he comes stalking into the stables, she doesn’t want to be found standing over Little Walder like this. Beth spares a sympathetic glance for the twins, then cuts out through the back paddock, hopping the fence with ease, and continuing on her way. She doesn’t find out that Ramsay in a right state because Lord Bolton took Reek from him and sent him back home to the Dreadfort, his tail between his legs, to be summoned for his own wedding, until a good hour later. 

Arra comes to tell her while she’s collecting snow. They had a brief autumn blizzard three days past, and while the rains melted the three feet they got down a good bit, there’s still enough to collect for water, especially from the bigger drifts and mounds in the godswood. Beth spends a lot of time in the godswood now. There and the library, at night. They’re the only places that feel even halfway safe here. She knows she can never afford to completely let her guard down, but when Arra is near she always relaxes a little. Nothing bad ever seems to happen when she’s around. 

Arra sits on a stump now, speaking amiably with her as Beth shovels snow into the large wooden buckets. They’re so big she can only drag in one at a time, but at least this work is quiet and solitary, and it will eat up time until dinner. She wouldn’t want to be one of the maids fixing Ramsay’s bath, or be in the kitchens with Turnip right now. Ramsay is particular about his meals, and the cook is always tense because of it, knowing there will be hell to pay if the meat’s overcooked or not properly seasoned. Beth seldom eats in the hall herself; the servants usually eat in the kitchens afterward, exhausted after a good two hours of being on their feet, refilling cups and bringing dishes in and out of the kitchens. 

“My lord Ramsay’s most affronted,” Arra says, a slight smile playing on her thin lips. “His father promised him a princess, but wouldn’t let him so much as a lay a finger on her. And he took his Reek, to boot.”

Beth doesn’t know what Roose Bolton would want with Reek. He’s just a mad, shambling corpse. She hates Theon Greyjoy, she will always hate Theon Greyjoy, but it’s hard to hate the thing he’s been turned into. That doesn’t mean she feels sorry for him- why should she? Theon may never have been the monster Ramsay is, but that doesn’t mean he was good. He killed the septon and Farlen and Mikken for nothing. He let them rape Palla. He hurt Kyra, over and over again, until she was crying every night. He would have killed her. He made Black Lorren put a noose around her neck and stand her up on the ramparts and made her father watch.

Even now, when she thinks of it, she still feels the rope. She still feels the fear. And she still hates. She didn’t deserve that. None of them deserved any of it. He was a traitor and a murderer and a slaver. He brought reavers onto their lands. People will never see their families again because of him. They will die miserable deaths on the Isles because of him. Father is dead because of him. Ramsay was the one who killed him, but Theon was the one who put Father there in the first place, all because of his pride and greed. 

She doesn’t feel sorry for him. Not that it matters; he’s too mad to know either way. The last time he saw her he kept mumbling under his breath, “Beth, Beth, rhymes with death.” So it does. And Reek rhymes with freak, and sneak, and weak, and Roose rhymes with noose, and she hopes that’s what they both get. The noose. “Do they really have Arya Stark?” Beth’s not sure she believes that at all. How would they have found Arya? Why wouldn’t the Lannisters keep her for themselves, like Sansa? Beth can’t imagine anyone finding Arya if she didn’t want to be found. She was always a good hider, second only to Bran, when he still had legs. She wonders where Bran is now. Dead, maybe. Or hiding in some village somewhere. Maybe Osha took him and Rickon over the Wall, and they’re happy and free among the wildlings. 

Arra shrugs. “I am no seer. But I believe they have Donella Stark’s babe, else Roose Bolton would never have so boldly set off for Barrowton with his men.”

Beth brightens slightly, even as snow and slush drip down onto her boots. “Lady Barbrey must hate him. He betrayed Queen Nell, and gave her over to the Freys.”

“I heard a rumor the Starks are fighting the Freys again in the Riverlands,” Arra arches a dark eyebrow, as if it is no matter.

Beth tenses. “But they killed Robb. And all his men.”

“Perhaps not all of them. It’s easy enough to kill one man. It’s harder to stamp out a thousand.”

Beth allows herself a dash of hope for a brief moment, then silences it. There’s no sense in wishing and praying. Even if Donella managed to escape the Freys, or the Lannisters are losing again, they are still leagues and leagues away from here, and winter is coming. No one is coming to save them. Not the Starks, not the Manderlys, not the Dustins or the Ryswells or the Flints. Not even Stannis Baratheon.

As if she’d read Beth’s mind, Arra says, “Baratheon’s taken Deepwood Motte. I read one of Uthor’s letters.”

“How’d you get it?” Beth demands, blowing warm puffs of air onto her freezing, red hands.

“He’s absentminded,” Arra shrugs. “He forgets to properly lock his door. Or his windows.”

“Deepwood Motte’s nowhere near here,” Beth replies. She remembers her maps from childhood. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means there’s more then just Bolton men and a few runty Ironborn roaming the North,” Arra seems bemused by her forced indifference. “It means Roose needs be on his guard. It means he must give the rest of the northern houses cause to be loyal. Hence,” she holds out a pale hand, palm up, “the babe. Barbrey Dustin will do anything to protect her niece’s child. And Old Rodrik has no sons left, just a young heir. The Dustins and the Ryswells will obey. And they say the Karstarks have already turned cloak for the Boltons, even before that.”

It’s good she didn’t let herself be hopeful, before. Things always come apart like this. Beth keeps shoveling, her breath misting in front of her. “So that’s why he’s going to Barrowton with the princesses and the Freys?”

“Aye. He doesn’t trust his bastard to stay his wagging tongue or his wagging cock,” Arra laughs lightly. 

Beth gives her an incredulous look. “One day someone will hear you say a word against Ramsay, and they’ll string you up on a cross and take off your skin.”

“It’s not my skin I’m worried for,” Arra says with mock sobriety, before she softens, standing up and brushing off her skirts. “You’re wise to keep your hopes at bay, Beth. The Starks are not your saviors, nor any of the rest. But you should keep your ears at the ready. Things are changing.”

“Nothing ever changes here,” Beth retorts. “Nothing will ever change here. You should know that.”

“Oh, I have know that,” Arra puts a hand on her shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean it will always be so. Where do you think Roose Bolton would rather fight Stannis Baratheon? Here, after he’s taken three quarters of the North and collected the mountain clans behind him? Or somewhere more amenable?”

Beth stops shoveling, staring at her. Is Arra trying to be difficult? She’s not always easy to understand; she thinks she’s so clever, always speaking in half-riddles, full of vague promises or belated warnings. Beth likes her, she does, and Arra’s been a good friend to her, but she doesn’t always trust her wisdom. She’s still just a girl, even if she is a widow. She thinks for a moment, gazes down at the snow at her feet, then finally asks, “Winterfell?”

“You ought to know better than me,” Arra scolds. “Is that not your home? Where you were born and bred? Full of glass gardens and walls that are warm to the touch? Hot springs bubbling underfoot and the strongest walls in the North? Aye, this winter will be a long one, and ruined or not, many men would rather outlast it there, not here,” she casts a dismissive look around the godswood’s walls. 

“You think he means to go to Winterfell,” Beth says. “But what about the wedding? Is he… aren’t they wedding Arya to Ramsay? Isn’t that why he’s so upset? Because his father promised him a proper Stark bride?”

“Where would you see a Stark wed?” Arra scoffs, brushing a lock of dark hair from her long, almost hollow face. “In little wooden Barrow Hall? No. The Bastard is back, aye, but not for long. He’ll still come like any dog when his father calls. And he knows the way to Winterfell very well, he does. So when he goes again…” She smiles slightly. “Why, he’ll not be back for sometime, I should think. Him and his Boys.”

Beth wrinkles her nose at her, dismisses this as fanciful talk, wants to tell Arra that these wild thoughts are just that, wild, that she can’t really know what the Boltons’ plans are, and for all they know Ramsay won’t wed Arya- if it even is Arya- for years and years. Maybe she’s not even flowered yet. But a scant few nights later, Beth stands with her back to the wall, a flagon of wine at the ready, as she always has, and watches a somewhat placated Ramsay, pink-cheeked from food and drink, rise from his seat to address the hall.

“Word from my lord father,” he says, and he does not even have to bellow or raise his voice, because everyone immediately falls silent, knowing better than to interrupt. Even the few dogs roaming the hall go quiet, even the littlest one, the puppy Kyra. “He writes to tell me that we march for Winterfell, to celebrate my wedding to the lady Arya,” his grin is truly revolting, Beth thinks, those wormy lips stretched over his yellowed teeth, “and to meet the Baratheon invaders in battle, as we crushed the squids!” He continues on for sometime- Ramsay quite enjoys speeches- but concludes with, “I know Damon will prove an able master to you all, in my absence.”

Damon straightens proudly in his seat, like a little boy at his name day feast, and Beth makes brief eye contact with Palla, who is balancing a tray full of pies between her and Turnip. Their gazes meet, and without really thinking about it, Beth mouths, “Soon.” Soon what, she’s not sure, she just has this feeling. Not like anxious butterflies in her stomach. It feels smooth and cold, like ice water trickling down her spine, seeping into her scarred flesh. It’s not a bad feeling. Is this how Arra feels, all the time, so sure of herself? Beth shouldn’t be sure of anything, least of all her own life. 

But soon. Soon Ramsay will be gone again, and he will take the Walders and many of his men and his hounds with him, and they will… Well, they will be left with Damon again. And witchy grey Arra. And maybe things are changing. Or going to change. Or will, if they make them. She thinks of the Weeping Water, winding sadly down from the mountains to the sea, and beyond that, the great Hornwood forest, and beyond that, a place where she wouldn’t have to be so afraid and so angry all the time. It’s just a story to tell herself, like all the rest. 

Only this one feels slightly more real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. You could say Beth's leveled up a little while we were away. It's been twenty chapters since we've heard from her, but only about two/three months in her time. With some knowledge of herbalism, a helpful friend/mentor in Arra, and a lot of experience navigating the Dreadfort and avoiding the likes of Ramsay and others, Beth's certainly a little more hardened and a little more confident in her own abilities. While she doesn't have much knowledge of the world outside the Dreadfort, and has long since given up hope of rescue, that doesn't mean she or the other Winterfell survivors are completely down for the count.
> 
> 2\. Similarly to as in canon, Ramsay brought Theon to Moat Cailin to get the Ironborn there to surrender the fort, and help Roose and company finally leave the Neck, where they've been basically stuck treading mud and water for months now. Unfortunately for Ramsay, Roose has taken Theon off his hands and essentially sent him back home to the Dreadfort, not bringing Ramsay to Barrowton with him for fear of him needlessly antagonizing the Ryswells and the Barbrey Dustin. 
> 
> 3\. As in canon, Stannis is finally on the move. We will be seeing him in this fic. I'm both looking forward to and dreading having to write his... notoriously charming demeanor. 
> 
> 4\. Next chapter will be in the Vale! I'm very excited! Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy.


	68. Jorelle V

300 AC - THE GATES OF THE MOON

Jory dreams of the forge the night before they leave the Bloody Gate, not the river. She wonders if it is a brief reprieve from the gods, to give her that gift. She doesn’t dream of river reeds tangled in her hair, or a harsh net catching and scraping at her skin, or the rushing sounds of the current or the low murmur of oars slicing through the water. She doesn’t dream of water at all, but fire instead, the light of the big hearth spread out across her skin. 

It’s not dreadful early morning, but the warm cradle of the night, and everything is tinged with oranges and yellows, not grey and brown. She is not lying helpless on her back, dragged along by the river, but sprawled across the furs and blanket bundled on the stone floor. Her hair isn’t long and waterlogged, but bristling beside her ears and she is flushed pink, not white as snow. The only similarity is that she does not want to wake up. She wants to stay in the dream, the moment, forever, like an insect trapped in amber, surrounded by golden light.

His eyes are blue, but in the firelight they look almost green as the sea. The shadows soften the hard lines of his face into something more boyish and tentative, aside from the stubble across his jaw and chin. She wonders what they do to her. Does she look almost pretty, in this light? Does she look like she wants to be kissed? She does. They are sitting cross-legged, like the children they have not been for years. 

It would make more sense if they were drunk, but they are not. He doesn’t like to beyond the occasional cup at meals, says it reminds him too much of the alehouse where his mother worked. Of the men who would come there and wile away their lives, one cup after another, until they pissed themselves or slumped down across the table or staggered out into the street to be run down by some cart. Jory always feels more self conscious and shy when she is drunk, grasping for words and consumed with awkward giggles, so she is glad of it.

She thinks of what her sisters might say, how they would mock her. Aly and Lyra would tell her she is being silly; seventeen and very much of age, and she acts like a timid little maid, waiting to be told what to do. Mormont women have never hesitated in taking what they want. Dacey would have been more sympathetic; Dacey was always more reserved with men, slower to smile and flirt and fall into their arms, laughing. She said it was because she had a duty as the eldest, the firstborn, to be more careful, more particular with who she chose to bring into her bed. She never had children, despite the occasional urging or suggestion to either wed or find herself a bear. 

“Aly will give you all the grandchildren you require, Mother,” Dacey would tell Mother with a wry smile, dodging Alysane’s swat, and then later tell Jory that not every woman looked eagerly towards the birthing bed. “It’d seem a silly thing, to die pushing out a son or daughter instead of on a battlefield.”

Jory doesn’t know if she wants children. She wants her honor. She wants her sisters. She wants Bear Island and the North and she wants to bring Sansa Stark home. And right now, she wants to kiss Gendry. “You could stay,” he says, suddenly. “With us. For the winter, and then- after the snows melt, you could go back to the North. Your kin- they would understand. You’d be safer here.” He’d swallowed then. “I’ve seen you fight. We could make it safe.”

Her only response had to been to shift up so she was sitting on her knees, smiling at him sadly. His flushed cheeks had darkened all the more. “M’sorry. That was- it was stupid. You’re-,” his jaw had tightened, and then he’d averted his gaze with familiar bitterness. “You’re a lady. I shouldn’t have- Forget I said anything.”

So he’d said, and so she’d looked at him, a terribly sweet pain in her chest and belly, and then she shuffles a little closer, in the memory and in this warm dream of hers, and says, “I am a lady. And you’re a knight. And one of the finest smiths I’ve ever met. And- and you could be the greatest armorer in the land, and make swords like the ones from the Age of Heroes, and-,” it’d been her turn to swallow nervously, “and if you think I don’t want to stay, you’re wrong. But I swore an oath. And I gave Brienne my word. And- and there are people who need me.”

He looks back at her. She holds his gaze, unflinching, and then slowly puts her bare hand over his. His knuckles are rough and scarred with old burn marks and scabs under her fingers. His arms are tanned and leathered from years of summer sun, even now, on the brink of winter. And she can see his pulse thudding steadily in his neck, and feel the comforting warmth of his hand under hers. This is strange. It’d be one thing if she wanted to bed him. She does, but she won’t, because she has no steady supply of moon tea, nor the time to fret over a babe in her belly. But she doesn’t just want that, doesn’t just want him because he is tall and strong and handsome. 

Jory’s had her share of girlish loves, cast those longing looks, exchanged kisses with a boy or two before she left Bear Island. She knows what it means to feel like butterflies are beating gossamer wings under her skin, and she knows what it feels like to be wracked with hurt and longing over someone who won’t- can’t- love you back. But this is different. Those were dreams or games. This is real. And now she does understand how some people see a man or a woman and think ‘I’d be happy enough, to stay with you, for as long as we both lived.’ 

Maybe he doesn’t really feel the same, maybe it was just curiosity or lust or fascination with this strange northern shieldmaiden, but in her dream all the hesitation and insecurity vanishes, and if he paused, if he nearly pulled his hand away in the memory, if she could see the doubt in his blue eyes, the wariness, well, in the dream he kisses her immediately, and his hand comes up to cup the back of her hot neck, and there is nothing clumsy about it, nothing halting or fumbling, but-

But she cannot sacrifice everything genuine about it, even in a dream, because Jory Mormont has always been painstakingly honest, even when she wishes otherwise. So in the dream, as in life, she bites down too hard on his bottom lip in her eagerness, and he winces in surprise and pulls back slightly, one hand at the nape of her neck, feeling at her short hair, the other on her slim shoulder. “M’sorry,” it’s her turn to whisper, flush in embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to- are you alright?” His chest is heaving and there is a bead of blood on his lip. He licks it away and mayhaps because she seems so self conscious and bashful herself, because she is not behaving as though this were some illicit romp, glancing nervously towards the door or urging him to be quick and quiet-

He breaks into a broad grin, the truest one she has ever seen, and Jory feels the same seed of happiness and pleasure root itself in her heart, all over again, to dream it once more. “I’m alright,” he says, warmly, happily, she’s so seldom heard him happy, as opposed to satisfied or content or amused, and moves in to kiss her again. She loops her wiry arms around his neck, draws closer, smells sweat and ashes and dead leaves in his hair from the woods, and his mouth burns and burns against her own, like that fire god he worships, and the forge around them expands, branches out, and for just a little while she is not missing home or family, is not missing anything at all, only wants time to stop outside the stone walls and let her stay a little longer here.

Later, she lays beside him in his narrow cot, a cot he is almost too big for, his legs sprawled out haphazardly, both of them half-dressed and half-awake, and she wonders if he is sorry they didn’t bed each other, rather than kiss and touch each other on the floor and whisper back and forth about what they wished they could do. “No,” he says, when she asks. “I don’t want a bastard. Ever.” Her head is on his bare chest. He has a line of dark hair going down to his belly button. She is in her shift and stockings, and before he was counting the freckles on her shoulders with one callused finger. 

“I could be a bastard,” she says. “My mother never married my father, nor my sisters’. Here, I might have been a bastard, and they’d have packed her off to a motherhouse.”

“She meant to have you,” he says. “No one ever meant for me. She wanted you.”

“I meant for you,” Jory cranes her neck up to kiss the underside of his jaw, watches his pulse jump like a rabbit’s. She likes the feeling of his muscled legs locked firmly around hers, like she’s being held here, like she can finally be at ease, at peace. No one touches her anymore. She misses her sisters’ easy embraces and playful punches and shoves. “I’ve wanted you.”

“And you’ll be gone come morn.” She can tell he is trying to sound disaffected, impassive, and failing miserably. 

“I’ll come back,” she says. What is one more vow? And she means to keep this one, if she can. She feels no rush of regret or doubt. She is seventeen now, oughtn’t she to know what she wants? There’s precious few men like him, be they high or lowborn. “I’ll come back, and you can make me a new sword.”

“You come back, it’ll be with your lord husband and a few bear cubs,” he says flatly, but there is a glimmer of something in those dark eyes. Maybe hope. Maybe just wishes. Even ‘prentice smiths and outlaw knights are allowed to have wishes, she thinks. “I’ll bow to you and call him m’lord, and you’ll wear a fine dress and keep your hair long again. And you won’t look twice at me.”

“Mayhaps I’ll have a husband and long hair and a fine dress someday,” Jory had muttered into his chest, “but never a lord.” When she was younger, before the war, before any of this, she’d heard Mother talk of someday proposing a match between her and Robb, if she could just manage to lure Lord and Lady Stark up to the island. Robb was a good man. Mayhaps still is, if the rumors are true and he did manage to survive the Freys’ betrayal. But she would not have wanted to be his wife, even if she would have wed him out of duty. Jory doesn’t care about power or legacy or influence. She doesn’t want a husband and a master to be one and the same. Besides, Winterfell always felt so cavernous and cold to her, nothing like a proper home. 

His hand had come to rest on the small of her back, where the hard ridge of her spine began. “I’m not a boy anymore. I’ll be alright. We’ll be alright,” and she knows- knew- he was talking of the orphans as well. “You’ll see. If… if you did come back. This will look a proper inn again.”

“You wait and see,” she’d said boldly. “I’ll come back, and you’ll swear it was like I never left at all. And I’ll wear my hair long, so you can see how it looks.” She’d wondered if he was trying to imagine it now, falling down her back and over his hand there, or the smooth weight of the neat plait. “I’ll curtsy to you, and call you Ser Gendry of the Crossroads. Or Master Smith. Mayhaps it’ll be you who won’t look twice at me. With your pretty wife and your six strapping sons, to help you in the forge.”

He’d laughed, and it had rumbled in his chest, a pleasing sound under her ear. “Your shield should be heavier now,” he’d said then, practical as ever. “You’ll have to get used to the new weight. You’ll practice with it, aye? You have to practice with it on your arm, not just your sword, or the weight will throw your balance off in a fight, and some Vale prick will kill you.” He’d hesitated. “It’s heavier, but it’s stronger now. If you stayed longer, I’d toss it and make you a new one. A buckler. Give you a steel fist.”

“I like it strapped to my arm instead,” she’d countered. “Leaves my left hand free to go for a knife if I need to.”

“If we had more leather I could have done another layer. There’s fir trees out back. I should have just carved you a new one.” He sounds as though he were rebuking himself. She can see him mapping it out in his head, in the bellows of his mind. “I could have gotten it finished in two days, if’n I worked through the night. It’d even out better for the weight than the copper lining-,”

She’d leaned over and kissed him to shut him up, propping herself up on her elbows on either side of him. A lock of brown hair fell into her eyes. He pushes it away, and in this memory turned dream his hand lingers on her scalp. “I’ll practice with it. I promise. You mustn’t worry about me. I’m a Mormont. We never break our word.”

He’d looked up at her through his eyelashes, which were longer than she’d first realized, and opened his mouth to reply, and then she’d jerked awake, the wind howling outside.

It felt like a month-long uphill battle just to reach the Bloody Gate. Bloody is a good word for the fortress, because her face was so chapped from the wind and her arse so sore from the saddle by the time they got here- She’d nearly cried out in relief upon seeing it. They’d been plagued by the mountain clans on the vicious journey into the mountains, and Jory is certain the only reason they weren’t attacked outright is because they weren’t a caravan with salvageable supplies or goods. Still, there’d been a few tense close calls, and at least one instance where she was certain they were being watched, and another wherein Brienne had them take a different path to avoid winding through a narrow pass she thought likely to be a trap for travelers. 

She’d thought she’d known mountains. Certainly better than the rest of them; Pod had been born in the southern Westerlands, closer to the coast than the mountains, and spent most of his childhood in towns and cities. Hyle was from the footholds of the Red Mountains, but she doubted he’d ever spent much time up in them, knowing the Reacher hatred for the Dornish lords, and the easy game to be found in the lowlands instead. And Brienne was from Tarth; it had mountains, aye, but she’d spoken of Evenfall Hall as being on the cliffs overlooking the sea, surrounded by lush green meadows, not towering peaks. 

Jory may have spent most of her childhood on Bear Island, but she has traveled, albeit only in the North until the war, and she’d visited the homes of the northern mountain clans before, had been all around the highlands, and once as far north as Queenscrown. The Vale, she had convinced herself, could not be as wild and rugged as the North. She was young but she knew better, surely. Well, she did not know better. The high road was like nothing she’d ever seen before- it was just that, high and narrow and winding and treacherous. The air grew thinner and colder with every step, and some of the passes ran alongside chasms the likes of which she never wished to see again. Shadowcats howled in the night, far closer than she’d ever heard them howl in the north, and the moon seemed to hang lower and brighter in the sky, and the stars seemed to shine closer.

Parts of the road were nearly entirely closed by snow. They either had to wait for rains to pass through and melt it, try to dig themselves a fresh path, or consider abandoning the horses. As it stands, Septon Meribald’s donkey might have never made it- it is good they left him behind at the inn, to care for the children. Pod’s filly died one brutally cold night, they all narrowly evade frostbite on several occasions, and they burn through their rations with chilling swiftness. By the time the Bloody Gate had come into view the three of them had been exhausted, near delirious with hunger and cold, barely clinging to the saddle, and half-convinced it was just a mirage wavering before them, that fortress forming almost naturally out of the stones of the Giant’s Lance.

They’d been in no shape to defend themselves from much of anything, so it was sheer luck that they were not met with outright hostility. If they’d been turned away, Jory is certain they’d not have survived the journey back down into the Riverlands. Instead an earnest voice had yelled, “Who would pass the Bloody Gate?” down to them from the covered bridge overhead, almost lost on the wind, and after a few moments Brienne had found enough voice to shout back, “The Maid of Tarth, Ser Hyle Hunt, and Lady Jorelle Mormont!” Poor Pod had been half-asleep in the saddle in front of Jory, her one arm locked stiffly around his skinny frame to keep him from toppling into the knee-deep snow. 

Thankfully, fortunately, they’d been deemed trustworthy (or defenceless) enough to be admitted into the fortress. Once, Jory knows, Ser Brynden Tully had called this his home, charged with its defence by his niece’s husband, Jon Arryn, but Jon Arryn is dead, and the Blackfish may be as well. It is Donnel Waynwood who holds claim to it now, the Knight of the Gate, and he cannot be much older than Brienne or Hyle, perhaps two or three-and-twenty at most. Jory is glad it is a Waynwood to whom they were first introduced, for the Waynwoods have great power here, and Ned Stark’s great aunt wed a Royce, and their daughter wed a Waynwood, tying both House Royce of the Gates of the Moon and House Waynwood of Ironoaks to the Starks. 

That is good, Jory keeps telling herself. That must mean something. It’s been said that the Vale has long been sympathetic to the plight of the North and Riverlands, their might only stayed at the insistence of first Lysa Tully, then by their new ruler, Petyr Baelish. If many of them are already inclined to side with the Starks and Tullys, then surely that means they can be persuaded. Donella Bolton Stark’s paternal grandmother was a Redfort, another powerful Vale house. Ned Stark spent his boyhood here, counted these men among his friends. That must mean they can see reason, can be convinced that they are needed, now more than ever, to lend aid to the North and to see Sansa Stark back home, if she is here. 

And it is Ser Donnel Waynwood who informs them of even better news- the Kingslayer has been forced to retreat back to Harrenhal in the wake of Randyll Tarly’s desertion to King’s Landing in defence of Cersei Lannister, or more aptly, Margaery Tyrell, the little queen imprisoned by the Faith gone mad. The Vale is devout in the Faith of the Seven, but Ser Donnel seemed to have little sympathy for the Sparrows and the newly reformed Faith Militant, appalled at the idea of any septon having the power to imprison noblewomen at will or condemn lords and knights to death based sheerly on the supposed will of the gods. 

“Still,” he’d acknowledged, “if the Lannister woman did have Lord Arryn murdered, mayhaps we’ll see some justice come of it yet.”

Jory very much doubts the High Septon cares whether or not Cersei Lannister murdered Jon Arryn two years ago. He is apparently more concerned with who a queen might take into her bed. But the knowledge that the Riverlands had triumphed at last, that they were for now free from further invasion, had still cheered her greatly, and had helped give her the nerve to put on a borrowed gown and launch an impassioned plea over dinner on the first night they’d sheltered at the fort. Hair shorn and face wind-chapped or not, Jory can still conduct herself as befits a lady, and it as not as though northern women were a separate species from the rest. 

She was taught to dance and sew and sing and practice her proper courtesies, and she is certainly more suited for it, she thinks pragmatically, then Brienne, who watches from a corner while cautioning Pod to not drink his scalding stew so fast that he chokes. Hyle has been exiled to a separate table, playing dice and japing with some men-at-arms, after his not very covert mockery of Ser Donnel’s younger brother, the newly knighted Ser Wallace. Ser Wallace has an awful stutter. “My lords,” she says, chancing a winning smile at both young men, straightening her shoulders and keeping her posture correct and elegant for once, rather than slouching out of comfort, as she so often does. 

“We would greatly appreciate an escort to Redfort or Ironoaks. Lady Brienne and I come as representatives of House Stark’s cause, beseeched by Lady Catelyn herself to seek aid from you and yours. We only ask for an audience with Lord Redfort or your lady mother, and shelter from the cold. We’ve come such a long way, and-,” and here she’d thought, with a tinge of guilt, she had best play the part of the forlorn but determined lady a little, and appeal to that famed chivalry- “and I am sure you can see how exhausted we are. Still, we cannot forsake this quest. We’ve come so far. The North is beset by Ironborn invasions and betrayals. The Riverlands are in dire need of food and supplies for the winter.” 

She and Brienne had agreed during their long-awaited baths beforehand that it was best not to mention any suspicions or questions about whether or not Sansa Stark resided in Vale, either in secret or as some sort of hostage. The chances were good neither Donnel nor Wallace would have the faintest idea, and the chances were even better that they would repeat whatever they were told, and the last thing they needed was someone with ill intentions catching wind of it.

She’d anxiously watched the Waynwood brothers exchange a long, silent look, before Ser Donnel had nodded gravely, and said, “I would be happy to have my brother escort you and your companions directly to Ironoaks, my lady, but I’m afraid my kin are traveling themselves, to the Gates of the Moon. Lord Nestor and Lord Baelish are hosting a tourney, you see, for Lord Robert. To welcome in the winter years and to form a knightly order for Lord Robert’s protection. He is still but a child, and a frail one at that. Most every noble house is traveling there now, so their sons and brothers might compete for the chance to serve.”

To serve, and then what, Jory had thought. The rest will all just go home? No. Something else is afoot here, and she could tell then that Brienne, listening intently from her position further down the table, thought much the same. It sounded more like calling the banners than a simple week or two festivities. Calling them for what? Baelish was thought to have been loyal to the Lannisters in the past. Does he mean to march them against the Riverlands? Surely the Vale lords would never agree to such a thing. Her apprehension must have shown plain as day on her face, for Donnel had been quick to reassure her-

“But this is far better suited to your plans, surely. Wallace will bring you to our kin there, at the Gates of the Moon, and you may meet with our mother and any other lord you can gain an audience with. You could even appeal to Lord Baelish directly-,”

Wallace’s look had darkened at that, and he’d cut in, “Littlefi-finger is no Valeman. Just a p-puppet-master leading S-sweetrobin where he p-pleases. Our lady mother won’t s-stand for it m-much longer.”

“He is only Robert Arryn’s regent for the time being, and that time is fast approaching its end,” Donnel had said firmly, a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder. “He needs keep us sweet; he has coin and friends in every port, but he doesn’t know these mountains we do, and he does not command the loyalty of the people as Jon Arryn did. And he’s yet to see a winter here.” 

From Donnel’s grim tone Jory had surmised that, given the choice, many of the lords of the Vale would rather Petyr Baelish never live to see said winter begin. 

But here in the Vale, you would never know that the Citadel had not officially announced the beginning of winter. Jory is no stranger to the cold, but it is a different sort of cold from what she was used to on Bear Island. This is the sort of cold that comes from being so very high up in the air that she imagines the other six kingdoms looking like children’s toys scattered at their feet. The last vestiges of her warm dream of Gendry and the smithy melt away as she bathes and dresses, hesitating for a moment over her clothes. 

When they heard it was only a few hours by horseback up to the Gates of Moon for a small party, Hyle had openly thanked the Seven, something she’d never heard him do, and even stoic Brienne had looked very relieved. It will still be a brutal ride if the winds keep up like this, but at least there will be an end in sight, and hopefully a decent welcome at the castle. In some sense the tourney is the best they could have hoped for. The castle will be packed with visitors coming and going, from the highest lords and ladies to the wealthy merchants and their kin to the humblest of peasants, all there to see the festivities and make some coin. It will be much easier for them to go unnoticed or to find out information than if they’d just had the Royces and Littlefinger to contend with. 

But if they are going to be appealing directly to Lady Anya first, Jory thinks she ought to wear the dress, as much as part of her dreads it. When they were first ushered inside from the cold a few days ago, she was given quarters and a maid was sent in with three spare dresses, old cast offs forgotten in some wardrobe, most like. Two of them are baggy in the bodice on her, and one is slightly too short in the skirt. But she cannot rely on the name Mormont and her house’s reputation for bold women warriors preceding her. The Vale isn’t the North. In some ways it is both more brutal and yet also prides itself on refinement and pageantry. She has to play the part of what passes for a proper lady here, even if it is not always the most practical choice. And it’s not as though she loathes dresses. In the best of circumstances, she quite likes looking refined and pretty. Its just that these are not what she would call ‘the best’ of circumstances. 

She just can’t take the chance of them being turned away, or worse, ignored. Brienne’s family name will be respected, but the Valemen won’t see her as a chivalrous warrior as good as any grand knight, they will see a homely, unwed young woman in new armor and a borrowed shield. And gods know Hyle’s flattery will only go so far; he’s barely more than a poor hedge knight with nothing to his name beyond his sword and amor. Between that and Pod’s stutter… Jory grits her teeth, and puts on the ill-fitting dress. At the very least, it’s heavy wool and quick warm, and her boots are not entirely gone to ruined leather. 

She adjusts her swordbelt around her waist and slings her shield across her back. She has fought in a dress before; Mother made them practice sparring in skirts as well, cautioning that they would not always find themselves in chainmail or leather jerkins when it came to a fight. If something should happen on the short journey to the Gates of the Moon, she will not be entirely vulnerable. 

All the same, she hasn’t worn a gown since the Quiet Isle, and that was some stained brown smock. This feels different. Like a mockery of peace. She wonders if the Elder Brother misses her, or if he is already busy tending to others; orphans and runaways and washed up soldiers with heavy hearts.

“My lady, shall I sit you on your steed?” Hyle drawls as Jory thanks the stableboy for saddling her new horse, and somewhat awkwardly swings herself up into the saddle, gripping the pommel much harder than usual. She’s not sure if she’s ever ridden side-saddle before; it feels infantile and strange to her. Maybe once or twice when she was very small, during a festival on the island? She was about five when the summer began, and they must have had a grand festival and dancing and feasting to celebrate that. 

“I see you’ve managed,” he notes, used to her cold silences by now. “I confess I am seeing you in an entirely new light, Jorelle. It’s as though I walked in on Brienne nursing a babe at her breast-,” Pod ‘accidentally’ bumps into him while carrying his own saddle, causing Hyle to stumble slightly. Brienne gives the boy a look of silent approval as he passes her, a slight hint of a smile playing on her lips.. 

Ser Wallace seems very much perplexed by their… dynamics. 

Jory would not say she is any fonder of Hyle Hunt after their excruciating climb into the mountains, but she has fought at his side now, and there is a certain level of respect that comes with that, whether one can stand a man or not. He might be insufferable in most regards, but at least she knows she can trust him to watch her back in a fight. And he is a decent sparring partner; he’s not much taller than her, and it’s good to practice with someone who has more muscle to them than skinny Pod. It’s not as though she’ll be fighting armies composed of scrawny boys of twelve in the future.

She cannot say she is thrilled to set off into the blustery cold once more, but at least she’s wearing warm, dry clothes and on a fresh horse. Jory tries to ignore the discomfort that comes with having to rely more on the reins, less on her heels in the stirrups, and sets forth into the pale morning with the others; Brienne, Pod, Hyle, Wallace Waynwood, and the two dozen or so men of their escort. Ser Donnel watches them depart from the ramparts, waving goodbye to his younger brother, who gamely waves back. Jory supposes he must be disappointed, although he did an admirable job of hiding it. He won’t be able to participate in the tourney; the Bloody Gate cannot go without its knight commander. 

And for all that she thinks herself hardened and mature now, after her departure from the Isle and their run-in with the outlaws and the westermen, Jory would be lying if she said some small part of her was not in the least excited about this. She has never seen a tourney before, after all. They are very rare in the North, more like to be held at White Harbor than anywhere else, and there’s never been one on Bear Island. Competitions and tournaments, to be sure; she’s seen her fair share of horse racing, wrestling matches, melee combat, and archery. Never a joust, though, and she’s never watched anyone ride the rings. She’s never seen a Queen of Love and Beauty be crowned.

But despite Ned Stark’s southern marriage, one could hardly blame the Starks for being adverse to the notion, after what happened at the last one they famously attended.

Still, Jory should like to see it. Her sisters and mother often made a good mockery of what they viewed as thin-skinned, simpering southerners and their obsession with appearances, but Jory does not think chivalry can be all bad. Only when it is hiding something greedy, or foul, or false, surely. She’s not saying she wishes to be swept off her feet or rescued from a tower- they’d have a hell of a time getting her in the tower in the first place- but Gendry is a knight, is he not? Knighted by a Dondarrion, no less. He doesn’t need to follow the Seven to be a good one, no more than he needs to worship the old gods to earn her respect and admiration. He is brave, and loyal, and honest, and he doesn’t just defend people weaker than him, he cares for them as though they were his own kin. If all knights were like him, smiths or not, it’d be a far better world. 

She must have smiled a little to herself, for Pod is staring at her, in between trying to control the chattering of his teeth. They can’t see very far ahead of their line of horses, and the sun keep shifting in and out of view, hidden by thick, snarling clouds of grey and white. When it does emerge, it glints so brightly off the snow on the ground that it almost blinds her. Far, far below them, to the southeast, some stretch of river winds through the snow-covered landscape, like a silvery ribbon. The wind moans and howls around the mountains, and there is the occasional sharp cry of birds, drifting on the currents. It’s beautiful, despite the harsh weather and the cold. Every so often she picks out the distant arch of some towering castle, holdfast, or stalwart watch tower, framed by the foothills or thickly forested slopes. 

Beautiful but punishing. Is this what the Hightower woman thought, when she came to Bear Island after her lavish wedding in Oldtown? Jory’s memories of Lynesse are faint. Blonde hair, soft hands, bundled in furs, laden down with jewels in her hair and at her throat, and utterly miserable. Mother had no love for her, and sometimes her older sisters could be cutting; even the servants were like to talk. When a southern woman marries into the North, the expectation is that she will give up much of her past life, no matter if it be splendid music, fine new gowns every year, or all other sorts of amusements, entertainments, or comforts. 

Her faith, very often. Ned Stark built his wife a small sept, but most men are not our Ned, as her mother would say. Many thought it unusual, even too permissive of him to permit his wife to raise his children in both faiths. And Lynesse was no Catelyn Tully Stark, to be sure. She had little interest in adapting to their ways or accepting that her previous life was no more. Her marriage to the Slaver was unhappy well before he began to drive them into ruin out of desperation to keep her affections. They had no children. Truly, Jory now thinks that was likely a relief to Lynesse. A Mormont son or daughter would have only further bound her to Bear Island. And had they had a child, that son could have returned from exile in an attempt to claim rule. 

It is better this way. Mother is well-loved by their people, and respected by most lords, even the ones who shake their heads at her behind her back. When she dies- for she cannot be dead yet, never, when Mother goes it will be with her teeth sunk into a bearskin or her axe sunk into a Bolton’s back, dragging them wailing into death with her- it will pass to Dacey, and if Dacey is… If Dacey is gone, then to Alysane, and her children. Alarra is nine now, only a year younger than Lyanna. There is a son, too, little Jonnel, barely walking when Jory last saw him, but Alarra will lead them. It is any lord or lady’s right to name their heir, regardless of what tradition decrees. 

Jory just hopes she lives long enough to see it. She wants to be that old grizzled woman at the feast, with nieces and nephews on her knees, maybe a few children of her own, telling tall tales and still spry enough to be pulled into a reel or two. The rest doesn’t matter so much, so long as she can just succeed in this one quest. Then she can return home with pride, and not shame. Then she can see her mother and father again without feeling like a failure and an embarrassment. To be useless, that’s what she’s really afraid of. For none of it to have counted for anything at all. 

Despite the cold and the wind and the chattering of Pod’s teeth, which is loud enough to set Hyle on edge, they make good time, and eventually the Gates of the Moon come into view before them, and far, far above, seven white spires which can only be the Eyrie of legend. It’s hard to make out clearly from so far below, and in this weather, but that only adds to its appeal, in Jory’s mind. It’s not a very big castle, the Eyrie, from what she can tell; the Gates of the Moon before them is far larger; but there is something fantastic and almost mythical about it all the same. It looks like the sort of place where a dragon might really circle, howling in triumph, or where a pair of lovers might abscond to. And then the clouds shift and the wind surges, and mist rolls down, and the Eyrie temporarily vanishes once more. 

“It’s beautif-ful, isn’t it?” Wallace has noticed her look of amazement; Pod is gaping openly, mouth slightly ajar, and Brienne’s deep blue eyes are shining like sapphires. Even apathetic Hyle looks impressed, a gloved hand cupped over his brow, shielding it from the wind. Jory glances back down towards the Gates of the Moon before them. This castle is no beauty like the Eyrie; stout and squat and practical, it reminds her more of Torrhen’s Square, at least before it was overrun with Ironborn. But its moat is impressively wide, and the large forest flanking it reminds her of home, all pine and spruce, shifting in the wind.

“Thank you for agreeing to bring us here, Ser,” Brienne says. “Your brother and yourself have been very kind.” 

Jory nods. “We’re in your debt, truly.”

Wallace flushes; with his long, thin face and his brown hair, he looks almost more a Stark or Karstark than any fanciful idea of a handsome southern knight. He speaks sparingly, too, she assumes because of the stuttering. It seems worse around strangers and women, and it’s evident he’s been mocked for it since boyhood, even if he is only Jory’s age now. “Not our d-d-debt, our duty,” he enunciates carefully on the last word. “I p-promised to bring you t-to my mother, and I will.”

With that, they ride across the lowered drawbridge and through the wide gates, joining the throng of other new arrivals, all in a hurry to get indoors and out of the cold. Jory keeps alert and watchful as they dismount, not so much because she expects some kind of ambush, but because any little thing could be a clue, surely. A snippet of conversation, or a passing servant, it could all lead them… To what? a nasty voice in her head jibes. Do you expect to follow some muddy footprints in the snow, right up to Sansa Stark? You don’t even know if she is here. She could be across the Narrow Sea. Or dead.

Someone is tugging at her sleeve. Jory glances down at Pod, while Brienne brushes snow and frost from her thick wool cloak, and Hyle bemoans the states of his breeches, almost entirely soaked through. “What is it?” Jory keeps her voice lowered, as Wallace hails a pair of passing pages to help bring their horses into the bustling stables. She scans Pod’s pale, wan face in an almost sisterly manner; he was very sad to leave Dog and Septon Meribald behind, and she has resolved that he shall not pass the winter without a puppy if she can help it. The poor boy has little enough to look forward to as it is, having been abandoned by everyone in his life thus far.

“I can…” He gives a little jerk of his shoulders, glancing around, then clears his throat at her baffled look. “I can go look around. You know. By myself. No one will notice me.” He’s right about that; there must be a hundred other boys here around his age, with his looks, all scurrying here or there, after their knights or fathers or older brothers or little friends. And he does know how to be quiet; Hyle has asked him more than once if his house sigil is not a mouse, or perhaps some other sort of small, silent rodent. Truthfully, he’d make a very good spy. But Jory hesitates all the same. Wallace will likely not notice his absence, true. Still-

“I can,” he insists, still keeping his voice low, but a little firmer. He squares his shoulders; he is starting a growth spurt, it would seem. 

“Alright,” Jory says. “But be careful. Get a feel for the place first; you don’t want to get lost. You’ll come find us within the hour, promise?”

If not, Brienne will have her head. She’ll never admit it, but it’s clear as day to Jory that she is very fond of Podrick. He nods eagerly, pleased with her faith in him, then turns on his heel and vanishes into the crowds. Jory joins Brienne and Hyle, following Wallace past the gatehouse, through a courtyard and training yard, up a wide set of stone steps, and towards the entrance of one of the castle’s four towers. The guards outside recognize Wallace, or at least his house colors, the rich green and black of House Waynwood, and let them pass without comment, although she notes their startled looks when they take in Brienne’s towering figure.

The inside of the tower is much warmer, and Jory feels the heat rise in her cheeks instantly, even before they begin the climb up the stairwell. House Waynwood has obviously been afforded the best rooms in said tower, near the very top, and that is where they pause. “My mother and s-s-sisters are inside,” Wallace informs them. Jory can hear faint female voices through the heavy oaken door as the guard admits them. 

“Wally!” someone cries out immediately as Wallace steps in first, and there is a flurry of skirts and various rustling, before Jory takes in the sight of the Waynwood women. All resemble their brother in terms of their thin faces and brown hair, though they do not all have his pinched nose, and they vary distinctly in height. But it's obvious whom the eldest of them is; Lady Anya Waynwood, if she is surprised by the sight of three bedraggled, unexpected guests, does not show it. She rises gracefully from her seat, flanked by her murmuring daughters, and steps towards them, adjusting her ermine mantle.

She reminds Jory of Barbrey Dustin, and Barbrey Dustin, truth be told, always frightened her a little. Her hair may be more grey than brown, and bound in a simple widow’s knot under a heavy jeweled net of gleaming emeralds, and her skin may be lined and weathered, but her dark brown eyes are sharp and keen as a woman years younger, and she holds herself proudly, chin raised and posture stiff. Brienne bows. “Lady Waynwood. I am Brienne of Tarth. We thank you for your sons’ hospitality and safe passage through the Bloody Gate.” 

Hyle follows suit, albeit with more of a flourish. “Ser Hyle Hunt, at your service, my lady.”

Jory curtsies and is relieved when she doesn’t fumble with her swordbelt in the process. “Jorelle of House Mormont, my lady.”

“These are the t-travelers we wrote of, M-Mother,” Wallace says, inclining his head respectfully.

Lady Anya is silent for a moment, evaluating them, then says, “Then they must surely be seated and offered some refreshment, musn’t they? Elinor, tell Agnes to have some wine and bread brought in, immediately. Some fruit as well, I should think- Lianne, put aside your weaving, we have more important matters to attend to.”

Jory catches a glimpse of the fine tapestry, halfway completed, on the loom as one of Anya’s daughters stands. It seems to depict a snow white falcon in flight over a rough blue-toned map of the Vale. “Your work is beautiful,” she tells the woman as a maid hurries forward to take her sodden cloak. “Truly. Is it to be a gift?”

Lianne Waynwood is at least five-and-twenty, but she blushes prettily like a young girl all the same. “Thank you. Yes, for our cousin Harry. A wedding gift.”

“A fine gift indeed, for a marriage to a natural daughter,” one of the other daughters mutters under her breath, though she quails slightly under the furious look her mother sends her way as they all sit once more. 

“I did not know this tourney was in celebration of a wedding,” Brienne says slowly, settling her hands in her lap. Hyle is looking around openly, gaze flitting from daughter to daughter, as if trying to sniff out which one might be unwed. 

“It is not,” Lady Anya is quick to correct, “our… our cousin Harrold’s recent betrothal is simply a happy coincidence.”

Jory does not believe that for an instant, from the look on her face. Whoever’s bastard daughter he’s wedding, she’s not pleased about it, at all. 

“And who might the very lucky bride be?” Hyle wonders. “To wed into such an illustrious line as yours, my lady.” 

“Harry’s not a Waynwood,” another daughter is quick to explain, bemused. “He’s a Hardyng. Our lady mother’s cousin’s son. But he’s been our ward since he was just a babe, so he is truly like a brother to us.”

Wallace seems surprised by this news. “Harry’s b-betrothed? T-to who?”

There is a moment of tense silence, before Lady Anya allows, “Lord Baelish’s natural daughter. Mistress Alayne Stone.” 

The wine is brought in then, smelling of cloves and spices; a cup is quickly set before Jory. So she picks it up and drinks deep, feeling the warmth coil down her throat, as she exchanges a brief look with Brienne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really meant to get this update out on Tuesday, but life interfered and I ended up not being finished with the chapter by then. 
> 
> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. This was a little nerve-wracking for me because I've been so used to writing in the Riverlands and the North, two environments I think I'm pretty familiar with after spending so much time in them in this fic. I haven't really written much fic concerning House Arryn or the Vale, and I don't think it's a very popular location in ASOIAF fics in general, so I went into this wanting to try to make it as memorable as possible, compared to other old familiar settings. 
> 
> 2\. I don't mean to railroad this chapter into one big 'Jory has a crush!' fest but I thought it could use a little levity compared to everything else going on in this fic. Jory is a bit naive and sheltered in some ways but in other ways I think she can be quite confident in knowing what she wants or who she wants to spend her time with. So I felt like a genuine connection between her and Gendry was not really all that unreasonable, whether you want to make the argument for it not being a 'real' love for one another or not. The point is they're both young and have been through a lot of shit, and I think it was nice for them to get the chance to just act like awkward teenagers for a little while. 
> 
> 3\. Much like Jon, I can see Gendry being pretty firm about not wanting to risk a bastard child, although he and Jon had *very* different experiences as illegitimate children in Westeros. In addition, I think Jory is practical enough to not even want to run the risk of a pregnancy at a time like this, adolescent hormones aside. For them I think it was really more about opening up to each other and confiding in one another on an emotional level than focusing on anything physical. Both are aware of the class disparity between them but, Jory, at least, is the more hopeful and optimistic of the two in believing that they could potentially be together again in the future, whether it be through marriage or not. I think Gendry is a lot more cynical, but in the moment he is also willing to consider that sort of best case scenario, however briefly.
> 
> 4\. Gendry canonically wants to be come a master armorer and I think that's sort of tossed to the wayside in a lot of fanon interpretations of him? It seems like that's something that would take a good deal of skill and intelligence and creativity and I wish we got to see more of that side of him both in fics and in canon. He is also canonically proud of his status as a knight, even if he doesn't go around flinging it in people's faces. 
> 
> 5\. It's a pet peeve of mine in fics when it's just a long slew of 'this place isn't the North. it sucks! fuck these fragile southerners! they don't know true winter! everything is so ugly! your gods are false!'. Jory loves her homeland but I think she's also pretty open-minded and capable of appreciating other places and people as well. She has no issue with Gendry following R'hllor or the Valemen being devoted to the Seven and courtly chivalry. It might annoy her at times or she might finds things impractical or silly, but she is going into this with a pretty diplomatic attitude in the hopes of honey catching more flies than vinegar.
> 
> 6\. The Waynwoods are described as being pretty solemn and serious and having sort of long, thin faces and brown hair, as well as being devoted to tradition, so I didn't think the comparison to the Starks was that far out of left field. Lady Anya and her sons are seen in canon; she is also mentioned to have daughters, who we will be seeing some of as well. I did not invent the Stark ties to the Vale; the only non-canon addition of mine is that Nell's paternal grandmother was a Redfort who wed into the Bolton line; Lord Horton Redfort is her great-uncle. 
> 
> 7\. We've established that Jory and most of her family really are not fond of Jorah, but I can see her being mildly sympathetic towards Lynesse, who did not really understand what she was marrying into. In Jory's mind it goes both ways- she wouldn't be thrilled to marry into say, a Reacher noble family and be expected to give up everything she loves about being a Mormont, so she can understand why Lynesse was so miserable with her family. I also thought the reference to a Stark-Mormont marriage was interesting. Canonically Mormont women have been Lady Stark before, and Jory and Robb are about the same age, even if she comes across as a little more immature. The idea of Robb wedding her, had he never been betrothed to Nell and had there been no war, would not be that odd at all. I know Dacey/Robb is probably more commonly referenced or suggested in fics, but canonically Dacey is at least a decade his elder; Lyra or Jory would be a much more practical choice. That doesn't mean Jory would have welcomed the idea; she's very frank about not wanting that sort of power or responsibility.


	69. Donella XLVIII

300 AC - THE NECK

Nell blames the Neck for the return of her dreams. Her mind hasn’t conjured up anything half so vivid since she was a prisoner at the Twins and dreamed her mother in a burning bed, the night after they took Lysara from her. Perhaps now that she is suddenly closer, at least geographically, to regaining her daughter, they have returned. Or perhaps it is just the result of days of hard travel making her sleep deeper than usual. She doubts that, though. The Neck is a sinister sounding place at night, and she seldom sleeps the whole night through, often waking to hear the wind howling in the barren trees and skimming across the marsh, and the various croaks and creaks and chirps of the animals willing to brave the cold. 

By now, she feels removed enough to judge for herself. Those nightmares she used to have, of Mother and Sara and the others, it was all the result of crippling self doubt and girlish fears. Some part of her knew Father could never be trusted, knew something was going to happen, knew they would be betrayed, and it simply expressed itself in the form of dreams. That is what she tells herself. She would dream of dead women because she was terrified of her family legacy and her future as a wife and mother, and Robb- Robb would dream of Grey Wind because he-

Well, he would never tell her about his dreams, so she can hardly say now, can she? He doesn’t dream anymore. He barely sleeps. She can listen to his breathing slow and feel his heavy head loll against her own in their tent, but never for very long. He may drowse from time to time, but it seldom lasts. She doesn’t know he finds the strength to sit up in the saddle come daybreak. If their judgement of the Freys reawakened, however briefly, some memories of before, of his old kingship, of the man he used to be, well- It sated an appetite for vengeance, not food. He barely sleeps, he rarely eats. And hunting is not so easy in the Neck, where the path is seldom clear and the ground is seldom firm. Robb still prowls out on occasion and comes back smelling of blood and bone, but his hunts are not the hours-long sojourns they were before. 

Grey Wind mislikes the Neck, she can tell. And despite their unison at the Twins, it is almost as though Grey Wind mislikes Robb as well. There are no castle walls to hide behind here, and given the terrain, when they make camp quarters are always very cramped indeed, tents practically atop one another, horses milling about anxiously, wagons squelching in the mud. Nell watches the Riverlands fade into marshlands and bogs, Robb watches her, and Grey Wind watches Robb. Once Robb abruptly got up in the middle of the night and left their tent, taking neither cloak nor torch to guide his way. Nell had called quietly after him, but knew better than to follow. Grey Wind had crept in a little while later, and she’d lain there and nestled her head on his thick fur, even if it was damp and reeked of mud and rotting leaves. 

That is what she is reduced to. Holding a bloody wolf in place of a husband, and trying not to think about how Robb seems to grow gaunter and paler by the day. She’d hoped their travel northwards would restore him, in some sense, make him come back to himself a little, grow stronger. That he would realize they have so much to live for, so much to do. They need to kill her father and rescue their daughter and take back their seat, his ancestral home. But Robb shows no recognition of the Neck, and does not recall Howland Reed or Maege Mormont at all. Nell wonders how one might get a raven to a castle that moves, and can only hope that the sheer size of their army has already been noticed by the crannogmen. They fly the Stark banners, and the Reeds will have remained loyal. She cannot imagine them treating with Roose.

She doesn’t want to imagine them treating with Roose. She’s tired. They have many fights ahead of them. Can this not be one brief reprieve from it all? At the very least most of the men seem cheered to be on their way back home. Karstark worries about desertion, is concerned men will try to flee back to their respective villages, towns, and keeps once they’ve retaken Moat Cailin and entered the proper North. None of the lords might dare remove themselves, but the common soldiers- they could easily lose a thousand men to low morale and desperation. In times like this, winter on the march, just as they are, men don’t care about who sits what noble seat. They care about their families surviving the winter.

And all she cares about is her daughter. Somehow it hurts more now that they are closer. Mayhaps it’s like the last painful spurt of energy when racing. She can feel it in her ribs, the knife. It is just as Catelyn said, just as Mother said. The pain never went away, but it was dulled before by other, more immediate concerns. She couldn’t even think about how they were going to get Lysara back when she was forced to exchange pleasantries with Addam Marbrand and Black Walder. Now the board seems a little clearer, and she has more time to herself, with all this agonizingly slow travel, to think about what she’s lost. 

Lysara will be six months old by now. Nell isn’t even familiar enough with babes to know what she ought to be doing. Can she sit up on her own now? She must be able to, and crawl as well, perhaps. In her dream, Lysara moves with ease from a crawl to a toddle, suddenly less a babe and more a child, and as Nell once sweetly dreamed of a little boy called Eddard leading her through Riverrun by the hand, now she dreams the child that really exists, dashing through the darkened halls of the Dreadfort, chubby little hands brushing against the cold stones, feet pattering against the floor. Nell follows at a distance, but as fast she she walks, Lysara is always well ahead of her, and she pays no mind to her cries to come back and slow down.

Around and around they go, through an endless labyrinth of unfamiliar rooms and down flights of musty smelling stairs, until they are somewhere deep in the belly of the castle, in the dungeons, no, in the crypts, where all of Bethany Bolton’s dead babes are buried, and Nell’s breath mists in front of her, and all the torches on the walls sputter and gasp for air. “Lysara!” she calls out, afraid. “Come back! You musn’t- don’t go any further!” Her daughter ignores her, and her childish giggles fade and echo into the darkness.

Nell finds her at the edge of a solitary pool of light, a lantern in hand, gazing up mutely at a flayed figure on a cross. Nell comes to a halt herself, and feels no horror or fear, only a sharp, cold, stab of sorrow in her chest. The pink, skinless body raises its head with a rattling breath to regard her, then with unnatural strength tears one hand free of its restraints, and brings it down to cup Lysara’s head of auburn curls. “How I’ve missed you, sweetling,” says her mother’s voice, although Nell refuses to acknowledge this creature as Bethany. It is just a nasty trick. Her mother had her skin when she died. It may have been waxen and sallow, but it was there all the same. This is not her mother. It is not. She won’t let it be. 

Lysara has set down the lantern, and is clutching at the figure’s pinky, fleshy legs, even as they bleed and bleed onto the sleeves of her little dress. “Mumma,” she says, and looks up with something like yearning in her pale, pale eyes, and the flayed woman looks at Nell, and Nell sees now that her eyes are not brown, like Bethany’s, but grey as her own. As her own. Nailless, spindly fingers weeping blood smooth back Lysara’s hair, and a lipless slit of a mouth moves in a mockery of a loving smile.

Nell watches herself from the dark, looks down at her own hands, and finds them no more substantial than mist. “Let go of her,” she says. The corpse ignores her. “She is not yours. She belongs to me. I would never be this. I would never- I would die. If I cannot have her I would rather be dead. I would rather her dead than live in this wretched place.”

The skinned hand moves from Lysara’s hair to her pale neck, and the flayed woman looks at Nell, smiles, and squeezes. 

She wakes more angry than afraid, as if she’s being mocked by her own mind. As Mother would mock her in dreams. Poor Nell Bolton, asking a dead woman for advice, beseeching a dead man to love her, and seeing her own dead, dirty ice eyes in her daughter. But she’s not a Bolton anymore, and the Dreadfort was never her home. There is no reclamation of it for her, no more than she could curl up under a bloody skin for comfort. If she was ever proud of her name, it was not Roose and his legacy she was proud of, it was Mother’s and her own, that they could endure. She was not thinking of House Bolton’s interests when she was betrothed to Robb, only her own and what she could get from the marriage. 

Lysara is not dead, she reminds herself. Roose needs her alive if he wishes to survive the winter. If he harms her they have no reason to follow him. He may not care for what happens after his death, but that does not mean he wants to die brutal and bloody as the winter begins. He will keep her safe and bide his time in the hopes of wedding her to a son of his and Walda’s. He will keep Ramsay away from her. But the thoughts are not as convincing as they might once have been. She thought she knew her father well enough to predict his motives and actions once, only to be slapped in the face with the truth of it. 

It is perhaps slightly easier to move through the Neck now that most of the trees have lost their foliage and one can see more than a few yards ahead of them. But the causeway is stretched thin and perilous, and they lose three horses to injuries within the first two days of travel alone. The lizard lions may have retreated into hibernation, as have most of the venomous snakes, but some of the poisonous flowers yet bloom, and the quicksand is just as treacherous. The rains are not helping matters either. Rarely does a day pass where Nell does not begin and end it in sodden clothes. Her only consolation is that the Bolton and Frey forced that moved through her a few months ago must have been even more delayed by the bad autumn weather and the vengeful crannogmen. At least no one is actively trying to sabotage their travel. She can tell when they are being watched, mostly due to Grey Wind’s constantly pricked ears. But for days there is no real sign of any crannogmen or women, until the Greenwoods arrive.

The Neck is the most sparsely populated region of the North perhaps besides the mountains beyond the New Gift before the Wall. There are less than a dozen noble crannog families that rule here; not even ten, if she recalls correctly. Much like the mountains clans they disdain referring to themselves as houses, for the most part, and are seldom called ‘lord’ or ‘lady’. 

Crannogwomen are sometimes taken as wives by other houses; Reeds have been Lady Stark before, and Dana’s own grandmother was a Cray, but the men don’t often take other northwomen as their wives. Nell can’t imagine many women eager to make a home in the Neck in the first place. The keeps are few and far between, and very small at that. There are no proper towns, only villages, some of which move from place to place. 

The Greenwoods, she knows, are located somewhere in the middle of the Neck, but their keep not visible from the narrow causeway. Dana spots them first; reaching over to nudge Nell and jerk her head in the direction of the marsh to their left. Nell stares for a moment until Grey Wind barks sharply, and then sees the small raft and the figure crouched on it. Robb reins up his disgruntled stallion, and Harry Karstark doubles back from the front of the column with his outriders. For a brief while there is only silence as they regard the crannogman and he regards them, aside from Oly Frey nervously muttering something to Daryn Hornwood. 

Finally, the raft approaches, silently propelled by the crannogman’s pole. It’s not even a grown man but a boy, Nell realizes as he draws closer; he’s no bigger than Arya, who is watching in mute curiosity beside Catelyn, but his face suggests an age a few years older. “Well met, Stark,” he says politely. “I am Karl’s heir.”

“Lord Greenwood,” Catelyn says. “Your father is Karl Greenwood?”

He nods. Arden has dark hair matted to his scalp with rainwater, and a smooth, oval face. His lower eyelashes seem almost longer than his upper. His brown clothing blends almost perfectly into his muted surroundings. “You are passing through our wood.”

“Not much of a fucking wood,” Sandor Clegane mutters under his breath.

“We would offer you our hearth and home,” the boy continues; he has a musical, almost lilting sort of voice, and seems utterly unruffled and devoid of any anxiety about being so close to the head of an army. “But my mother thinks you’d find it a poor welcome, for so many men. Instead we will send for the Greywater. Please stay here.”

“For how long?” Karstark demands roughly. “We’ve not the time to waste waiting for the Reeds and Maege Mormont to catch up.”

“A day,” Arden shrugs. “Easier for them to find you, than you to find them. Your men and horses would drown. Or suffocate in the quicksand. The Reed has information for you. So you must wait.” As he looks from skeptical face to face, he briefly locks eyes with Robb and recoils as if struck. For the first time Nell sees a child’s pure fear flash in his dark eyes. Then he composes himself again. “We will bring you offerings. Food and supplies to make the journey easier.”

“Have faith,” he suggests, as he turns his small raft, “you are but six days away from Cailin. And the squids have fled.”

Multiple voices call after him, demand he turn back, but he vanishes into the reeds, passing under the white roots of a massive half-submerged tree trunk. 

Karstark draws Robb away for a few minutes of hushed conversation, if you can call it that, and then the order to make camp is given. It’s late in the afternoon; they would have to had to stop for the night soon anyways. Arya wants to see the Greenwoods’ godswood. Nell suspects this is less about devotion to the old gods and more about wanting to get off the road. Traveling on the causeway is not like traveling on the Kingsroad or Riverroad, and this is not the leisurely stroll south that it was when Arya was last here, traveling with her father and sister. They can’t afford to let her go scampering off to pick flowers or fish. 

Still, Dana says the child feels suffocated, even more so now that she is the only real child among them, aside them the occasional page or young squire. Ned Dayne is, gods willing, on his way back to Starfall; Seagard received a frantic letter from his aunt inquiring after his welfare; evidently she had not heard from him or any news of him in nearly a year. This is the same aunt who was wed to Beric Dondarrion, but Nell thought it best they not inform her that her dead betrothed did, in fact, die several times over in between leading a band of outlaws. The Dayne boy had little interest in returning home, although he seemed guilty when he heard of Allyria’s distress, but Karstark took him aside, and whatever Harry said to him must have found its mark, for Edric Dayne went no further north than Seagard. 

He was warned not to try to return to Starfall by way of catching a ship from Oldtown. The Ironborn are more focused on reaving the Reach than the North at present, it would seem. Nell can’t imagine Oldtown falling to them, it seems impossible, but Allyria Dayne claimed by all reports Euron Greyjoy seemed set on it. Stranger things have happened. Nell would have once said Winterfell was impenetrable and could never be taken in a single night. And truth be told, she would rather the Crow’s Eye turn his gaze to the plump Reach and not the frail North. She doesn’t want to turn from Roose and his Bastard’s headless corpses just in time to see more ships on the horizon. 

But with Ned Dayne gone and the Mallisters left behind, Arya has little in the way of friends beyond Dana, who never seems to tire of being her constant companion. Perhaps it’s a way of coping for her. Nell usually leaves them be, only joining them with Catelyn for meals. Arya is especially anxious to find any survivors of the massacre at Winterfell; she asks constantly about whether Old Nan or Mikken or Farlen or even little Beth Cassel or Palla the kennel girl might still be alive somewhere. “We have to bring them back home,” she’ll insist. “We’ll find them, Mother, can’t we send people to search for them, after we’ve defeated the Boltons?”

“Of course,” Catelyn usually says, brushing back Arya’s hair from her head- it’s growing longer by the day, nearly to her shoulders once again. “Of course we will. They belong at Winterfell, with us.”

With nothing much else to do for the rest of the day beyond light their small cooking fires and finish setting up haphazard tents and shelters, Nell sits and watches a small pilgrimage go back and forth from the causeway to the Greengoods’ godswood, which is apparently not hidden behind castle walls but a small outcropping or island in between their hidden keep and the road. There are no signs or markers for it; the crannogmen don’t need them. Arden Greengood, when he returns with a sister, Lyella, to drop off some weighted nets they can use for fishing, says they often just swim out to it in the summer years.

Arya begs leave to go with the Greengood siblings to the godswood, and Catelyn reluctantly grants it, then marvels to Nell, “I’m shocked she asked me beforehand. She used to never-,” she stops herself. “But it’s safe enough here. Even if Bolton men hold the Moat, they’d never send scouts this far out.”

“I very much doubt it,” Nell agrees, and then asks, because it has been nagging at her. “Have you heard the howling at night, to the south of us? It sounds like a great pack. I’ve never known wolves to come into the Neck before.” She heard it last night, when she woke from her nightmare. Far off in the distance, not close enough to be a concern, but there were so many. Wherever the pack is, it sounds large. Much larger than normal.

“There were always rumors of that mad pack roaming the Riverlands,” Catelyn says. Her lips tighten. “They frightened the Freys so. And they say they would follow the Brotherhood about sometimes, but I can’t believe that. If they are following us now, it must be the supply train. We’re their best hope for food.”

“Then I sorely hope they don’t get too bold in their hunger,” Nell considers the ramifications of a pack of perhaps a hundred wolves suddenly assaulting them from the rear. It would be a cruel jape to lose men to wolves, the sigil of House Stark, when they were so relieved to be marching North with the Riverlands finally secure behind them. But even hungry packs of wolves are not known to attack marching armies, especially men on horseback. If they were a smaller party or a simple caravan, then she would be frightened. 

Besides, she thinks, looking to Grey Wind as he makes yet another loop of the camp, they have something of an ambassador with them.

Finally, as the daylight begins to grow thinner and thinner between the mossy trees, Nell makes up her mind. She has not been to a godswood since Seagard, and that felt less a wood and more a rocky shelf overlooking the shoreline. She should make another sacrifice. She has nothing to lose at this point. Dana brings her back a small goat from their stores, barely more than a kid. Nell strokes its neck and holds it in her arms as she might a babe when she goes to Robb, who has kept his eyes fixed on the marshes, as if expecting Greywater Watch to appear at any moment.

Which, it very well might.

“Come to the godswood with me,” she says. “It could be our last chance before Winterfell. We can pray for Lysara. For victory,” she adds, as if to sweeten the pot.

He spares her a blank glance, and she tries not to flinch at the sharp pain she feels again in her ribs. It would be easier if she had anything of Lysara’s to remind him. She could have cut some of her hair before they took her, but she could not bear to. All she has are a few scattered blankets, but they smell of the Twins and Grey Wind growls whenever he sniffs at them. “Robb-,” she takes his arm, but he jerks away.

“We must wait for the Watch.”

“They are not coming tonight,” she snaps, failing to keep the frustration from her voice. “Robb. Please.” The kid bahs softly in her arms, chewing at the twine round its neck. Then it smells Grey Wind on the air, and goes still and stiff with primal terror. Nell doesn’t see the wolf, but she suspects he is lying under one of the wagons nearby, watching their feet. “Even if you don’t believe anymore-,”

“I don’t know,” he corrects her, and then stops, as he often must, to think of how to word it. “I don’t-,” he swallows, and shakes his head. “I don’t know them.”

“Of course you do. You were raised with them. You were anointed in a sept, but you were named in a godswood all the same, your mother’s told me-,”

“No,” he says. “They weren’t there.” It is almost like a wounded child turning an accusing stare on a parent. “They weren’t- I didn’t feel it.”

“Feel what?” she asks, suddenly afraid he is speaking about the moment her father put his sword in his chest. “You didn’t feel-,”

“After,” he turns to face her directly, and once again she gets the cold sense she is looking more at Stoneheart than her Robb. “When it was dark, and the river carried me away. I didn’t feel them. I didn’t feel anything. And then they pulled me out of the river and they pulled it back into me.” He sounds almost as though he were going to be sick. “They pulled me back, and I felt that. Nothing before.”

Craven as it might be, she nearly turns away from him, cradling the goat to her chest. “What did that feel like?” she asks after a moment.

He is silent for a long while, thinking, or just considering whether or not he wishes to reply. “It felt like waking up, under... Underwater,” he decides. “Pounding and- and weight in my ears. In my eyes. In my chest. But there was never anything else.”

“The gods brought you back to me,” she lowers her voice. “I know they did, I know- they have a purpose for you, else you never would have come back, you know this-,”

“I don’t know,” he all but snarls, and the kid lets out a sharp squeal as if Nell were faced with a bear and not a man, and she takes half a step back all the same, face flushed. “I don’t know- you keep telling me what I should know, and think, and feel, and I don’t- if there were gods, I didn’t feel them. They didn’t want me. And I didn’t want them.”

“Then tell me what you feel, right now,” Nell says breathlessly. “I’ll listen. Tell me. You can tell me you don’t love me as you did, it’s alright, you can tell me you don’t remember your mother, your sister, I won’t be angry-,”

“I love you,” he says, so immediately it is hard to doubt it, as if it were an instant reaction, an instinct. “I remember them. They weren’t afraid of me, I remember that. They are now. And you are angry. You were always angry,” and here there is almost the barest, faintest shadow of a smile, before it vanishes. “But you never told me you were afraid. Sometimes I hated you for it. I was always afraid. And you never were.”

“I was too proud. I was selfish.”

“You were mine - you were my wife,” he says. “I was supposed to be strong. To protect you. To protect my crown. I failed.”

This is the most she has ever gotten from him about it, since his return. Here, on the side of the muddy causeway, watching the sun go down. “No,” she hisses. “No, Robb, you didn’t fail-,”

“Then why do I have this,” he growls, slamming his bare hand against his chest. He is clothed, but somehow Nell can still see the black wound beneath the chainmail, in her mind’s eye. “It burns. It feels like ice. Every day and every night and only when I have blood on my blade, then it fades a little, and it comes back again. Always. I was afraid. I was afraid when he killed me,” he almost muses, tone lowering back to a murmur. “And he knew. He was pleased. But it doesn’t matter now. I’m not afraid anymore. And I will not fail again. But do not speak to me of gods. Give the goat to me- to Grey Wind,” he corrects himself, wincing as if stung by an insect. “To Grey Wind. Better served in a wolf’s belly than in the branches of a tree.”

Nell clutches it almost as protectively, which is laughable, since it will die either way. “No,” she dares refuse him in this matter, although it feels grander than any they have fought over before, as if it were more than just a goat, and more than just a sacrifice. “I’ll pray alone. You should go to your mother. She loves you, even if she is afraid.”

The Greengood godswood is big enough for perhaps a dozen men to stand upon comfortably, no more. A crannogmen paddles her over, but does not join her on the solid ground, instead letting the small boat drift off a ways to fish. Nell takes that she is meant to call for him when she wishes to return. The light coming through the tree trunks is a bruised purple now. They saw a few glorious sunsets before they broached the marshes, but there is no clear horizon here. The kid is happy to be back on the ground and comes along quite amiably as she leads it to its death.

Nell was taught to never dwell much on the sacrifice. Mother shed no tears over the fine stallion she slaughtered to bring Nell into the world. She’s been killing animals for years now, both for food and for worship, and although occasionally she has felt bad or pitied the poor thing, for some reason the sight of the small goat lying prone in front of her, eyes glassy, and throat slit, makes her feel as though she could cry. It just looks so little and weak. It’s just a baby. She sits there on her haunches, ignoring the way the damp ground is seeping into the hem of her dark green skirt. 

Finally, she slits open the belly, pulls out the innards with her gloved hands, and arranges them along the roots of the weirwood. She can’t bring herself to actually hang the guts from the small, slender branches. She stays there for a while, kneeling in front of the tree, watching the blood dry and crack on her leather gloves. _We will be together again_ , she prays, no, demands. _After all you have done to me I deserve this much. I will be together with my husband and daughter and you will never deprive me of them again. We will be a proper family._

The purple light of dusk has turned to pale blue when she turns to see Harry Karstark setting foot on the tiny island in the middle of the swamp. They look at each other with stiff pretense for a moment, and then, realizing that they are practically alone, aside from the nearby crannogman fishing, within sight but too far away to hear them if they speak quietly- Well, all pretense is dropped. “I need to speak with you,” he says.

“It’s becoming a habit of yours, demanding an audience with me, then telling me what I ought to do, and berating me when I disagree,” she says, more lightly than she feels. “What now? No, let me guess. You’ve received a frantic raven from Petyr Baelish and he’s marching the Vale in our defence. No, nevermind. There’s been word that the High Sparrow has had Cersei Lannister strung up on charges of cuckoldry. Wait, that can’t be right. Perhaps the boy Tommen is dead and the Tyrells are wedding Maid Margaery to Euron Greyjoy so he might spare the Reach.”

“I see the solemnity of the godswood is lost on you,” he says. It’s hard to take a man who had to wedge his six foot frame into a very small skiff all that seriously. 

“As basic courtesy is often lost on you. Must you hound me while I pray as well?”

He eyes her bloody hands. “The Greenwood boy had hoped to have that goat for supper. The crannogmen consider it something of a rare delicacy, in the Neck.”

“Arden? Have you managed to snatch up yet another child?” 

“He’s asked to be my squire. Karl Greenwood will come tomorrow to discuss it with me at the Watch.”

“My,” Nell says dryly. “You honor them, my lord.”

He pretends as if he had not heard her, and steps closer, forcing her to retreat back to the bloodied, solitary weirwood tree. A bird is rooting around at the kid’s entrails, but it flies away at their approach. Karstark drops to one knee for a few moments, when in ‘sight’ of the weirwood, and Nell has enough decency to step away and let him have this. Then he rises, and turns back to her, his prayer completed. 

“When we reach Moat Cailin, it is likely to be guarded by your father’s men. Not many, I’d imagine. He will not have wanted to waste any more bodies there than necessary. And the Freys will have refused to keep any of theirs there; they loathe the Neck.”

“I’m aware of this,” Nell says, fighting to keep her expression from folding into a scowl. As if she needs yet another lecture from Harry Karstark now. His grey-blue eyes watch her carefully from under his dark eyebrows. 

“I would hope so, Your Grace. No one is concerned about the fight there; we are four thousand, they are likely less than a hundred. I am concerned about them fleeing north to inform your father of our approach.”

“He will know once we reach the Barrowlands, whether we like it or not,” Nell says. “If House Ryswell and House Dustin have pledged themselves to him out of concern for my daughter-,”

“I don’t intend to waste time sacking Barrowton,” he cuts her off.

Nell flashes from irritation to fury in a moment. “I will be dead in the ground before any man dares touch Barrowton. They are my people. That was my home. How could you- Do not presume to think I would ever do such a thing to them. My aunt is loyal to me, I know she is. If she pretends to go along with my father’s schemes, it is just that, a mummer’s game to lure him-,”

“Your aunt may very well think she would serve quite well as Lysara’s regent,” Karstark says coldly. “Something she does not need you alive for.”

“Barbrey would never betray me.”

“And Robb? Will she have such loyalty to her king? Furthermore, will any of them- will the Ryswells, do you think, be so eager to join us, after Young Roose died in Robb’s defence and His Grace himself executed Rickard? After Roger died at the Twins?”

“Roger’s death was Roose’s work,” Nell says through her teeth. “They will never-,”

“You don’t know,” he snaps. “You do not know, you cannot know-,”

“I am still your queen, Karstark,” it’s her turn to growl, “and it is not your place to tell me how ignorant I may be-,”

“I am telling you,” he snaps, “that if you ride hard into this under the belief that they will all simply drop the Bolton banners and pick up Stark ones, you are going to be sorely disappointed.”

“When they hear Robb yet lives, when they realize he has returned-,”

“Robb does not live!” he shouts, and for the first time in weeks, Nell is speechless. Harry swallows hard. “Donella. You are a clever, capable woman. Do not pretend at naivety. You know as well as I that he is not- this isn’t living. What he is, it is not- no one could call that living. He is hollow. His heart is a stone in his chest and his mind is full of holes. Things that cannot be replaced.”

“Are you a maester?” she demands, ignoring his improper use of her first name, as though he had any right to address her thusly. “No. You are a boy. You are barely any older than I, and you think yourself so wised, so _learned_ , when you spent half this war a hostage! Robb does live. He breathes. He speaks, he _eats_ -,”

“I’ve seen him take uncooked meat off the bone with his teeth. They will begin to fall out from him chewing on bones. They will rot in his jaws. His tongue will turn dark. He speaks- what he speaks, most men cannot understand. You would know this, if you spent time amongst the soldiers as I do. Do you truly believe them so dull-witted, that they cannot see the truth of it? They know he was not simply injured. They know this is not a case of a stricken soldier’s wits gone to pieces- They talk, and they whisper, and they call him Stoneheart when your backs are turned.”

“They are loyal,” she says fiercely. “They would follow him anywhere, these men, they have followed him everywhere-,”

“They have followed me,” Harry says. “They have followed me, and the Greatjon, and his sons, and the surviving Flints, and even Daryn Hornwood. You think they put their faith in a man whose direwolf acts more rational than he? They can see it. They can hear it. They are not stupid. They may look to him on a battlefield, as men will look to any brutal fighter. Do you think they still trust his judgement outside of that? When they see him in a rage, or hacking off Daven Lannister’s bloody head in a godswood?”

“They don’t need to trust, they need to _obey_ ,” Nell snaps. “He is their king. The king they chose-,”

“They chose Robb Stark. They did not choose a shell formed out of fire and magic and vengeance!” Harry Karstark barks. “Do you hear yourself? I’ve seen you look to him. Does he look back at you? Or is he so far gone-,”

“HE IS RIGHT HERE!” she all but screams. “He is here, Harrion! With me! He saved me! That night, when you retook Riverrun, it was _he_ who saved me! He and Grey Wind! Not you! Not a Flint or Umber or Hornwood! Him! My _husband_! He has not forgotten everything, he knows me, he knows what he must do, he knows Grey Wind-,”

“Does he, or does Grey Wind know him?” Harry asks sardonically. “Because I see a warg in that beast’s yellow eyes. And I do not know if that ought to frighten me more than the beast I see in your husband’s grey eyes. Grey. They are grey now, Donella. His eyes are grey, and his skin gone to wax. He has a weeping hole in his chest. Must you have your head in his jaws before you see what he is?”

“Robb is no warg,” she can barely breathe for an instant for the shock of it. “That is- do you bandy the same lies the Lannisters thought to use against us? Behaving as though he were some savage witch? Is treason a family trait now? Your father named him a coward and a kinslayer, and you will denounce him as some kind of monster?”

“You may have chosen to forget the old tales in the interest of pretending you do not come from a long line of torturers and murderers, but I have never had that luxury,” Harry snarls. “Aye, I do name him a warg. I’ve seen him in battle. I’ve seen that wolf in battle. There is no other explanation for it. Animals serve men. Grey Wind served Robb’s interests, and now Grey Wind serves his own interests, because when a warg dies-,”

“Don’t,” she almost gasps it, “no. Do not dare speak another word of this. I will not- No. You are a power hungry fool so blinded by your own fear-,”

“My fear?” he demands. “My fear? He is not a monster because he is or was or would have been a warg. In fact, that pack following us may have more to do with Arya-,”

Nell makes a shrill noise of disbelief.

“But I’ll not argue with you on that front any longer. My fear, my lady? I haven’t had the pleasure of knowing fear since I realized the only way I would ever lay eyes on the Karhold again was if I remanded your own men into something resembling a standing army. Until I made peace with the Brotherhood and secured the creature they have turned your husband into’s trust. Until I fought our battles- all our battles- in the Riverlands and united them behind House Stark and House Tully once again. Until I brought Arya Stark back to safety, to her kin. I’ve had no fucking time for fear, Your Grace, for I’ve been too busy holding half a hundred reins at once, trying to keep the teeth from all our throats!”

“So you admit it,” she takes a step towards him. “You admit that it is all just an act, your self-serving hissing in his ear, all so you might hold onto your head and your sword long enough to return home-,”

“Don’t insult yourself with this line of thought any further,” he sneers. “You know the truth when you hear it, and you hear me now. I have never lied to you. If I wanted sheer power I would have put my honor aside and married Arya as soon as I realized I had her in my custody. I would have ensured your husband’s second life was a very short one. And I would have left you to the lions. Do not presume to tell me how I lack for courage, or decency, or loyalty. I come from Starks. I am a son of winter. I have given you fair counsel at every turn. I cannot force you to abide by it. Nor can I force you to accept the truth, even when it is staring you in the face.”

Nell stares at him, her mind racing for a moment, a composite of every man she has ever known and loathed flashing before her eyes- Roose, Ramsay, Black Walder, Ryman, the Kingslayer, Lothar, Edwyn, Gregor Clegane, Rickard, Marbrand- but she cannot think it of him. He may be a Karstark but he has the honest Stark face, long and plain and too angry for deceit, not under a Bolton’s cutting gaze. She may hate him in this moment, but in her heart, she knows he is not lying, knows it as she has not known anything in a long time. It frightens her for a brief moment, that she could know Harry Karstark of all people, better than her own husband.

“I want to go home,” he says hoarsely. “Just as you do. I want to kill my uncle and cousins, just as you want to kill your father and his bastard. I want to save my sister, as you want to save your daughter. And if she is dead, I want to turn snow red with their blood, and mount their heads on the wall facing the sea. I want to rule fairly, and I want my power recognized, as you do yours. But I knew I was never going to reach home alone. None of us are going to make it home alone. So if you choose to believe that this is all a means to an end, fine. But you ought to consider the end. Because there is no ending to this where he rules us as he is now. You know this, Donella. They will tolerate what he has become so they may wet their blades and glut themselves on revenge. After that…”

“Lysara is his heir,” Nell says, forcing her lips to even form the words, for all it feels like treason. “She is a Stark of Winterfell, and by rights and by his will, when he- when he lived, all knew her for his successor. My daughter will be their queen someday, Harrion. I do not care what I have to do to make it so. She will be their queen, and she will be the Stark in Winterfell, and they will love her and honor her as they once did him. Even if they never love me.”

“They will never love you,” Harry acknowledges. “No more than they loved the first Starks. But they may honor you, if they think you worthy of it. If that is the ending you want, you needs consider how you will reach it. Because you will not find it behind Stoneheart’s teeth or at the end of his sword.”

It is a short, quiet ride back to the causeway. Nell cannot even look at him. Harry seems almost unusually chastened, if that is even a word that could be applied to such a man, for all that they just spent shouting at one another. By all rights, she should call for his head. If she told Robb this, he would. If she told him that Harry Karstark thought that eventually he would be cast down and replaced, he would. If she told him that she- that she stood there, and listened to it, and did not curse Karstark’s name or call him a lying bastard or a treacherous snake- if she told Robb that she even bore silent witness to such a thing, he would-

She does not know what he would do. He loves her and he forgets the rest and he wants revenge and he is dying. He is dying because whatever he is, he is not living, so while he may not be bleeding out or succumbing to an illness before her very eyes, what else could she call it? He did not feel the gods, or perhaps he never had the chance. They threw him in the river and then plucked him back out to suffer some more. He says he has ice where his heart once was, and Karstark names it stone. His eyes have gone to grey and there is no love or light to be found in them anymore. He knows the names of his kin but not their smiles. 

She prayed for him to return to her, and so he did. She prayed for them to triumph over the Lannisters and the Freys, and so they did. She has prayed for Lysara to be in her arms once more. What will she be, a smiling babe, or a tiny corpse? Will the gods answer her, and put them all together in the crypts, or flayed on crosses? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want to know. Was he a warg? Is he still? And never once told her, never trusted her enough to confide it in her? Is Arya? 

She doesn’t eat much at dinner, and complaining of a headache, retires early to her tent. Robb lies atop the furs, not beneath them as he used to, nude save for the thin blanket across his legs She crawls onto them beside him, the guilt gnawing at her. He is wide awake. She traces the outline of the wound on his chest with her cold fingers. Where once he would have jerked away, laughing and complaining of her cold Bolton blood, now he only lies still, breathing every other moment or so. If she had to choose between him or her daughter, she would rather walk into the deep snows and never return. But if she had to choose, if she could only save one of them-

“What color were her eyes?” he asks.

“Whose?” Nell buries her face in his chest like a child hiding from the world.

“The babe’s. Were they blue?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “They were light, pale. The color had not settled yet. It will have by now. What color would you like them to be?”

He does not, or cannot, answer her that. She turns away and tries to sleep, only to be woken just before dawn by a familiar bellow of a horn. She heard it last at the Whispering Wood. She would recognize Maege Mormont’s warhorn anywhere. She would recognize it in her sleep, in a dream. 

She clambers out of the tent just in time to see the Greywater Watch emerging from the pre-dawn mist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. I think as I've stated before, while some of Nell's dreams do seem to be vaguely prophetic a la Theon's nightmares in canon, others are, well, just that, regular dreams and nightmares that more reflect her fears and anxieties than the future. Nell obviously would prefer to think there is nothing supernatural about them, for the sake of her own sanity. Others might disagree. 
> 
> 2\. Harry just picks up squires wherever he goes. This is honestly reaching Bruce Wayne levels of Robin-collecting.
> 
> 3\. Canon provides very little info about the crannogmen or the Neck! Hoping that will be resolved in Winds of Winter! It would be cool to see some crannogpeople beyond the Reeds!
> 
> 4\. Definitely nothing ominous about a giant wolf pack following a ragtag army north as winter sets in...
> 
> 5\. Resurrection is not fun. 10/10 would not recommend for boy kings. Crises of faith following a return from the dead are probably a very common side effect.
> 
> 6\. I think the idea of a little weirwood island in the middle of a bayou is super cool. Talk about northern (blatantly inspired by southern) gothic. 
> 
> 7\. I feel like every discussion between Nell and Harry Karstark winds up being in a godswood because it's one of the few places where one could plausibly expect some privacy. So yes, this is repeatedly the equivalent of two people having a shouting match in an abandoned church. What can I say. You know shit is starting to hit the fan when Harry Karstark actually calls Nell 'Donella' instead of 'Your Grace' or 'my lady'. 
> 
> 8\. Harry is something of the dark horse of this fic because I enjoy writing his dynamic with characters like Nell, Dana, and even Arya so much. He says what he thinks (well, not in front of Robb, but-) and the consequences of that are usually pretty interesting. 
> 
> 9\. Pour one out for Allyria Dayne, because dear god has she put up with a lot in canon and this fic. Dead brothers. Dead sister. Dead betrothed. Nephew turned outlaw. And all she's got in exchange is one giant alien star sword. 
> 
> 10\. Next few chapters we're going to be switching back and forth between the North and the Vale, for obvious reasons. 
> 
> 11\. Finally: one could write a whole fantasy sitcom series about Howland Reed and Maege Mormont living in Howl's Moving Castle.


	70. Jorelle VI

300 AC - THE GATES OF THE MOON

Jory learns quite a bit about the Waynwoods in the two brief days she spends in their company before the tourney begins. Firstly, she was not wrong to compare Lady Anya to Barbrey Dustin. Anya Waynwood may be a bit less severe and certainly has more to be cheery about, with six grown children and seven healthy grandchildren, but she rules her family without question. Her husband has been dead for nearly two decades now, and it was he who married into her line- she was the heiress, not him. 

So this is a woman quite used to wielding her own power. In that sense she does remind Jory of Mother, too, although she doubts Lady Anya would enjoy that comparison. Even at her most regal, Mother has never worn jewels in her hair or an ermine stole. But Jory does not dislike Anya, either, although she isn’t sure she’d want to have been raised by her. Anya is grave and proud, but she is not without humor or wits, and her sons and daughters seem genuinely fond of her, even when they are visibly intimidated by her sharp tongue or piercing stares. 

All of them save Ser Donnel are present at this tourney; her three daughters and her two sons. Jory is briskly but politely introduced, along with Brienne and Hyle, to each in turn. Her heir is her eldest, Ser Morton Waynwood, who is old enough to be Jory’s father. He looks a good deal like Donnel, with thick brown hair, a wide nose, and a stocky build. His son, Roland, who is nineteen and newly knighted, much like Wallace, is taller than his father, but has a much longer face. At first glance he reminded Jory of poor Daryn Hornwood, gawky limbs and all. Ser Morton has been widowed for years now; Roland is his only child. 

His squire is a plump, sandy-haired Frey named Sandor, who is a ward of the Waynwoods alongside his sister Cynthea. Their mother was Anya’s half-sister through her father’s second marriage before he died, Carolei, and she and her Frey husband both passed aways years ago, leaving their children to be brought up in the Vale. Anya watches Jory in particular closely when she reveals their heritage; the Vale may have been isolated from the war these past two years, and they may not know the most current news out of the Riverlands- does anyone, with how quickly things change?- but they do know of the Freys’ betrayal. Jory keeps herself composed, and smiles at the boy and his sister, complimenting Cynthea on her pretty new dress. 

Lady Anya’s eldest daughter, Alyssa, looks like a younger version of her mother; they have the exact same laugh-lines around their eyes, even. She was wed to an Arryn of Gulltown, which everyone is quick to assure them, may be just a cadet branch of the Arryns of the Eyrie, but are also extraordinarily wealthy. Alyssa’s Gull-Arryn husband has given her three children thus far; Philip, called Pip, a squire for his cousin Roland, and two younger ones; Denys and Cyrelle. 

The two younger daughters, Elinor and Lianne, are but two years apart and frequently mistaken for twins, even past their girlhood days. They even wear their hair in similar thin braids coiled into a bundle behind their ears. Elinor wed an Egen and has a boy of seven and a girl of three and Lianne wed Horton Redfort’s heir, Jasper- Nell Stark’s first cousin once removed- and gave him one daughter, little Marya or Red Masha, heir to Redfort, a child of five. Through this marriage the Waynwoods and the Redforts are firmly allied, which pleases Jory, and must please Brienne too, from the way she nodded in satisfaction when it was referenced. Good. They can appeal to both houses at once, and not fret over Horton or Anya turning against one another.

Then there is just Wallace, the much-teased and prodded baby of the family. Jory wonders if that is the source of his stutter; years of older siblings mocking or dismissing him. Then again, his stutter seems to fade somewhat at times around his kin, before reemerging with a vengeance around strangers. Hyle likely doesn’t help matters; he’s not stupid enough to say anything rude or even discourteous in front of Lady Anya, but he does have this habit of raising an eyebrow in a patronizing fashion while Wallace struggles to finish a sentence. It makes Brienne glower pointedly and Jory want to slap him.

But as relieved as she is to behind seemingly safe castle walls and surrounded by, if not friends, at least not enemies, that doesn’t mean she is at ease. They have very little privacy in such a crowded castle packed with guests, and they are hardly in any position to demand any privileges or private audiences. The Waynwoods are tolerating them as guests out of respect for the guest rite offered to them by Wallace, but that does not mean they are bound to listen to their pleas. And they have all agreed that the worst thing they could do would be to immediately begin asking after rumors of Sansa Stark. 

Best to stick to the plan. As far as anyone is concerned, they are hear to appeal to the lords and ladies of the Vale for aid to the North and Riverlands for the coming winter. No more and no less. The absolute last thing they need, Jory thinks, is for either Petyr Baelish or the Royces to grow suspicious of their intentions and throw them out into the mountain pass- or worse, into a cell. If Sansa is here, or if there is someone here who knows where she might be, or if she even passed through the Vale at all, they will find out so long as they are patient and unassuming. This tourney will be three days of drinking and revelry before what is sure to be a long and hard winter. Tongues will wag, and the truth will out. They just have to have faith.

Still, it doesn’t quite make for good scheming when she and Brienne are sharing a bedchamber with Cynthea Frey and her septa. The Vale has plenty of those. Jory has never seen more septons and septas in one castle in her entire life. Riverrun had just one, Septon Dougal, who was prone to bad nerves, hardly improved upon by the war waging right outside his stained glass windows. The Gates of the Moon must have dozens. Granted, most were brought by their guests; it is not uncommon for septons to travel with the family in the Vale, it would seem, not just the septas who govern their children, but it is still odd to see so any grey robes rustling in the strong winds that buffet the courtyard and ramparts. 

Cynthea is, despite her Frey name, a sweet girl of ten or so, and her Septa is wary but polite, but Jory can hardly speak to Brienne about any immediate plans when in earshot of those two, and they are almost always listening. Brienne means to compete in the joust and the melee. If that is some sort of coded message, Jory is too stupid to decipher it. Hyle means to participate in the archery competition, the melee, and the joust, even though he will have to pay to make use of a lance. Jory is fairly sure there is no hidden meaning there; Hyle just wants the prize money. She’s sure neither has any intention of striving to become one of little Lord Arryn’s ‘winged knights’, as they are calling them.

The whole thing smells foul to her, anyways. What dangers could Baelish contrive that would prove an excuse for the Arryn boy to have what is more or less his own Kingsguard? If he really intends to keep the Vale firmly loyal to the Iron Throne through the winter, he would seem to be courting danger with this nonsense. Would it not better serve him as one of Cersei Lannister’s worms to simply keep his head down and placate the child with a new pony and the Valemen with the promise of a peaceful winter? Unless he doesn’t serve the queen, but then who? All men like him serve someone, Jory is sure of it, even if she has only see this man from a distance. The Waynwoods made no mention of a formal introduction to Baelish or the Royces or Baelish’ mysterious bastard daughter.

Jory keeps telling herself not to get her hopes up. No, neither she nor Brienne nor Hyle nor Pod- and Pod should know most of all, for he was in King’s Landing while Baelish was- has ever heard of the man having a natural child. Still, these things are common enough; many men send their bastards away with distant kin or old friend for their childhoods, only to summon them once more when they come of age. The Waynwoods speak of this Alayne Stone as though she were of age; certainly old enough to be wedded and bedded, and Sansa is only three-and-ten. A man might disguise a girl, change her hair and clothes, but surely there can be no mistaking the age, can there?

It doesn’t help matters that the first time Jory thinks she might have caught a glimpse of this unknown Alayne, she sets off through the crowded keep after her, only to be stopped on the stairs by Hyle, who informs her, snidely, that she was about to address the daughter of Lord Nestor Royce, High Steward of the Vale, as though she were a bastard girl. As it would turn out, Myranda Royce is most certainly not Alayne Stone. Myranda is short, buxom, and heavyset, with a round, often flushed face, thick bouncing brown curls that cascade down her back, and a very, very, loud laugh. 

Jory has yet to speak with the girl- though she is really more a woman, a few years Jory’s elder, at least nineteen- but she’s heard her laugh all over. Myranda is always surrounded by a small cloud of men, which she treats more or less like gnats. Hyle has too much smug pride to join them, but Jory catches his admiring looks all the same, although a mere Hunt would never stand a chance with a Royce, even one from a cadet branch. 

“Cheer up,” Jory tells Hyle the morning before the tourney is set to begin, as Pod begrudgingly helps him strap on his armor, “All you needs do is kill Lord Nestor’s son in single combat, and then you might wed his sister and claim his lordship. How hard could it be, Ser?”

Pyle gawks at her as though she were deadly serious, and Hyle just stares, brows furrowed, before he says, “An odd time for you to develop a sense of humor, Jorelle. Next you’ll be telling me you’ve promised me your favor.”

“I’m afraid not,” she snorts. “Wallace Waynwood wanted it, so I obliged.” He blushed red as a Lannister banner to ask her, but Jory thought little of it. There is no real danger of a Waynwood wanting to wed her, and Wallace has been very kind to them, when he might have been cold and unwelcoming. Besides, they practically have the same house colors. It is almost as though he were wearing his own favor. 

Hyle laughs aloud at that. “You do know how to pick them. First the lowborn smithy, now the stuttering halfwit- tell me, do you prefer it when they can barely form a sentence? Why, next it will be some half-mad old man missing most his teeth-,”

“Oh, I can start you on missing some of yours, Hunt-,”

No sooner has she made the fist than Podrick has remembered something all at once; he almost drops Hyle’s helm in his hurry to hand it to him. Hyle huffs in annoyance, “Gods, boy, are your hands clammier than usual-,”

“I’m not your squire anyhow!” Pod snaps back at him, or nearly snaps- it’s really more of a squeak, but an angry squeak all the same, and Jory grins at his nerve and Hyle’s baffled look. 

“What is it?” she demands of Pod. Thus far, his sneaking and spying haven’t turned up much, but then again, he said one of the knights started to follow him after dinner the other night, which scared him enough to send him scurrying back to their rooms. Cynthea’s septa was quite firm on not letting a boy bed down with them, even if Pod is harmless as a mouse and Jory has slept beside him hundreds of times, huddled for warmth. He is far more talkative in his sleeping hours than his waking ones, and he has the strangest dreams. “Did you see something yesterday? Mistress Alayne?”

“No,” he’s shaking her head, taking her by the hand, and leading her in a hurry out of the busy armory, down a set of stone steps, through the courtyard where the tourney stands have been hastily erected, packed with excited people, and then through a narrow passage that comes out behind the stables. “I saw- here.” 

For a few moments Jory has no idea what he is trying to show her. The dusty area behind the stables is mostly deserted, save for a few stableboys kicking around a ball in the dirt, and a young woman speaking with a knight in simple grey and brown plate. They aren’t conversing very loudly, but the wind carries their words over to Jory; the woman can be no more than twenty, clad in men’s clothes, and simple ones at that, with a leather jerkin trimmed with thick fur round the collar and sleeves, and an apple and knife in her hand. She deftly carves it up, nodding casually as the man speaks with her.

The knight, whoever he is, is perhaps thirty or a little older; he’s the same height as the woman, who is tall and sturdily built, with broad shoulders and long, powerful legs. In contrast with her thick black hair, cut in a shaggy manner no longer than Jory’s, the man’s hair is crudely cropped and nearly all greying, and his jaw is square and stubbly. From what Jory can hear of his voice, he doesn’t sound as though he were of high birth; perhaps that is what has set the woman at ease, for she is no lady, no more than the she-bear carved atop the Mormont gate is. 

“...a seat for you just below Alayne, if it pleases you,” he is saying. “I should like to see you in the stands when I ride out today, Mya.” For all that he is the elder of the two, he sounds almost hesitant, as if bracing for some blatant rejection or insult. 

The woman, Mya, just looks at him for a moment, then laughs, and as she turns a shaft of sunlight illuminates her face, and Jory realizes now what Pod wanted to show her. This girl is kin to Gendry, she would stake her life on it. Not just in that she is black of hair and blue of eye and tall and strong like him, but they have near the exact same face. Same big, strong nose, same thick brows, same square shaped face and a chin you could break your knuckles on. She’s as pretty in a rough and tumble way as he is handsome, but they must be siblings, they must, they look so alike it makes her miss him terribly. 

“...can’t hardly turn down a captain of the guard, can I?” Despite her words she is chuckling a little, Mya Stone, she must be Mya Stone, for if he is Gendry Waters, then- Jory never did ask Brienne where she’d recognized Gendry from, but now she understands perfectly. Brienne spent two years in Renly Baratheon’s Rainbow Guard. She never heard of Renly having any bastards or ever even a woman at all besides his little Tyrell wife, and everyone knows Stannis Baratheon hated whores so much that he shut down all the brothels on Dragonstone, but King Robert-

Well, who else so known for his coal black hair and bright blue eyes could have sired bastards in two different kingdoms? 

She glances down at Pod, who surprises her with his impatience. “I know,” he says, almost exasperated, “but that’s not why- Mya?” he calls out tentatively, raising a hand in shy greeting, and the woman turns more to face them, popping a slice of apple in her mouth, even as she presses the last two slices into the knight’s surprised hands. 

“Keep up your strength for the melee,” Mya Stone tells him with a grin- Gendry’s grin on a woman’s face- “And knock Hardyng on his arse!” Realizing how loudly she said the last bit, she glances around warily, before her gaze alights on Pod, whom she obviously recognizes. 

“Pod!” she shouts, waving, and makes her way over, leaving the knight- whoever he is- behind. He smiles, bites into the piece of apple, and is on his way. Jory thinks he even might be whistling a little to himself. Hyle’s not the only one infatuated with a woman who hasn’t the slightest idea, then. 

Jory looks from Pod to Gendry’s sister as he says, “She knows Alayne.”

Finally. None of the Waynwoods have been keen on making an introduction, Harry, the girl’s betrothed, spends most of his time throwing himself on the nearest serving girl or in the training yard, and it was quickly beginning to look like their only choice would be to try to track her down during a feast, something Jory was not very confident of. People didn’t usually seek out bastard daughters of minor lords, even if said lord now ruled the Vale in all but name. If it was Sansa, it wouldn’t matter if they aroused so much suspicion in confirming it that they ended up with fifty swords at their throats. 

“Alayne?” Mya has sharp ears, but not the suspicion to go with them; her blue-eyed gaze slides from Pod to Jory, who inclines her head, unsure of how to greet her. “Are you the Mormont?” Mya demands, although not with any great hostility. She gives a slightly awkward little bow, having no skirt to curtsy with. 

“Not one who stands to inherit anything but my sword,” Jory is quick to assure her, noting Mya’s baffled glance at the sword still belted at her waist, albeit atop a borrowed gown from Lianne Waynwood of deep forest green with bronze stitching along the bodice and sleeves. Her cloak is ruffled in the wind, knocking down her hood and revealing her short hair. “I’m no great lady, I swear it.”

Mya looks her over once more, than grins almost as in relief. “I didn’t think you were, but the Waynwoods are choosy about who they take into their household. Proud as anything, those lot, and stubborn as one of my mules.”

“We’re only guests for the tourney,” Jory says, sticking to the plan, and praying neither Brienne nor Hyle has said anything to contradict this in Mya’s earshot. “We mean to appeal on behalf of the North and Riverlands when it’s through, for aid this winter.”

“Ah, that’s wise enough,” Mya shrugs. “They’re like to all be in fine mood once they’ve won their prizes and broken their lances. At least the ones who’re chosen.” She looks down at Pod and smiles carelessly, clapping him on the shoulder. “I caught this one skulking about the stables the other day. He swears he’s a squire to the Maid of Tarth- is it true?” She sounds fascinated. “I’ve met my share of knights, but never a lady knight.”

If Brienne were here, she’d flush scarlet and mutter something about being no knight, but Brienne is not here, and Jory cares little for what does or doesn’t qualify one to be a knight. If Gendry can be a knight, Brienne certainly can. Jory would put a knife to Hyle’s back and make him do it, only Brienne would likely rather be knighted by pondscum than by sneering Hyle Hunt. 

“He’s her squire,” she says firmly instead. “And she was pledged to the Starks after Renly’s death.”

“The Starks are all dead,” Mya snorts, before her tough face softens slightly. “But Lady Catelyn was kind to me, when she visited.”

“They reclaimed Riverrun,” Jory wishes she sounded more confident about that, but if they do find Sansa, they can hardly say, ‘well, we’re nearly sure some of your family might still be alive, truly!’. “They say Robb Stark survived the Freys’ betrayal, and we believe them. The Vale will as well, once they’ve heard the truth.”

“They’ll be happy for any kind of war, these boys,” Mya shrugs again. “Cooped up here all summer and autumn, waiting for their chance to fight. Might be Lord Baelish will be pleased to set them loose- take some weight off his back, wouldn’t it?” She glances around, then lowers her voice. “All any of them can talk of is how he finally got the Waynwoods in his fist.” She mimes squeezing one shut, as if milking a cow’s udder. “Bought off their debts, and all they have to do is wed Hardyng to his daughter!”

That explains quite a bit, then. The Waynwoods obviously didn’t propose the match themselves, and Lady Anya must be relieved Baelish didn’t insist on one of her own unwed sons, but just her ward instead. But… “I hear they call him Harry the Heir,” Jory says with forced levity. “What does he stand to inherit?”

“Oh, Hardcastle,” Mya’s blue eyes gleam in the sunlight, so like Gendry’s, only there is a keen brightness to them Jory has only seen once in his, “and everything else, should Lord Robert pass without an heir.” Her words are respectful enough, but her tone makes it clear that this is not an ‘if’ but more of a ‘when’. Jory has only seen Jon Arryn’s sole surviving child once or twice from afar, but those brief glimpses made it hard to believe the boy was eight years old. He looked closer to five, if that. Elinor Waynwood mentioned he had some sort of sickness that caused fits of shaking and spasms. 

Jory could readily believe the child might never see a decade, nevermind live long enough to wed and sire a son or daughter. 

“May the gods keep him strong, then,” she says. “You’re attending the tourney, surely?”

“Ser Lothor promised me a seat in the row below her,” Mya says, then winces. “I told him I’d come and see, only I-,” she catches herself, steering around some subject she does not want to mention, and then amends, “Yes. Yes, I am, m’lady Mormont,” but she smiles when she says it, and it is more friendly than nervous. “You’ll be there, to cheer on your lady knight, aye?”

So they are. An hour later Jory and Pod have wriggled into the seats besides strapping Mya Stone, and in the row above them, sooner or late, comes the rustle of skirts and a murmured ‘excuse me, thank you’, and Jory wills herself to swiftly glance back and over her shoulder as slyly as possible. Her heart sinks. The girl sitting down behind them is brown of hair, not red, and she is much taller than the child Jory remembers. The glimpse of her face Jory got was much sharper and almost pinched, either by nature or in worry over something, and her gown was cut like a grown woman’s, to accentuate her figure. Jory reddens in dismay as she turns back around, catches Pod’s eyes, and just stares helplessly, while Mya has gone stiff and silent behind them as the knights ride in, one by one. 

It’s not her. If it’s not her, then- she could still be in the Vale, somewhere, someone might know something, but if it’s not her, and if all this was for naught- no. No, she can’t think like that. They still have a duty to advocate on behalf of the Starks and Tullys here. There is still good work to be done, even if they are no closer to finding Sansa. But she misses the opening ceremonies in a daze, only sparing the briefest of glances for the box where Littlefinger sits with his young charge, behind and above to the left of them, accompanied by both Lord Royces, and Lady Myranda, Lady Anya, the elderly Lord Redfort, and the portly Lord Belmore.

Jory has never been to a tourney before, so she has nothing to compare this one with. She finds it enjoyable, even under duress, if not spectacular or awe-inspiring. Many of the knights (and there are over fifty competing today) are young and green, unblooded beyond a few skirmishes with the wild clans. In her eyes, they practically stumble over themselves in their eagerness to prove their worth to their lords and ladies. 

But there is something dignified about it all, she supposes, if not very alluring to her. When Hyle rides in, head held high and back straight on a fresh mount, despite his worn and battered armor and stained white surcoat, he seems half a true knight for a few moments. Brienne gets the same applause as any man would when she rides in with her helm lowered to hide her woman’s face, on a white stallion and in her fine new hauberk, courtesy of the Kingslayer.

Wallace Waynwood pauses briefly as he enters on his horse to nod to Jory, her green favor tied to his arm, which still bemuses her. Perhaps it is more meaningful than she’d thought; she’d taken it for a simple fancy, that he would just ask the first ‘lady’ he was not related to for a scrap of cloth. And the knight Mya had spoken with earlier, Lothor, she called him, rides in wearing a lady’s favor Jory very much doubts is Mya’s, not because she is no lady but because she does not all seem the sort to bestow one upon a man with a straight face. 

She glances warily at Mya, to see if she seems upset by this, but the young woman instead turns round in her seat to ask Alayne, “Did you give yours to Brune? Good on you, Alayne! Hardyng must have been peeved-,”

Just then there is a surge in the cheers as Harrold Hardyng himself rides in, but Jory misses it entirely, for now she has the excuse to look back straight at Alayne again, longer this time, and then Pod makes a muffled noise beside her, like a gasp, and Jory stiffens in her seat as she meets the bastard girl’s gaze for the first time. The hair is the wrong color, the face is older and longer, no trace of baby fat or childish dimples to be found, and the bodice of her gown has clearly been padded to make her look more mature and womanly, but there are no mistaking those eyes up close. They are Tully blue, a shade lighter than her mother’s and uncle’s, but blue nonetheless, and with her expression drawn and guarded, she undeniably looks like Lady Catelyn… and Lord Ned. Jory had never noticed it before, but with her hair darkened and her face harder and leaner, oh, she does. 

She is gaping, and so is Pod. Pod, who once served as Tyrion Lannister’s squire. Alayne- Sansa- she might not recognize Jory immediately, but she surely spent enough time around Pod to, and Jory knows she has, for the polite, if tense smile she was offering Mya has vanished, and now she looks as though she might vomit. That, or faint. She almost recoils back into her seat, and Mya starts in concern, reaching a gloved hand towards her as if to steady her in case she collapses. “Alayne, what’s wrong?”

Pod clamps his mouth shut and swivels back around in his seat as if pulled by a string. Jory tries to smile reassuringly at Sansa, but she’s too busy fending off Mya’s questions- “I’m fine, Mya,” she hears her say, as Jory reluctantly turns back around as well. “I just- I felt a little faint for a few moments, is all. I didn’t eat much this morning; I was busy helping my lord father.”

My lord father. Jory tries to pick apart her tone, but without looking at her, it’s difficult. Did Baelish force Sansa into this, or offer a willing rescue from the capitol? Has he already turned cloak against the Lannisters? Surely he must have- if they were to find out he’d spirited one of their prized hostages away they’d have his little head on a spike head. But what was his cause to betray them? They’ve handsomely rewarded him- unless he thought he could get more from the Vale and the North, or did it out of some old fondness for Lady Catelyn-

But then the jousting has begun, and Jory’s mind is racing well enough without the torrent of panicked thoughts pouring through. Sansa is here. Sansa Stark is sitting right behind her. What are they going to do? Part of her wants to whirl around, snatch up the younger girl’s hand, and start running, but that is madness. Sansa is terrified, and even if she weren’t, they’d never make it out of the castle like this. All she can do is wait. There’s no way to readily signal Hyle and Brienne from here, and no way to tell Sansa they mean her no harm. She should be thrilled, really. They’ve stumbled right into her, the lost princess. Only, in most of the stories Jory can recollect, it didn’t quite play out like this.

Snow is flurrying in the air as jousting begins, but it’s swiftly carried away on the wind, and doesn’t seem to be sticking to the ground. With all the braziers light and the torches on the walls blazing, it doesn’t feel all that cold, and Jory almost feels flushed and feverish instead, spots of color in her cheeks. But that might have less to do with the excitement of the tourney, and more to do with the heir to the North sitting behind her. Mayhaps the only heir, if Lysara Stark is dead. Jory doesn’t want to consider what might have befell a fragile infant at the hands of the Freys or Boltons. 

With a few notable exceptions, the competitors are all young, some barely of age, with the faintest of wispy beards or mustaches, others still covered in spots. Mya tells her that those who are chosen as part of the Winged Knights will be bound to serve for three years, so Jory supposes it makes sense that most men with wives and children would decline to take part, aside from appealing to their own pride. But there a few older men in the lists, whether they are competing for vanity’s sake or simply to test their strength after years of peace in the Vale. It’s hard to believe some of these men must have fought alongside Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon in the Rebellion, that the last time they saw real war was so long ago, before she was born,

Jory feels as though her life has been nothing but war since she was five-and-ten. Two years feels like twenty. When she looks in the mirror she sometimes catches herself searching for wrinkles and crow’s feet around her eyes, like her Mother’s. If she’d been born and raised here, instead of in the North, how different her life would have been. She’d be as brilliantly arrayed in rich fabrics and gleaming jewels as the Waynwood daughters, and she’d like as not be wed by now, perhaps with a child on the way. She’d fear no reavers or westermen taking her husband away from her. But it seems empty all the same. The Vale is much more populated than the North, and has many more bustling town centers, especially up and down the coasts, but it must be isolated and lonely in many of their towering keeps, up in the mountains.

Lothor Brune breaks his lance against young Mychel Redfort, but unhorses him all the same. Mya breaks into a beaming grin at the sight of it, shouting her praises before she reddens under some disapproving stares and restrains herself. “Do you know Redfort?” Jory asks her, wishing she didn’t sound slightly shaky from her nerves. Luckily, Mya doesn’t seem to notice- nor does she notice the way Ser Lothor slowed upon completing his circuit, as he rode past them, his gaze fixed on her. 

“I used to,” Mya answers curtly, as Mychel Redfort heaves off his helm, flushed with embarrassment, as a squire leads his horse back to him.

Marwyn Belmore’s shield is cracked in half by the force of Hyle’s lance half an hour later. The lanky redhaired knight topples from the saddle and gets his foot caught in the stirrups. Jory is frankly impressed that Hyle doesn’t make a mockery of him but instead wheels his mount round and orders a nearby groom to help Belmore before his neck is broken from the drag.

Harry Hardyng rides impressively; Jory has yet to be introduced to the man formally, and isn’t all that sure she wants to, from the rumors she’s heard from the Waynwoods. They may consider him kin, but it is clear that Lady Anya is less than pleased with his whoring and bastards, and her daughters seem to view him with thinly veiled exasperation and disdain. He is very handsome, though- after every victory he removes his helm, and his sandy blonde hair shines like summer wheat in the midday sun. It’s obvious he will be one of the last knights riding by the end of today.

Brienne defeats two Royces before she is unhorsed by Symond Templeton, who looks near a Karstark to Jory, with his dark hair, light eyes, and hooked nose. She manages to land gracefully- or as gracefully as one can fall from a horse without snapping an ankle- in a near crouch, and rises without much fuss. When Templeton comes back to offer his compliments, she takes off her helm, and there is a momentary hush over the crowd. Jory looks around almost defiantly, waiting to see if anyone dares jeer or scorn her, but Lord Nestor Royce launches into the announcement of the next two knights at the list, not waiting for the crowd’s reaction.

That Gilwood Hunter ought not to be in this competition at all is obvious; even from a distance Jory can tell that the man is past his prime- “And yet some still call him Young Lord Hunter,” Mya mutters to her, chuckling- but he is determined nonetheless. He rides up against one of his own brothers, Ser Eustace Hunter, who is not much younger but who seems to be in better shape. Gilwood is red-faced from a morning of drinking and thick around the gut. The crowd seems more bemused by this than anything else, as the brothers gallop towards each other, but Pod suddenly grabs at her elbow.

“His gorget-,”

Jory sees it too, then, the bright flash of metal in the sunset at the armor around Lord Gilwood’s neck; his gorget isn’t properly fastened, or else the chain has somehow loosened, for it’s tilted down on the one side, leaving part of his throat and sternum exposed- She winces an instant before the collision; a great scream of horror and shock goes up as Hunter lands in the dirt, a lance point lodged in the side of his neck where it meets his shoulder. The crowds all jump up to see how badly injured he is, the common household servants and young squires and pages at the bottommost rows surging over the fence, and Pod stands up on his seat to get a better look, but Jory turns round, instead-

Just in time to see Sansa Stark disappear into the packed aisle and hurry down the wooden steps towards the ground. Jory doubts she’s running to Lord Hunter’s aid. There’s no way she could have known that Gilwood Hunter would be so horribly injured at this exact moment, but she’s obviously decided to take the opportunity to make herself scarce. Jory can’t quite blame her, but she also can’t just sit here. “Pod, come on,” she hisses, all but bodily hauling him out of his seat, and if Mya Stone calls after them in confusion, she can’t hear it over the uproar of the crowds and horses.

It takes longer than she’d like to get down from the stands without diving off them, but once they’re on solid ground Jory breaks into a dead run, Pod panting at her heels, trying to think of where Sansa might have fled to hide. Her bedchamber inside the keep? The kitchens or cellars? One of the currently empty towers? She pauses in the yard with Pod, looking around breathlessly. “Where do you think she would go? You know this place better than me.” Did Brienne or Hyle see them take off after her? Will they follow? 

“In the Red Keep she’d go to the godswood every day,” Pod gasps out, and Jory wants to slap herself not thinking of it sooner. Of course. Sansa’s frightened and panicking. She knows who Pod is, and she remembers him being in service to the Lannisters. If Sansa’s sole source of comfort and peace at court was the Red Keep’s godswood, if it was the only place where she felt safe, then it makes sense that she’d go to the godswood here as well, to calm herself or take a measure of things. 

“Show me the way,” she urges Pod, and then it’s her turn to follow him, at a brisk walk instead of a sprint. The godswood here is located near the postern gate, towards the back of the square keep, a small enclosed acre of wooded garden. It is similar enough to northern godswoods Jory has been in that it spurs her to remember that the Royces, too, are descendants of the First Men. They may be devout followers of the Seven now, but that was not always the case. 

They slip inside the hushed wood, shutting the door behind them, and then Jory stops Pod with a hand on his shoulder. “Stay here and watch this gate,” she says. “Seeing you again won’t help matters. If she’s here, I’ll find her, and try to explain things to her.”

Pod exhales, the nods grimly. Jory hesitates. “If anyone else comes through, and it’s not one of the Waynwoods or Brienne or Hyle… hide.”

Pod gives her a bit of a sullen look and gestures to blunted tourney sword at his belt, but obeys.

Jory tries to look confident and calm as she smiles briefly at him, then moves through the trees, her heart pounding in her chest. She may have her sword and shield on her, but hampered by her dress and heavy cloak, she can’t imagine she looks much a threat. Still- Jory can’t recall having ever spoken to Sansa before beyond a polite greeting or farewell, and the plain truth remains that it has been years. It’s been years since Sansa saw or spoke to anyone of the North. Jory does not know how the Lannisters treated her at court. But they wed her to the Imp. That does not speak well of it, Jory thinks. 

The weirwood at the center of the godswood here is small and stunted, in the middle of a dense crop of pine trees. Jory moves through them silently from years of experience, light on her feet as snow, and then pauses, watching Alayne Stone and Sansa Stark, two girls in one, pace frantically back and forth in front of it. After a few moments Sansa seems to calm herself, and backs up so her back is to the trunk, sinking down onto her haunches, heedless of the dirt and dead leaves collecting on the skirt of her gown. She brushes her thick hair back from her face, then hesitates on the wooden comb holding it, rips it out, and flings it away. It looks like some sort of carved bird.

Jory hesitates for another moment, then swallows her indecision and steps forward. “Sansa?”

Sansa looks up, white with horror, and scrambles back and over the roots of the sad little weirwood, scrabbling at the pale bark as she clambers to her feet. “I- you’re mistaken,” she says frantically. “I am Alayne, I don’t know- You’re confusing me for someone else, my lady-,”

“I’m Jorelle Mormont,” Jory says clearly. “I was born and bred of Bear Island. I marched south with my lady mother and yours to fight alongside your brother, the King in the North. I’ve known you before. You were long gone from Winterfell when I was last there, but my family visited yours twice before. The last time was when I was twelve. Robb and I were of an age, but you were just nine. It was snowing the whole time. You came in soaking wet and laughing with Arya and Bran, because they’d ambushed you with snowballs outside the keep.” 

There is a long silence that flows between them. Sansa stays where she is, one bare hand on the weirwood’s narrow trunk, watching, deciding. Jory does not move, and keeps her hands where Sansa can see them. “I mean you no harm,” she says. “On my honor as a Mormont, in full view of our gods, I do swear it. Nor does Podrick Payne, nor Brienne of Tarth.”

“It’s too late,” Sansa licks her lips, then says in a wretched, hopeless voice. “It’s too late, don’t you see? You can’t- I’m only safe as Alayne. I can’t- I can’t be her again, not until I wed Harry. He promised me that when we were wed, then I could tell everyone the truth, then the Vale might-,” she swallows, “then they might fight for me, but not before, not now-,”

“Harry told you?” Jory asks, baffled.

“No,” Sansa says fiercely, “Petyr- Lord Baelish- Littlefinger! He saved me from the Lannisters, but he said I’d have to be Alayne, at least until…” She trails off, shaking her head. “This is- no. I need to go back to the tourney. People will begin to talk if they see I’m missing, and I- I promised Sweetrobin I’d be watching for when they name his knights, and-,”

There is a distant, sharp, scream, and both of them freeze. It can’t be more fuss over Lord Hunter. Tourney injuries are not so uncommon. This sounds different. Then another one. Sansa picks up her skirts and runs for the godswood entrance. Jory is not far behind her. Pod is nowhere to be seen as they run out. A few maids are running from the nearby kitchens towards the courtyard where the tourney is being held. “Maddy!” Sansa recognizes one of them, and shouts. “What’s going on, what’s wrong-,”

“It’s milord Robert!” the woman yells back without stopping, “he’s taken ill again, only he’s bleedin’ and bleedin’-,”

Jory’s heart sinks. Sansa pales even more, if that is possible, a hand to her mouth. “The sweetsleep,” she murmurs, and then really does look as if she might retch. “No, no- the sweetsleep, oh, I’m so _stupid_ -,”

“Come on,” Jory grabs her hand, still looking around frantically for Pod, who she doesn’t see anywhere. “We can fetch the maester-,”

“No, he’ll already be there, he’s never far from Sweetrobin-,” Sansa wrenches her hand away, but keeps moving, darting around the corner the inner keep, a narrow passageway that will come out on the far side of the courtyard. “This way, it’s faster-,”

Hemmed in by grey stones on either side, Jory holds her breath, keeping her eyes locked on the dark grey of Sansa’s cloak as she hurries ahead, only to skid to a halt, sending small pebbles flying. Jory almost runs right into her back; Sansa is easily as tall as her, despite being several years younger. “Ser Shadrich,” Sansa chokes out. “I- have you seen Lord Robert, is he still shaking-,”

“Can’t say I have,” the short man Jory spies over her shoulder says. At first she mistakes him for a pageboy, he is so small, perhaps the same height as Pod, but when she gets a better look at his face she sees he is well past thirty. His orange hair is short and bristly, and his armor has seen far better days. But it’s the hand on his shortsword that concerns her. “But I should say I’ve a far better sight in mind than that poor wretch. Tourney or not, I think I’ll have my bag of gold dragons now… Lady Lannister.”

Sansa goes stiff and still as a weirwood herself, then glances back at Jory. 

“Step aside, wench,” Shadrich says. “I want no quarrel with you, just the wolf girl. You have my word I’ll not lay a finger on her, lest she presses me, of course. The Spider wants her alive. Course, the queen might be less picky.”

Jory looks beyond him, then back. They have about five feet of width to work with. She’s hampered by this dress, but he’s enclosed by the same narrow walls as she. And she’s got three inches in height on him, and a much longer reach at that. She shrugs off her cloak instead, letting it puddle to the damp ground, and reaches around and behind her back for her shield. “You want to be pressed,” she says, as Sansa neatly steps aside, blue eyes darting between the two of them. “Come try me. Sansa, find Brienne of Tarth. I’ll hold him.”

Ser Shadrich smiles, and it plucks at the scar beneath right ear that cuts into his sunken cheek. Jory has barely gotten her sword in hand when he comes for her, and he is astonishingly fast for a man of his size. She pivots, braces so her knees won’t buckle, and catches his first blow soundly on Gendry’s improved shield. Sansa makes a sound like a caught scream, then backs up several paces, and runs without a word. Jory doesn’t watch her go; Shadrich wrenches his blade loose, screams like a madman, and comes at her again, pressing her backwards down the passageway. Jory lets him, less concerned with holding ground than keeping herself upright and limber. If he makes her trip and fall, there is nowhere to scramble or roll. So long as she’s on her feet, she’s still bigger than him. 

Their blades clash once, twice, and it’s been a very long time since Jory felt like this- she’s not outnumbered, she’s not on the edge, and she’s not afraid. She can hold her own against him, even in a gown, and with every movement he seems to realize it, and that feral grin turns more irritated than eager for bloodshed. Good. He’s about to do something stupid. He feints left, she catches him on it, he pulls back, swipes at her legs, but only succeeds in slicing at the fabric of her skirt. Jory slashes a line up his surcoat, nearly reaches his throat, only for it be blocked by his sword. “You can’t be so stupid as to die for a dead house, wench,” he says. “What’s Littlefinger paying you?”

“If he pays me, it’s not going to be in coin,” Jory snarls, covers her left flank with her shield, then spins and momentarily pins his sword-arm against the wall with it, panting. He’s wriggling and tugging to get loose, like a mouse in a trap. Jory throws an elbow back once, twice, and on the second time connects with his chin; he shouts in pain, she releases his sword arm, then smashes him with the shield as he reels. 

Shadrich staggers, she gets in a strike to his right thigh, opening up a deep cut there, then just barely evades his sword as it slashes through the curve of her left ear. There’s the heady feeling of blood bubbling up there, but she ignores the strange warmth, refuses to flinch back or cower, and catches his next blow on the shield once again, the copper ringing soundly.

“You bitch,” he says, pink and panting, “This mad mouse will not be bested-,”

Jory lowers the shield, feints right, parries, then slices down at his sword-arm; he wavers, fumbles his short sword, and out of the corner of her eye she watches him go for the roundel at his hip, the same sort she taught Nell Stark to use. “No, you don’t,” she snarls, and rams her rusted blade straight through his left shoulder. He yelps in pain like a kicked dog, staggers against the wall, and she doesn’t wait, as the roundel topples from his grasp-

Jory pivots back half a step, hears the skirt of her gown rip further along her leg, and opens up his throat until her blade grinds against the mail of his weathered shirt. She watches him topple over, waits to see if he moves, then slowly turns back around, finding herself several yards away from a gaping Pod, Hyle, and Wallace Waynwood, who is still wearing her favor.

“Well,” Hyle says, patting Wallace on the shoulder with a mailed fist. “Might be you should have given her yours, Ser.”

“Sansa,” Jory bursts out, and wonders why the vision in her right eye is steadily going pinkish. The right side of her head is very, very hot. 

“My lady, you’re hurt-,” Jory palms at it mutely, feels a wave of dizziness, and her vision narrows to a black hole around the blood soaking through her gloved fingers, just before she stumbles down to her knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Effective next week, I'm changing the update schedule for this fic. From now on we're just going to update every Friday. We're entering the end game here, the chapters are getting longer, and I need more time to go over them and make sure it's not Plot Hole Central. For example, while writing this chapter I had to stop after four pages in and redo a massive chunk of the timeline in my notes. Besides that, most people are probably only checking for an update once a week anyways, and Fridays are more convenient for everyone at the end of the week. 
> 
> 2\. Jory is going to be okay, she's just learning that head wounds, even ones that aren't necessarily life-threatening, tend to bleed... a lot. Like, a lot. Also, one and a half ears is still better than none.
> 
> 3\. This and the Nell chapter that will follow it are pretty much happening at the same time. Next Jory chapter will pick right up where we left off. Lots more drama to come. 
> 
> 4\. I don't know how things are going to go down in canon, but we know Shadrich is in the Vale to try to capture Sansa for a reward from Varys, and we know things are not looking great for Sweetrobin's health. 
> 
> 5\. Littlefinger predicts Gilwood Hunter does not have long to live in canon, given his murderous brother(s). The gorget 'mishap' is a direct callback to what happened to Jon Arryn's former squire all the way back in AGoT. 
> 
> 6\. The Vale takes tourneys and tourney protocol quite seriously, whereas Jory does not really think much of giving poor Wallace Waynwood her favor.
> 
> 7\. I wanted Pod to have his moment to shine a little in this chapter. We will be seeing much more of Brienne, Sansa, Baelish, and everyone's favorites, Harry and Hyle, in Jorelle VII. Also, Myranda and Mya and Lothor Brune, because I love them. 
> 
> 8\. Jory referencing a snowball fight is a direct callback to Sansa remembering one between her, Arya, and Bran in A Storm of Swords. I didn't think it was implausible that the Mormonts could have paid a visit to Winterfell around that time, and that Jory might remember when Sansa and Arya had a warmer relationship.
> 
> 9\. Words cannot describe how much I hate writing tourneys. But I did enjoy giving Jory the chance to get a win all by herself.
> 
> 10\. Next chapter we'll be at Greywater Watch with Nell and co., then chapter after that will be the direct aftermath of all this drama in the Vale. So just to clarify: next chapter should be out Friday, April 24th. Hopefully the extra time will also let me get some more stuff pre-written. My notes/outline/timeline for this fic is now 35 pages long. Pray for me.
> 
> 11\. Addendum: I've recently made a fic/writing [tumblr](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/). I probably won't be posting much but chapter updates or new story updates on it, but people are free to follow the account and ask questions or propose prompts if they like. I may occasionally float new story ideas on it to see what people think would be most interesting.


	71. Donella XLIX

300 AC - GREYWATER WATCH

Nell has never seen a floating castle before, so it is now easy to say whether or not Greywater Watch has met her muddled expectations. She will say this- it is larger than she’d assumed it would be, larger than it has any right to be, for all that it seems to often go hidden. It is almost entirely wooden; from the walls to the roofs, the wood dark and slick from constant wet, likely buttery smooth to the touch. She imagines they must be constantly breaking down and building it back up, to keep it from rotting and sinking into the marshes within the year. 

The crannog it sits upon is the largest man-made island she has ever seen, and the keep itself- for that is all Greywater is, one, singular inner keep, ramshackle and draped in peat and moss and river reeds, one singular tower rising out of the center, dotted with the smallest windows she has ever seen, barely big enough to frame a human head. At its highest point the castle stands no taller than the very tallest of the Neck’s warped and sodden trees. Someone could leap from the top of the tower and survive the fall into the water, so long as they were not in the shallows. 

There are no gates and thus no entrances nor exits as far as Nell can see, and thus nothing for the army on the causeway to do except wait impatiently for some sign as to how they should enter. ‘They’ meaning perhaps a dozen or less of them. Greywater is larger than Nell had expected, but just by looking at it as it nears she wagers it could perhaps fit only seventy men-at-arms without it being a dark, dank pit of bodies pressed up against one another. Likely the household itself numbers half or less than that. The crannogmen do not function the way most northern lords do. There is no garrison, no stables, no training yards, no kennels. She doubts Arden Greenwood nor his diminutive father, who has joined them as the dawn breaks, have ever sat a horse in their lives. 

Well, Harry is the one who wishes to take the boy for a squire. If he wants to devote his spare time to riding lessons, then it is on his head. Nell glances at young Arden, who stands beside a gaping, awestruck Arya looking rather proud, as if Greywater Watch were his home and not the Greenwood. “They’ll lower a bridge in time enough,” Karl Greenwood is patiently telling Harry, who is half-listening to him in between barking orders to the captains and serjeants he has named to keep the army in order in their absence. 

Nell doesn’t imagine they’ll be spending longer than a day inside Greywater- she thinks she might go mad were it any more time than that, the ceilings seem so low and the walls so stunted and narrow- but at least they found it. Or, the Reeds found them. She looks at Catelyn, who has a strange expression on her face, before it occurs to Nell that Howland Reed was one of Ned Stark’s dearest friends, both before and after the Rebellion. Reed went south to find Lyanna with him, same as Barbrey’s Willam and the other northmen. They are all dead now, all of those boys turned men, save this Howland. 

When Nell was young there was the occasional rumor or fear that Ned Stark might promise Robb to Meera Reed out of fondness towards her poor but steadfast father. It never came to pass, of course, and Nell has never meet Meera, who must surely be dead by now, for she was at Winterfell when it fell, and she feels the odd pang of bitter wonder. Perhaps she would have served Robb better for a wife, a wily crannog-girl whose father was as loyal as they come. Perhaps Grey Wind would have come to like the smell of her, no matter how muddy it was.

Had he had a child by another woman, that child might be with him now, and he might be warm and flush with life and love for his son or daughter. 

The drawbridge that lowers is the barely more than an especially wide plank. Beyond it is a narrow, dark entrance. Dana raises her eyebrows and mutters something about swamp witches’ sinister abodes, at least until a very friendly face appears from the darkness. “Your Grace!” Lyra Mormont energetically hails, well, all of them, waving a thick, muscled arm. She is a little paler than Nell recalls and her hair is longer, braided down to her waist, but aside from that she looks to be in good health, and Dana breaks into her first genuine grin in weeks beside her. 

“Don’t just stand there, she-bear, help us aboard!”

If Lyra Mormont greeted them with a grin and a wave, as if utterly unsurprised to see Robb, Nell, Catelyn, Arya, Harry, and the rest alive and well, then Maege Mormont greets them with a roar of triumph, although it catches at her crooked teeth when she takes in the sight of Robb’s drawn face and pale eyes. Still she embraces Catelyn as though they were old friends, and ruffles Arya’s hair, claiming she always knew Ned’s little girl would find a way back to them. Catelyn turns her face away at that, to collect herself, and Nell knows she is thinking of the daughter who could not be saved, for whom there was no miraculous return.

Given the cramped quarters of Greywater itself, only Nell, Robb, Catelyn and Arya, and Harry Karstark enter. The Greatjon and his sons could not even hope to make it through the doorway, and as it stands Harry has to constantly duck his head, wincing with discomfort. When Robb died he was sixteen and just two inches taller than Nell. He has not grown since then, as he might otherwise have. In some ways it is a relief. If he looked even more a man grown it might be harder. In other ways it is just another casual cruelty of his existence now. There is no changing what death has touched. No new roots or branches may flower. 

The Mormont women lead them on a winding path through darkened, narrow corridors and through what must pass for the Reeds’ feasting hall, although it is so small Nell would have mistaken it for a private dining room in any other castle. But Greywater is not any other castle. She could reach her hand up and brush the ceiling with her fingers. Men in armor have to practically turn sideways to fit through the doors. The windows let in thin slits of light, and through them all is grey and green and muted. There are no servants watching from the corners; Nell does not see any servants at all, although the Reeds must have them, surely they are not cooking their own meals and cleaning their own privies. 

They pass through a brief, rickety bridge and Nell sees for the first time that the narrow tower at the center of the keep is on a crannog of its own, an island within an island. Perhaps the rest could be detached and leave this rickety old turret to float off by itself. She has no idea; she’s never seen anything like this. It wearies her, sometimes, how little of the world she has really seen. In the end, the furthest south she ever went was Riverrun. Dana and Arya are both further traveled than her; Arya has been to the capitol and visited near every major settlement in the Riverlands. Dana went as far south as Stony Sept in her quest to return to them. 

Nell has no secret longing to ever lay eyes on King’s Landing or Oldtown or Highgarden or Dorne, but there is something almost sad about it. The world is so vast. The North itself is massive, and she has not even seen all of that, her own kingdom, her homeland. She has never been to Bear Island or the Karhold or Widow’s Watch. Never ventured out onto Sea Dragon Point or paid a visit to the mountain clans and their keeps carved into the stones and dotted with watch towers. She has never been to Last Hearth and heard them sing in the Old Tongue, and she has never seen the Bay of Ice or the Wall itself.

Before she was married she had assumed all those places would come naturally to her; she and Robb would have years of peace and prosperity with which to travel and see every facet of the North. But it had all been vanity then; she hadn’t cared about the places or the people, she’d only wanted them all to know who ruled them, that it was she, a Bolton, who’d snagged Ned Stark’s heir and whose sons and grandsons would be their future Wardens of the North. And men and women of all those places have died for her, while she prepares to straggle back to Winterfell and kill some more northmen. 

They needs cross the bridge into the tower one at a time, it is so small and rickety. Catelyn scolds Arya when she all but leaps across it, landing gracefully at the end, and Dana goes whistling nervously under her breath. Nell does not look down; she is used to not looking down, from her time at the Twins, and when she enters the dimly lit tower and lets her gaze follow the winding wooden staircase in the center up and up, the back of her neck prickles as it usually only does in a godswood, with Grey Wind, or in a dream.

She used to always take that prickling for an ill omen, but she knows better now. It’s not necessarily that something is horribly wrong, but often that something is going terribly right, and just because it feels right and necessary doesn’t mean it’s going to feel good. Like finally vomiting after feeling sick to one’s stomach all day. “How do crannogmen get so many books?” Arya is asking curiously, eying the glimpse of shelves overhead, and a figure Nell initially mistakes for another boy, like Arden, emerges from behind the stairwell.

“Lord Reed,” Catelyn says tiredly, and Nell blinks in shock, noting the similarly surprised look on Harry’s sober face. Howland Reed must be at least thirty years of age, to have fought in the Rebellion, but his face looks young and smooth; he has no beard and very few wrinkles. His hair is still rich brown in color, no trace of grey, and pulled back taut from his face in a knot behind his head. His eyes are a strange shade of hazel, flecked with amber and green. 

His gaze slides over Robb, and something tells Nell that he understands what has come to pass immediately. Still, he dips in a neat, fluid bow. “Your Graces. Lady Catelyn. Princess Arya. Lord Karstark.” He rises and smiles thinly at the Mormonts. “And Maege and Lyra.”

“Howl almost had my head when I sounded the horn,” Maege informs them, unflappably. “No trust, this one- nevermind that I served damn well when we were keeping eyes on the Boltons and Freys! No horns going then, eh, Reed? You’d begrudge an old snark giving her king a proper greeting?”

“I begrudge the men Roose Bolton left behind at Moat Cailin hearing us announce ourselves in the distance,” Howland says without missing a beat, but almost smiles at the woman, and it occurs to Nell that they’ve spent months here together, waiting on some sort of summons or declaration of further instructions. She feels another jab of guilt, although she resents it all the same. No one could have predicted what was to come. Robb thought he was being prudent by sending Maege and Galbart Glover up ahead into the Neck. He’d thought they’d be right behind them.

They almost were.

She pushes the thought away. Karstark has made his points to her. She cannot allow sentiments to overrule her common sense any longer. She loved- she loves Robb still, but she will not have it said when she went blind and meek as the kid she slaughtered yesterday. No one man is going to win this war for her. Not Robb, not Harry, and certainly not Howland Reed or Maege Mormont, however relieved she is to see them alive and well.

“You saw my father marching his men up the causeway, then,” she says bluntly. “Did you harry them?”

“We delayed their progress for as long as possible without provoking battle,” Howland answers calmly. “He only made it into the Barrowlands six weeks ago.”

Six weeks is still plenty of time to head back to the Dreadfort, and Nell is not relishing the prospect of reclaiming Winterfell only to have to immediately pivot to plotting their assault on her childhood home. She has always hated the Dreadfort, aye. But it is still a part of her. It is still where she was born and bred. You can hate something and still know it intimately, feel some semblance of fondness and affection for it. All her memories of Mother are rooted there. If it were to disappear, what would happen to them?

“He headed to Barrowton, where he accepted pledges of loyalty from near every northern house, discounting the clansmen and those taken by Ironborn,” Howland continues in his plain, quietly frank way of speaking. “Now he marches on Winterfell, if he is not there already.”

“Winterfell?” Catelyn frowns. “Why would he not take his men to the Dreadfort? Winterfell was-,” she inhales quickly as if trying to move past it, “burned and sacked, the Dreadfort would be much easier to defend-,”

“You are not his only foe,” Howland says. “Stannis Baratheon has come down from the Wall to drive out the Ironborn. He seeks to claim the allegiance of the northmen on the eve of this winter.”

“That’s madness,” Harry scoffs. “Baratheon can’t think he has any time with which to raise another army to march south again-,”

“We have reason to believe Stannis does not mean to march south at all,” Howland says. “But north again, with our people… all of our people united behind him and his burning heart. He has found himself another war to wage, beyond the Wall.”

“The wildings,” Nell all but curses. Does it never end? Enemies sprout up like weeds. What’s next? Skaagos decides to secede? Jon Snow comes down from the Wall? The last thought pricks at her. Better not to tempt fate at all. If there was ever an opportunity for a bastard brother to seize power, the uncertain months following the Red Wedding would have been it. She should be grateful for that, at least. Even the natural son inherited some of Ned Stark’s honor.

Howland neither confirms nor denies this, only inclines his head to the winding stairs. “Come.”

As they climb, the wood creaking ominously underfoot, Howland notes, “Galbart Glover took a dozen men to scout out Cailin, when we realized you had passed into the Neck. He awaits your commands now, but I do not think it will be difficult to reclaim.”

At the top of the tower they find Jyanna Reed, Hollis Mollen, and a intricately carved pine trunk. At first glimpse, much as how her husband could be mistaken for an adolescent boy, Jyanna Reed could be mistaken for a young maid. She cannot be more than five feet tall standing up, if that, and sitting hunched in an oddly crafted armchair- all sloping back and spindly, gnarled legs- she appears even smaller and frailer. 

Like her husband, her hair is brown, although a slightly warmer shade, and her eyes are the darkest green Nell has ever seen on a human face. They remind her of Shaggy Dog’s. Her hair is so long it must come down to her knees when unbound- it is silken smooth and confined to two braided buns on either side of her small head. When she looks at Robb he stiffens, and Nell gives her a second, harder glance, trying to see what lurks behind the gaunt face and almost feverish countenance. She’s not well, that much is clear- she coughs long and hard, the sound rattling in her throat, there’s an odd sheen to her skin that may very well be sweat, despite the cold air coming in through the small windows.

She moves to rise when she sees them, but good-natured Hallis Mollen takes her hand as he might a sister, keeping her in her seat. 

“Jyanna, you should be in bed,” Maege scolds as though speaking to one of her unruly daughters. 

Jyanna blinks and smiles; it looks almost painful for her to stretch her thin lips. “How could I get any sleep, with all that noise? This morning lost to your horn, last night to the wolves…” Her eyes alight upon Arya, and she sighs as if in relief. “The gods are good. There is yet one warg among you.”

Harry makes a vaguely triumphant sound. Nell scowls at him, then moves to Catelyn, who has gone rigid, her hands like claws on Arya’s shoulders.

“How did you know about my dreams?” Arya rounds indignantly on Jyanna Reed. “I never told-,” she glances sharply at Dana, “you didn’t tell, did you-,”

Dana raises her hands in surrender. “If dreaming you were a wolf could make you a warg, why, we’d all be gods and monsters-,”

“You knew?” Nell bursts out, pivoting from Catelyn to Dana.

“She suspected,” Harry interrupts, “like anyone with common sense might, that the bloody direwolves might not just be a coincidence-,”

“My daughter is not a _skinchanger_ ,” Catelyn begins hotly, “she is a little girl, an innocent child-,”

“I was,” Robb’s emotionless statement silences them all. The only sound is Hallis Mollen shifting uneasily in his seat, and Howland Reed’s quiet exhale.

“Robb?” Nell forces herself to ask after a moment, thinking back to that night at Oldstones, on their way to the Twins, before the wedding, when she asked about his dreams. That was the night he’d told her he’d written his will. He’d said he dreamed of bloody, violent things, and then… and then he’d asked her, later, what sort of stories she’d heard of skinchangers and beastlings. And they’d spoken of the Warg King, and how in the legends, the Starks had crushed him and his armies and put hundreds of greenseers to the swords and abducted his daughters. “ _A terrible warlock king_ ,” she’d japed dryly, and made light of dark arts and witchcraft.

What was he thinking, then? ‘That must be what I am, then?’ Did it break his heart, to her speak so callously of it? She was such a fool. He was trying to confide in her, and instead she told him horror stories. He was trying to confess it, to turn to her for comfort and reassurance that he was not a monster or a villain. Instead she brushed it off and told him not to worry about nasty rumors or accusations of witchcraft. She’d assured him that history would be what they made it. That was not what he wanted, nor what he needed. He had been trying to tell her what was wrong. And she did not see it, because she did not want to. What if he’d come right out with it? Would she have sat there quietly and listened, or cried out in fear, or cringed away from him in horror and disgust? She thought herself so hardened then, but she knew nothing of the real cost of war until she paid it herself. 

She can love him now, the way he is, but then? If she had to reconcile the man she’d come to love with a monster out of all their oldest tales? Could she have stomached it? 

“Robb, is that what…” She swallows, hard. Everyone is staring at one another. Arya is looking between Jyanna and Robb, Catelyn looks as though she can’t decide if she should scream or weep, Dana is exchanging an ‘I wash my hands of this’ look with a baffled Lyra, Maege is chewing on her lower lip, pensive, Howland is furrowing his brow at Harry Karstark, Harry is looking at the trunk, and then Robb says-

“Before. I don’t have the dreams anymore. I don’t feel him anymore.” 

No one has to ask who ‘he’ is. 

“Why don’t we all sit down,” Catelyn says after another moment. “And determine exactly what is being discussed here. Please,” she adds sharply, and even Howland Reed seems to hurry to find a seat after that.

When they are all sitting, she turns her steely blue eyes onto Hallis. 

The bearded man clears his throat with obvious discomfort, then says plainly, “By the time we were halfway through the Neck, the Ironborn had taken Moat Cailin, and Victarion Greyjoy his-self was leading them. We saw no away around it, so we sought refuge with the Reeds, my lady. When Lady Maege and Lord Galbart arrived, we thought for sure the army would not be far behind, but then…” His gaze flits briefly to Robb, then away again, as if he is barely repressing a shudder. “You have my apologies, my lady. But Lord Eddard’s bones have remained here.” He lays a hand on the trunk.

Catelyn looks at it for a long moment, shoulders trembling briefly. Arya makes a small noise. “Later,” she says, “I should like Arya to have the chance to see them, and His Grace,” she nods to Robb, “if he wishes.”

Robb never got to see Ned Stark’s bones when they stopped at Riverrun. It was before his return. Nell knows he would have wept and prayed over them then. Now… 

Robb gives the barest inclination of a nod. 

“Now,” Catelyn says, looking to Nell and Harry. “Before we… speak any more of skinchanging or… wolf dreams, perhaps we should focus on more material matters.”

“You believe Roose is marching for Winterfell,” Nell says directly to Howland. “How do you claim to know such a thing? You have not left the Neck in years.”

“I have not been seen outside of the Neck in years,” he corrects her. “I travel as much as any lord does, Your Grace. Perhaps not so visibly as others. And my people are not blind, nor deaf. Just because we have no towns or city walls to hide behind does not mean we lack for scouts or traders. We are simply cautious, even in the best of times. And the North has not been safe for anyone, least of all the crannogmen, since the Starks left Winterfell.”

Dana bristles at that, but holds her tongue. Harry exhales forcibly through his nose. “The Frey troops remained with the Boltons after they exited the Neck?”

“Yes,” Howland says. “Roose will know he cannot afford any division of his men. His numbers are one of his sole strengths now. That, and the princesses.”

“The princesses?” Catelyn echoes him in disbelief.

So the rumors are true, then. Fair Walda mentioned it to her months ago at the siege of Riverrun. Nell had made her swear not to breathe of a word of it to Catelyn then, fearing it really could be Arya. But Arya is right here, now, which means it was an imposter girl all along, someone the Lannisters thought could be passed off as a Stark. 

Catelyn wraps an arm around Arya, pulling her close. To Nell’s relief, Arya does not jerk away or protest the embrace, instead laying her head against her mother’s chest. “Jeyne,” she says. “It must have been Jeyne.”

Oh. Nell feels a brief pang of sorrow.

“Jeyne Poole?” Catelyn murmurs. “Vayon’s daughter? That’s- she looks nothing like Arya, and she is two years older, besides-,”

“She has the same brown hair as me,” Arya says. “Only a little darker, and her face was always a little longer than Sansa’s. She was never very tall, either.”

“Most of the lords and ladies Roose has summoned will not have seen Arya since was a small child,” Harry says reflectively. “They would not know the difference, and if this Jeyne was your steward’s daughter, she was raised in Winterfell, was she not?”

“She’d never left it in her life,” Catelyn says hoarsely, and then bows her head for a moment. “That poor child. She was so excited when her father told her she was to go south to court. Sansa and her were inseparable.”

Arya tenses, looking away.

Nell recalls as well. She spent more time around little Beth Cassel than Jeyne Poole, but she remembers how Jeyne had jumped up and down, gleefully squealing, when she’d realized she and Sansa would not be parted. She’d all but danced her way into the wheelhouse. To be considered a lady in waiting to the girl who would have been queen must have been a thrill all the same, given her background. Had all gone as planned, Jeyne could have hoped to make a much better marriage in the south through Sansa’s influence at court than she ever could have made in the North. She might have been lady of her own keep someday.

“They mean to wed her to Ramsay,” she says, and Howland nods, confirming her suspicions. “In case… in the event that…” She cannot say it.

“An immediate marriage binding one of the last remaining Starks to House Bolton is in their best interests,” Harry finishes the thought for her. “Walda Frey cannot have given birth yet. Roose has no one else he could wed Lysara to, save his bastard, and he likely wants a child from the union as soon as possible, for protection.”

Nell is almost ill for a moment at the thought of the Bastard being wed to her own daughter, and ignores the guilt that comes the relief that it is Jeyne Poole being wed to the monster, and not Lysara. If they can save the Poole girl, they will. But her daughter must come first. 

“A good thing you have experience interrupting wedding festivities, then,” Dana mutters.

“So Roose marches on Winterfell, and Stannis comes down from Deepwood-,” Nell does not take very long to calculate the distances in her head, blanching. “The Baratheon army will beat us there, easily.” There is savage stab of fury at the thought. No. No. This is her revenge, not Stannis bloody Baratheon’s- what is any of this, to Stannis? These are not his people nor his lands and she will not let him claim what should be hers. Her vengeance. She will give her father and brother their deaths, not Robert’s washed up, beleaguered general of a brother-

“They will not,” Jyanna speaks up throatily. All eyes turn to her. “They have only just begun their march… and the weather will not hold.”

As if on cue, the wind whistles low and mournful across the marsh outside.

“That is only guesswork,” Harry begins irritably, “excuse my insolence, my lady, but you cannot possibly know-,”

“I know it because I dreamed it,” she sounds tired and impatient, now, shifting in her chair, adjusting the blanket across her lap. “Many storms are coming down from the Wall, but the first that shall come to pass will be mere ice and snow and wind. Still, it will hold them. It will give you time. It will give your enemies time.”

“Are you a warg, too?” Arya asks her curiously, ignoring her mother’s shocked look and Nell’s frown.

“I am no warg,” says Jyanna. “Only a dreamer. And my dreams are all mossy green, not grey fur and sharp teeth. Not nearly as strong as my son’s were.” Now she sounds sad and distant.

“I am sorry,” Catelyn says, struggling to keep her tone even, “for the loss of your children, my lady. They were guests of Winterfell when the Turncloak attacked. We owe you a debt for their lives.”

“Meera and Jojen are lost to me,” Jyanna agrees, “but they are not dead. No.” She lays a frail hand across her sunken chest. “No, I would feel it if they were. They went north,” she sighs. “Far beyond anything I might glimpse. They are shrouded from me. I had hoped to see them once more before I die. In the flesh or in a dream,” she smiles wanly. “But the gods do not care for my hopes.”

Howland takes her hand silently. “You will see them again, Jyanna.”

Nell supposes it is possible Meera and Jojen Reed could have somehow escaped the slaughter, if unlikely. Then again, if they are as good at going unnoticed as their father, and if Jojen truly possesses some sort of gift of foresight, perhaps not.

“You said Stannis had found another war to fight,” Harry says slowly. “Are the wildlings truly hoping to breach the Wall?”

“They have tried once, and failed,” Howland says, shaking his head. “If they come across the Wall again, it will not be in battle.”

Nell all but scoffs. “What is that supposed to mean? The Night’s Watch will simply stand aside and let them descend on our people?”

“The wildings have not been the Watch’s true enemy for some time now,” Howland says plainly. He rises, walks over to a small table besides the window, and returns with a letter in hand. “This came months past from Aemon Targaryen, beseeching every northern lord- and some southern lords as well, I have little doubt- for aid. Not in the war against the wildlings.”

He hands it to Robb, who reads slowly and silently as Nell and Catelyn look over his shoulder, and a copied letter to Harry, who reads while trying to fend off Dana and Arya’s prying eyes. Maege shifts in her armor; it’s obvious she’s well aware of all of this. Nell looks up in disbelief after a moment.

“How can the Watch expect us to believe any of this? This… this is the ramblings of a mad old man-,”

But Howland is looking at Robb, who raises his grey eyes from the letter. Something unspoken passes between them. “Robb was healed at a great cost,” Catelyn says swiftly, almost desperately. “He is not- perhaps there is some truth to this, perhaps there are dead men walking beyond the Wall, yes, but that has little to do with- with-,”

“My husband is not a _wight_ ,” Nell says hotly.

Robb stands abruptly. They all tense. But he does not reach for his sword or call for Grey Wind, as Nell worried he might. “I believe it,” he says. “I believe many things I could not before. I am no wight. But no maester brought me back. It was magic. And before I died I dreamed of wolves. I dreamed I was a wolf.” He pauses, frowning, as if trying to work out how to phrase it properly, “and the wolf was me, and we were one and the same, and all he felt and did, it was mine as much as his. And when I went to war, so did he, and when he hunted, so did I.”

“There was no magic in my world when I was a child,” Jyanna Reed says, “Only ever in my dreams.” She frowns. “I do not remember most of them now. And Jojen’s sight puts mine to shame. It was the fever. It nearly took him when he was just a boy of five, and when he woke, he was not the same.”

Nell thinks of another little boy who woke and was not quite the same, and then thinks of the wildling woman, Osha, who came to her in the stables, before she and Robb left Winterfell. 

_Trouble coming on the winds, and they may not blow this far south yet, but they will- men go into the woods and they don’t come out, or if’n they do, they’re gone to wights, m’lady, dead as stone and eyes like blue ice._

_North, not south_ , Osha had tried to warn her. And Nell had mocked her and ordered her back to the kitchens, scoffing at the notion of legends come to life.

“In the stories,” Arya says quietly, “in Old Nan’s stories, the wights came with the Others, didn’t they? They were their army. In the Long Night. Until the Last Hero defeated them in the Battle for the Dawn.”

Old Nan was not the only one who told such stories. Mother used to delight in frightening her with gory tales of the Others’ atrocities, how they hunted men and women and little children for sport. And even Sara Snow, when pressed, could describe them just well enough to make a young Nell wriggle uncomfortably under her furs. “Beautiful,” she’d say, “the most beautiful people you’ve ever seen, pale as the moon, and eyes so blue they burned a hole into your heart. But they had no hearts at all. Theirs were withered away long ago, all curled up with hate. Their hair spun down from their heads like spider silk, and their armor reflected like a looking glass. Their swords glowed and wailed as they did their bloody work, and they could not suffer sunshine nor iron nor firelight. And they can smell your pain and your sorrow and all your fear, and that is what brings them any joy at all.”

“Stannis means to fight them,” Nell says slowly, still incredulous. “The wights and… and mayhaps the Others, too?”

“He knows he cannot make a stand with just the might of the Watch alone,” Howland replies. “I am no advisor, but I would urge you to heed his actions, and Maester Aemon’s words of warning. The Boltons and Freys are our enemies, yes. They should be met with the justice of House Stark and its allies. But what lies beyond the Wall could threaten us all. Not just Winterfell or the North.”

“A new age of terrors,” Lyra Mormont says sardonically, with a bitter little smile. “And to think I ever complained of being bored of peace, aye?”

Nell doesn’t know what to think. More precisely, she can’t think. Or breathe, really. The room seems even smaller and more cramped, as if all the air were evaporating. “I-,” she looks to Robb, who is still standing.

“I want to speak with Lady Jyanna,” he enunciates with care. “Alone.”

If Jyanna Reed is afraid, if she has ever dreamed of wights or the Others and seen some semblance of either in Robb, she does not show it, only inclines her head.

Nell retreats to the Reed’s hall. Maege Mormont follows close behind, and draws her into a dim corner in the brief few moments they have alone before the other join them. She presses a sealed notice into Nell’s gloved hands. “I have done my duty and kept Robb Stark’s will close at hand,” she says to Nell intently, as if warning her not to brush this off or look away. “Now it must remain with you, or Lady Catelyn, at all times.” 

She pauses. “From one woman- one mother, to another, Queen Nell, I know something of what it is like to be bound by the wills of men. I was there when your husband wrote this one. I pledged to honor its contents, as did every other lord present. Some of them will choose to forget that promise. Some would rather the will never be read again at all. Keep it close. Keep it safe. And do not let them put your daughter aside. They will speak of safety and tradition,” she scoffs, “as they always blathered at me. Well, sometimes we must make our own tradition. It is what my kinswomen did once, long ago, when they first picked up their blades and screamed back at the sea that they were not afraid.”

Nell nods silently. Maege grips her shoulder briefly with a big hand, then lets go. “You need to eat. Keep your strength up. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed the grub here, but mayhaps the frog and snails will grow on you faster than they did me, Your Grace.” She pauses and her brown eyes soften slightly in grief then. “Lady Catelyn has promised to show me my daughter’s bones tonight.”

“Lady Dacey fought bravely,” Nell says around the jagged shard of ice in her throat. “She will be remembered as a hero of this war, not just a victim.”

“I never lost a babe, not one,” Maege reflects, shaking her head. “And I’d hoped to go before any of my girls. But I am glad she died on the water with her morningstar in hand, and not chained up in a cell.” She leaves Nell then, and goes to sit with Lyra, who is blankly studying the wood of the table while Dana leans on her in a comforting embrace.

One thing at a time, Nell tells herself. One thing at a time. This could all just be conjecture. None of them have seen any proof of this beyond the odd green dream, and that- she’s not sure if she even believes in any of it. Wargs, yes. She’s been around Grey Wind long enough to not deny that. But seers? Predictions of the future? Part of her is terrified. If Jyanna Reed’s dreams can come true, then what does that mean for hers? She is no greenseer. But at times they felt so real. Mother seemed so real. And Sara… And her daughter.

One thing at a time. When she has Lysara in her arms again, when Roose and Ramsay lie dead at her feet, then they can treat with Stannis and turn their attention to the Wall. One must secure the throne before they secure the kingdom. Even Robert Baratheon knew that. She can worry about the shadows dancing on the walls when the fire is contained. 

There is a rousing debate over dinner as to whether or not they ought to stop over in White Harbor, even if it will delay their approach to Winterfell. On the one hand, they could use the supplies and whatever swords the city can spare. On the other… if a blizzard is on its way, they do not want to be caught up in it themselves before they can reach Winterfell. And after so many delays, Nell pointedly refuses to allow for any more. Once they take Moat Cailin, they move straight up the Kingsroad for Winterfell. 

What does startle her is Howland Reed’s announcement that he and fifty of his favored crannogmen will come with them. His wife does not react to this beyond a small smile from her seat at the other end of the high table. Nell looks at Robb, trying to discern if he forced Howland’s hand, or if Harry somehow persuaded him, but when she glances at Karstark, he looks similarly taken aback. Why would the man leave his clearly ailing wife and the Neck he has been so devoted to now?

Because there are wights beyond the Wall and possibly Others as well, and his children are missing, a voice in her ear hisses at her. 

They have that in common, then. But at least he had the chance to know them first. 

They reach Moat Cailin six days later. Nell is a little surprised to find herself completely calm. Howland Reed and his men, alongside Galbart Glover, leads the majority of the footsoldiers completely off the causeway, through trails and passages across the muck and mire that would be invisible to outsiders. Robb and Harry stay back with the horse, and while Moat Cailin has never been taken from the south, it has also never been attacked from both the south and the north at the same time.

Much of this occurs in the dead of night; Nell can’t see much of what goes in the four hours of sieging that follows, but she can hear it, echoing strangely across the wetlands, and she can see the watch-fires of Cailin flicker and then extinguish, one by one, and hear the occasional snarl of a lizard lion and the sound of men falling into the water. When dawn is breaking and birds are beginning to scream once more, the fires are steadily relit by men in Stark colors.

The vast majority of the Bolton men left behind to guard the Moat- and Harry was right, for they number no more than a hundred, have surrendered without much fuss. It is what Nell would do, in their shoes. They are nearly all commonborn, they all know they will simply be reabsorbed into the greater northern fighting force, and they all know that the Starks have not the time to be meting out punishments or hanging men at the moment. They can’t afford to lose the swords. 

Nell does not like it, nor does anyone else, and Dana spits to see some of them trudge by, heads bowed respectfully, but there is nothing else for it. Perhaps some would have said ‘what is a hundred men?’ and killed them all anyways. But Robb does not call for it. Nell wonders if it has anything to do with Jyanna Reed. Did she tell him something? Did she warn him of his future? Does he have a future? That thought makes her feel sick all over again. One thing at time. They have taken back Moat Cailin.

They have spent two years convinced all their enemies lay to the south. And in the end, it may come to pass that the ones they should have been concerned with, men of flesh and bone and creatures of ice and snow, were behind them, to the North, all this time. Nell tries to imagine her younger self running to Robb as he pored over those maps of the Riverlands with his bannermen, insisting that he listen to her, them only a week wed, and keep his army in the North instead, that they march for the Wall, and not the Neck.

Then she hears the howls of the pack behind them, who seem to be drawing closer and closer by the day, and lets go of the fantasy. “If I’m really a warg,” Arya says, “maybe I could make Nymeria come here.”

Grey Wind growls at that; in approval or dismay, Nell’s not sure. Dana leans down and pats his massive head. “Her big brother would appreciate the company. I’m sure he’s sick to death of men by now.”

Nell watches Harry Karstark speaking with a few of the youngest soldiers to surrender to them- scarcely more than boys, no older than Arden Greenwood. “That would make two of us,” she says, with no real animosity. Then she yawns, and looks to the squat Gatehouse Tower, which suddenly seems far more appealing now than it did on the march south. It will have to do, despite the bright daylight and constant buzz of noise of men and horses. She got no sleep last night, and there will be very little on the nights to come

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. In case you missed the notice last time, this fic will now update once a week, on Fridays. So the next chapter will be released on May 1st. It should be a Jory POV.
> 
> 2\. We are pretty much going to be constantly ramped up in terms of action for this fic from now on, so things aren't really going to 'slow down' anytime soon. Because I'm trying to depict a bunch of events in different places all pretty much happening at the same time, readers should be aware that things are occurring simultaneously. We are not going to be having any serious time skips for a while now, since multiple POVs are going to be colliding down the line as the fic heads into its 'final arc'.
> 
> 3\. We've never seen Greywater Watch in canon. I don't think it was ever even depicted on the TV show, so I sort of went based off the image for it in the wiki, plus my own imagination. I picture it looking sort of post-apocalyptic and bayou-esque and just in general looking less like a 'proper castle' and more like weird wooden house sort of built all ramshackle and kind of up on stilts? Plus while most of the people in Westeros seem to be much closer to 'modern heights' given their good nutrition, the crannogmen are much smaller and skinnier, hence their castle being actually closer to a historical castle in terms of doorway heights and ceilings, etc. 
> 
> 4\. Maege and Lyra come to the private realization that Dacey is dead over the course of this chapter, which is in the background but still pretty sad. They are likely assuming Jory is dead as well, although they do not have her remains.
> 
> 5\. We know Howland Reed is not a greenseer like his son because Meera states so in canon. She says nothing about her mother. Is Jyanna Reed likely a greenseer in canon? Eh, probably not, but I needed a way to begin to introduce the more blatant fantasy aspects into the fic. Jyanna was never visited by the Three-Eyed-Crow aka Bloodraven, and her powers are nowhere near as powerful or acute as her son's or Bran's. If she knows or suspects that Bran or Rickon are still alive as well, she has not said anything to Catelyn or Nell about it, and I didn't want to just have someone dump all this exposition on Nell.
> 
> 6\. Maester Aemon is said to have sent two letters concerning the wights to every northern lord; this seemed like as good a time as any to actually circle back to that. I apologize if it felt awkward or stilted, but I really did not want the main characters going in blind up until some Really Bad Apocalyptic Things happen. That doesn't mean Nell or the others necessarily understand the full threat humanity is facing; they're thinking maybe, at most, there's a small-scale zombie problem north of the Wall. I did laugh to myself when Howland is like 'there's a threat beyond the Wall...' and Nell immediately goes 'gods, those damn wildlings again!'.
> 
> 7\. There will be more discussion of all the warg stuff in future chapters. Nell and Catelyn are both very thrown by this whole thing, even if in retrospect it makes more sense to them. I think sometimes a lot of fics assume that wargs and skinchangers are considered 'good' in the North, but it's important to remember that canon repeatedly emphasizes that they are depicted as evil and villainous in many legends, so it's not as though your average northerner would consider it a great honor to have someone insinuate they were a beastling. This is why Catelyn takes offense to the talk of Arya having those kind of abilities. 
> 
> 8\. Wights versus Others. I think it's admittedly easy to confuse the two even for people who have read the books multiple times, because we really only understand the difference through specific POVs. I know not everyone who reads this fic has necessarily read the books a ton, or even read all the books, or really remember what the hell the difference is. Especially given the show's popularity and the choice on the show (as far as I know) to just go with a kind of mash-up of the two led by a Night King? For the purposes of this fic: the wights are zombies. The Others are evil ice faeries/elves. I know I'm not supposed to say 'faerie' or 'elf' in this fic, but that's basically what they are. GRRM describes them as being sort of like the Sidhe. Beautiful and graceful but ultimately heartless and viewing humans as mere sport. The wights are the pawns of the Others. There will be no 'Night King' in this fic. There is no evil supreme leader of the Others and the wights. Just so we're all clear.
> 
> 9\. I did not want to waste much time on the retaking of Moat Cailin. Most of the soldiers were only too happy to surrender once they realized the jig was up. Full steam ahead to Winterfell.
> 
> 10\. You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/)


	72. Jorelle VII

300 AC - THE GATES OF THE MOON

Jory wakes with what feels like a very stuffed up head. She sits up in bed with a muffled gasp, then feels at the stiff bandages wrapped taut around the right side of her her head and ear. Her ear. She probes at it gingerly, and bites back a cry of pain. “The maester said you have to clean it every night,” a small voice informs her, and Jory blinks blearily at a wan and disheveled Pod, who is sitting on a small stool beside her bed. 

“Water,” she croaks, because her throat is very dry, but she also uses it to wash her eyes and face, just in case. She is not going to sicken and die from blood poisoning or some kind of rot at a time like this. When she’s done taking greedy gulps, she offers the cup to Pod, who grimaces and shakes his head. They are back in the bedchamber she and Brienne had been sharing with Cynthea Frey and her septa, but the room is empty now, save for her and Podrick. The hour must be late; the sun has set outside the window, rattling from the wind, and she can hear icy rain pelting against it. “Where is everyone?” Jory demands, shoving back the covers, even as ear throbs and her stomach churns. “Brienne, Hyle- Sansa, where’s Sansa-,”

“With Littlefinger,” Pod fidgets. “Er- Sansa is. They’re with Lord Robert and their maester. Everyone else is waiting. Littlefinger promised he’d explain after Sweetrobin was looked after.”

Jory isn’t sure what ‘looking after’ is left to be done; from what she heard before they encountered Shadrich, the boy seemed on death’s door. “What about the tourney? The guests?”

“They’re having a feast in the great hall,” Pod shrugs. “Littlefinger commanded them to go on with it.”

“He would,” Jory mutters. Placating them all with plenty of wine and food, so they won’t be tempted to prowl right up to his door. “Brienne and the Waynwoods and Redforts can’t be feasting too.” Hyle, maybe. She doubts any of this has much fazed him. 

“They’re all waiting in the Falcon Tower, where they brought Lord Robert,” Pod looks at her uneasily. “I came back here after we ate. See, there’s a tray for you.” He brings it over from a side table and shoves it rather insistently across the bedspread, with uncharacteristic vigor. “Brienne said to tell you she would have come too, but she couldn’t leave Sansa alone with the rest of them.”

“Good,” Jory looks at the food, much of which is still warm, but has very little appetite. “You’re the one who should get some rest, Pod. You stay here, and I’ll go join the rest of them-,”

“No,” Pod scowls at her. “I’m not, I- I’m a squire, a proper squire now,” he says emphatically, “and you can’t treat me like a little boy.” He reddens even as he says it, but adds, “my apologies, my lady. But it’s true.”

Jory regards him for a moment, brow furrowed, then leans over and ruffles his dark hair, trying to recall what it was like to be twelve years old and desperate to be taken seriously. Her mother would laugh and say that was not so long ago, for her. “Alright. You’re right. You’re a squire, and I can’t treat you like a child. And you have helped us, Pod. I mean it. You helped us get close to Sansa in the first place.”

“And then she saw me and ran away,” he mutters dolefully.

“That’s only because you reminded her of the Lannisters,” Jory reassures him. “And once we’ve explained everything, she’ll know you mean her no harm.”

Pod sits back down, but only after she reluctantly perches on the edge of the bed and begins to pick at her meal. “What are we going to do?” he asks after a moment. “About Sansa and Littlefinger, I mean. Will they still marry her to Harry the Heir?”

“I don’t know,” Jory pops a pie crust into her mouth, forcing herself to chew slowly. “First her identity will have to be confirmed- Baelish must know that game’s up, whatever his motivations in bringing her here. And once that happens, I suppose… well, if little Lord Robert is…” She trails off uncomfortably. It feels cruel somehow to speculate. She never saw more than a few glimpses of the boy, but he was just that, a boy. She can hate his mother for refusing them aid, for turning her back on her own kin, but Robert is just a frail little child, and somehow Jory doubts a man as coy as Littlefinger has ever had his best interests at heart. 

“If he’s dead, Harry will be Lord of the Vale,” Pod says it for her. He chews on his lower lip. “If Sansa married him she’d be Lady Arryn. That would be better than having to pretend to be a bastard. Or hiding. The Valemen would protect her.”

Just as Nell Stark must have thought Jory and the others would protect her. Jory swallows hard. “I don’t know. I’m not…” She’s not a politician, she wants to say, she doesn’t know the first thing about ruling or diplomacy or any of the kinds of designs people like that have to make. “But Brienne has sworn to see her home safe, and so have we. She must want to see her family, once she hears that they’ve reclaimed Riverrun, and if they have Riverrun, then sooner or later they’ll be marching north again.” 

Whether Robb Stark is really with them or not. What remains of the northern army would never tolerate the idea of the Boltons keeping a-hold of the North through what could be a decade-long winter. A decade means time to establish a ruling power, a line of their own. They cannot afford that.

“What if she doesn’t want to go home?” Pod asks after a moment. 

Jory freezes in the middle of spooning some pumpkin into her mouth, then swallows and says, “What?”

“What if she just wants to stay here,” Pod says in a more subdued voice, eyeing her warily as if she’s about to throw something at him. “And not... not risk it. She… well, her family never came to save her from King’s Landing, did they? And her brothers and sisters are mostly dead or missing. Maybe she’d just rather… stay here in the Vale, where it’s safe, and no army can make it through the mountains now.”

“No, that’s-,” Jory huffs and pushes the tray away. “Pod, you don’t understand. Sansa is a Stark. She’s not- this isn’t her home. These aren’t her people. She’s been safe here, to a point, aye, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to live out the rest of her life here. She belongs in the North. In Winterfell. With her family. The people who love her. You don’t think Littlefinger cares for her, do you? He’s- it’s like the Waynwoods say, he’s just using people to get power for himself. He doesn’t care about her, or Harrold Hardyng, or Robert Arryn.”

Pod just looks at her. “But you don’t know,” he says. 

“I don’t need to know, that’s not- I know what the Starks stand for,” Jory retorts, flustered. “And that’s not- they don’t run away.” Not like Jory Mormont, who let the river carry her away from battle, who hid away for months among septons and sheep, a voice in her head snarls. What if she does want to stay here? What will you do then, Jorelle? Force Sansa Stark home at swordpoint, for the sake of your lost honor?

Pod seems concerned now. “Sorry,” he mumbles, getting up. “I didn’t- I didn’t mean anything by it, Jory. Only- sometimes I think it’s not- you can’t be loyal to a house, really, only to a person,” he flushes again, crimson. “That’s what- that’s what I think,” he finishes lamely. “I wasn’t ever loyal to the Lannisters, not really, or even House Payne. Just Lord Tyrion.”

“Who are you loyal to now?” Jory asks him, and hates how young she sounds for an instant, as though she weren’t much older than him.

Pod thinks, then says. “Lady Brienne. And you. Because you were kind to me. And Ser Hyle… when he’s not being a prick,” he says the last bit in a very small voice, as if worried Hyle might pop up in the doorframe.

Jory can’t help but laugh a little at that, in spite of her tense mood. She heaves the tray up and off the bed. “Alright. Let’s go.”

Podrick makes a slight face. Jory sighs. “What now?”

“You’re…” He makes a sort of shy nod to her dress, which she’s only now realized is ripped and covered in blood and dirt stains, and her hair is in disarray around her ears. And she still has a bit of dried blood down her neck.

“Oh.” Jory glances helplessly towards the looking glass in the corner. “Right. I should change.” Most of the maidservants are likely helping serve at the feast or cleaning guests’ chambers while their occupants are away, so she doesn’t fancy the chances of ordering a bath. She’ll have to make do with a wet rag and some soap. 

Pod doesn’t have to be told twice to go into the other room while she hurriedly tries to make herself look somewhat presentable, stripping out of her ruined dress and into the only other one she currently has, yet another hand-me-down, this one a dour shade of grey that looks more fitting for a septa. At least she’ll be in Stark colors. She struggles to lace up the back of the bodice without any assistance, but eventually gets it mostly done, and then slips on one of Brienne’s heavy cloaks over it. 

Her boots still reek of blood and horseshit, if she’s being honest, but if that’s the least of her problems, then she’s in luck. There’s nothing to be done about the bandage on her head; at least it’s physical proof she did, in fact, fight off a hedge knight, albeit a very small one. She wonders what they did with the body, or if Ser Shadrich is still lying out there in the dark now, soaked through with the cold rains. She grimaces a little at the thought, and forces her mind somewhere kinder- Gendry, safe and dry in his forge, listening to the rain patter on the slate roof. She wonders if he’s thinking of her at all, or if he’s already half-forgotten her face.

Then she hurries to fetch Pod, hoping they didn’t waste time arguing over loyalty while something terrible was happening. 

They have to make a brief dash outside to reach the Falcon Tower, and Jory keeps a hand on her sword all the while. Shadrich proved to her once and for all that no castle is truly safe, whether she is surrounded by supposed allies or not. Pod shelters under her cloak as they reach the entrance and duck inside, breathless. A guard escorts them up the winding stairs to the third floor, where they enter a large, spacious solar ducked out in the vivid orange and purple of House Royce. Brienne is sitting by the fire across from Lady Anya and her two eldest children, Ser Morton and Lady Alyssa and her husband, Lord Adrian Gull-Arryn. 

Hyle is leaning against a bookshelf, his gaze constantly roving over the other occupants of the room, not even bothering to hide that he is on his guard. He nods at Jory and Pod as they enter; Jory passes the towering Yohn Royce, who is nearly taller than her even while seated in a chair much too small for his girth, the short, squat, and bearded Horton Redfort, who keeps his expression composed and mild-mannered as ever, and the Hunters, younger brothers to the Lord Gilwood who was so grievously injured this morning. Judging by their change to all black clothing, Jory suspects he didn’t survive it, although neither knight looks particularly bereaved. 

Lords Belmore and Templeton are seated at the end of a table, heads bent in quiet, tense conversation. 

“Lady Jorelle,” Alyssa has risen to greet her, face creased in concern. “Are you well enough to have come here? We feared the worst when we heard you were attacked. Oh, your head-,” She makes as if to reach out, then stops herself at her mother’s exhale.

“Leave the poor girl be, Alyssa. She’s been through enough today. We all have.” Lady Anya indicates the nearest empty seats. “Sit, and have some wine, Jorelle. There’s been naught else for any of us to do for hours now.”

“This is madness,” Yohn Royce snaps, “the castle is bounding with rumors, and we sit here like children while Littlefinger hides away with that damned maester and his daughter- something few of us are still convinced of.” He shifts in his chair and looks around the solar at the other lords and ladies, raising a bushy white eyebrow in challenge. “We’ve been pinioned by our own bloody courtesies for long enough. This cannot continue.”

“As I have told you,” Brienne speaks up hoarsely; she looks exhausted, Jory notes, “and will tell you again, Littlefinger has no daughter, or if he does, none of you have met her, because Alayne Stone is not who he claims she is. She is Sansa Stark.”

“And you yourself admit you have never met Sansa Stark,” the portly Benedar Belmore points out, stroking his beard, which is an equal mix of copper and grey. “I mean no disrespect, my lady, but we can hardly assume-,”

“I’ve met Sansa Stark,” Jory speaks up coldly. She would say that so has Pod, but revealing him to have been in service to the Lannisters at a time like this is perhaps not the wisest choice. There is no need to stir up even more conflict than they already have. “You all know me for a northerner, and a Mormont, surely. I have been a guest of Winterfell before. And even after that I marched south alongside Sansa’s own mother and brother. How could I forget their faces?”

“But you only last saw the girl herself years ago,” Adrian Gull-Arryn counters skeptically. “Any child’s appearance could change drastically over that length of time.”

“I would not forget her eyes,” Jory snaps. “She has her mother’s eyes. Nearly all her siblings do- did,” she corrects herself, frowning. “They did, except Arya.”

“Explain this to me,” Hyle cuts in smoothly. “If Jory and Brienne are so mistaken, then that still does not account for Ser Shadrich. Why would he attempt to abduct a mere bastard daughter after he was already taken into her father’s employ?”

“Why does any man try to force himself on a woman?” one of the Hunters counters with a snort.

Jory flares. “He wasn’t trying to rape her- or me, he was trying to take her for the reward money. He said the Lannisters wanted her. He was following her.”

“We can bicker over this until dawn,” Lady Anya says firmly. “As it stands, the only one who can truly confirm or deny this is the girl herself. If the claim that she has been made to darken her hair is true, a few vigorous washes should see to that. And if she is really a Stark of Winterfell, there are things many of us know, of her father and her aunt, that a Stone could not possibly know.” She sets down her cup of wine. “If this is all true, and Petyr Baelish really did manage to secret the girl here, then we have much more to consider than we did even a day ago.”

“Yes, such as your Harry’s marriage prospects suddenly improving,” Lord Symond Templeton mutters, ignoring the dark look Anya shoots him and Alyssa’s scowl. “We were all surely thinking it. Why, this rather improves House Waynwood’s lot, if it is true that your precious ward is to wed a princess, and not a bastard girl-,”

“Mayhaps what you should be concerned about, my lord,” Brienne says curtly, “is what Lord Baelish’s intentions were in bringing Lady Sansa here in secret. And why he did not reveal it to you Lords Declarant, even in private.”

Several looks are exchanged at that, but Jory is too anxious to make much sense of them. Finally Lady Anya murmurs something to her goodson, who rises and departs with a nod. 

“Gone to fetch Harry, has he?” Yohn Royce inquires brusquely. “Let’s pray the lad’s not drunk.”

There isn’t very much conversation after that, until presently there are footsteps on the stairs, and a serving woman enters to inform them that Lord Baelish and Mistress Alayne will be down shortly. Jory tenses in her seat, and Brienne shifts in her armor. Hyle mutters something under his breath from his position in the corner. Harry Hardyng follows Adrian Gull-Arryn into the room a few moments later; he smells of mead and spice, but he doesn’t look drunk to Jory, only red faced from running through the rain; someone offers his a cloth to dry off his drenched hair. 

He smiles politely enough at all present, but Jory sees through it. From what she’s heard he’s not startlingly clever, but he can’t be a complete fool either, for he obviously is aware that something is afoot. She wonders what’s going on at the feast; are they placing wagers as to Alayne Stone’s true identity. Surely he must hope the rumors are true; he is proud, Jory knows that much from the Waynwoods, and he wasn’t pleased at all at the thought of wedding a bastard.

A bold statement from a man who has at least one natural child himself, but Jory knows her sister Aly would tell her such men as as common in the North as in the South. Plenty will go out and sow their wild oats, but balk at the thought of taking the product of such sowing to wife. Even Ned Stark had a bastard after his marriage to Lady Catelyn, after all, and he had nerve enough, many would say, to keep the boy at Winterfell all those years. It would have raised no eyebrows on Bear Island, but Winterfell is not, as Dacey would have said, much at all like Bear Island.

When there is the sound of footfall in the hall, all the murmurs and fidgeting stops. The door slowly opens, and Petyr Baelish allows Sansa to enter before him; they both look exhausted, truth be told, although Sansa more than Littlefinger, who despite his obvious tiredness has still found the time to change into a fresh set of clothing and a new velvet cloak. Sansa’s eyes are red rimmed and she looks slightly unsteady on her feet for a moment, until she fully takes in the occupants of the room and stiffens, straightening her shoulders and clasping her pale hands in front of her stained gown. She looks much like her mother then, even with her hair darkened and bound back in a tight plait. 

Jory looks from her to Yohn Royce and Anya Waynwood, then back again at Littlefinger, who carefully closes the door behind him. He holds up a slender hand as if anticipating an outburst of accusations and insults, but the lords and ladies of the Vale are silent and taut to the last, like a set of strung bows, ready to launch a volley of arrows. Jory rather wishes they would. She doesn’t like him. She cannot prove he’s done Sansa or anyone else harm, for that matter, but she rather wishes she could. Nothing about him speaks honest to her, not his well-trimmed goatee nor his smooth, unlined face nor his grey-green eyes. 

“I apologize for keeping you here in such a state,” Baelish says in coolly composed tone, carefully arranged to be apologetic without being pitiable, conciliatory but not eager and grasping. “My priority was the safety of the children, of course. Robert has been like a son to me since my marriage to Lady Lysa, Seven preserve her,” he swallows, throat bobbing behind his ruff collar, “and Alayne…”

“May not be who you claim she is, if the Mad Mouse truly tried to kidnap her and took off half of Lady Jorelle’s ear in the process,” Anya Waynwood says curtly.

Littlefinger looks directly at Jory for the first time, and in spite of her anger and indignation, she almost shivers. There is no blatant malice in it, nothing overtly cruel or even angry, but she feels as though had sliced through her all the same, like a barber’s razer. “Lady Jorelle,” he says. “You have my thanks. All of them, if I am being direct. But then, I should have anticipated a lady of Bear Island would be more than willing to put her life on the line for a Stark.”

There is a perceptible shudder that goes through the room, as if they’d all been doused with cold water. Yohn Royce all but snarls, Templeton sighs as if he’d suspected all along, Belmore sputters, Harry the Heir mouths audibly, “A Stark?”, the Hunters begin angrily muttering, and Redfort says in a mildly frigid tone, “So it’s true, then. You do not deny that she is not your bastard at all, but Sansa Stark?”

Jory looks back to Sansa, who has dropped her gaze to the floor as though she might burst into tears… or vomit. She thinks she sees her slim shoulders shake, as though she really were about to explode into some burst of emotion, be it fear or anger or grief, and then she looks back up, and the frightened young girl is gone, someone else in her place, not older but perhaps a little wiser, colder and sharper, her lips a thin line before she says without hesitation, “I am Sansa Stark, daughter of Eddard and Catelyn, sister to Robb Stark, who was King in the North.”

“My lady,” Harry says in open astonishment, “I never-,”

“Not now, Harrold,” Morton Waynwood says through his teeth. Harry reddens and scowls but holds his tongue.

“Before I give you an explanation that might suit for all this… deception,” Baelish phrases as if he himself were almost disgusted by it, like a man handling a rotting corpse, “I have news of our Robert.” He pauses a moment, as if to compose himself even further, then says very quietly, “Maester Colemon does not believe he will live through the night. His fit today… the toll it took on his body has been too much. We have tried our best to slow the sickness these past months, but I fear it was too little, too late.”

There is an even longer moment of silence after that. 

“A shame,” Yohn Royce finally says, sounding genuinely bereft, “Jon loved him so.”

“I had hoped he might at least live to see his majority,” Lord Belmore says. “But I see it was not to be.”

Anya Waynwood says nothing, looking to Harry Hardyng, who bows his head and utters, “May the Seven keep him in their embrace, my lord. He will be with his mother and father now.”

Sansa exhales sharply but controls it, whatever it was about to be.

Jory feels a slight lump in her throat. 

“This has been a terrible day for us all,” Littlefinger continues. “But I have faith we will see the Vale through it, together. I know you have all had reason to mistrust me in the past, but believe me when I say that I have dreaded the thought of this for months now. He was all I had left of his mother. Question my motives as you please, but never doubt how I loved her,” his tone hardens slightly at that, and Jory could almost believe it. 

“I am sorry for your losses, my lord,” Alyssa says gently. “This must be heartbreaking.” But she looks to Sansa. “But you must forgive us- we needs know how you came to be here, like this, my lady. If… that is who you are. Sansa Stark.”

Yohn Royce stands suddenly, and nearly everyone flinches purely at the size of the man when he rises to his full height. He must be near six and a half feet tall. “I was at Winterfell not four years past,” he says gruffly, “with my youngest, Waymar, on his way to take his vows with the Night’s Watch. We stayed over a week at Winterfell. You would have been but a child then, my lady, but you should remember me all the same.”

“I do, my lord,” Sansa inclines her head.

“We hunted, your father and I. Our last hunt concluded early. Why?”

Baelish stiffens, sparing the barest of glances at Sansa, who is motionless. He opens his mouth to speak, but then Sansa steps forward, and says, “A summer snowstorm passed through. It forced you to ride back for Winterfell with haste. I was nine. You came back in a high temper; you’d only had time to bag a few turkeys, not the boar my father promised you. But we had a singer from White Harbor who knew a few songs of the Vale, and that cheered you, my lord. Ser Waymar sang along with them.” She gives the barest hint of a bitterly sad little smile. “He had a beautiful voice, and lovely grey eyes. I remember.”

Yohn makes a harsh noise for a moment as though he might sob himself, and then goes to a knee before her. “My lady. Forgive me. You are Ned’s little girl. Forgive us for not coming to your family’s aid sooner.”

The rest of the lords are exchanging equally startled looks. 

“Lady Anya,” Sansa is clearly not finished, hailing her next before Littlefinger can even attempt to interject. “I remember your surname from my studies at Winterfell with Maester Luwin. My father was Eddard, son of Rickard, son of Edwyle, who had a sister, Lady Jocelyn Stark. She wed into House Royce of the Gates of the Moon, where we stand at present, and her own daughter married a Waynwood, your own great-uncle. Through that marriage we share blood.”

“And Lord Yohn, as much as you ask for my family’s forgiveness, it has already been repaid- your own nephew, Ser Kyle Royce, lost his life when he accompanied my uncle Brandon to King’s Landing, seeking justice for my aunt Lyanna.” Sansa pauses, then says meaningfully, “I know what it is to be at the mercy of a cruel, vile king. Royces have already given their life for House Stark before.”

“And Lord Redfort,” Horton Redfort turns to directly face her, looking slightly taken aback, “our houses have never mixed, but you are a great-uncle to the lady who was my brother’s wife and queen, Donella Bolton. The Boltons betrayed Robb… but I had always heard the Redforts were As Strong as Stone and ever loyal.”

He gives a slight nod in response, but Jory thinks she detects a hint of pride.

“Ser Harrold,” Sansa addresses Harry last; he looks almost like a guilty child waiting to be chided. Her look softens, and Jory has no idea whether it is another mask or genuine affection. How could it be? They’ve only met a few days past. Then she thinks of Gendry again. “I must beg your forgiveness, my lord. I was not who you believed I was. I felt craven to hide the truth from you in such a way, but I was afraid, and I could not be certain you were the man they all speak of, a true Knight of the Vale.”

“I can and will be for you, my lady,” he says, and there is a near tinge of reverence in there, Jory thinks. Whatever spell Sansa is weaving here, it is working very well. “It is I who need beg your forgiveness. I was less than honorable and courteous- less than I should have been, less than I will be. You have my sword, and my hand, always,” he vows, ignoring the startled look from Lady Anya, who nevertheless doesn’t seem displeased, either.

Sansa gives a small nod, then says, “I cannot ask for any of you to risk yourselves or your kin for me or mine. I only ask that you believe I am who I claim to be. A Stark of Winterfell, not a Stone… nor a Lannister.” She quiets then, and Baelish, who looks rather as though he were balancing on a very precarious ledge and had only just been able to scrabble to safety, quickly steps in. 

“I’ll not waste your or mine own time with a flowery tale, my lords, my ladies.” He exhales. “My intentions at court in the aftermath of Lord Stark’s tragic execution were only to keep what remained of his and Lady Catelyn’s family safe. You know I was raised largely at Riverrun. Sansa’s mother was like a sister to me. I consider her kin my own. I could not openly support Sansa then… or shield her from much of the cruelty and perversion she faced in Joffrey the Illborn’s court, but I could watch, and wait, and bide my time. When I saw an opportunity, I took it. I was able to secure enough funds and men to provide us with passage to the Vale, all while convincing Cersei Lannister that I meant to secure Lysa’s- and your own- loyalty to her bastard’s reign. The Purple Wedding was a stroke of luck I could not have predicted, but while the Lannisters and Tyrells turned on each other, I was able to help Sansa escape to my waiting ship.”

“From there, we sailed for the Fingers, where as you all know, Lysa met us. She was always aware of Sansa’s identity, and she was overjoyed to see her niece once more, beliving her sister lost to her forever. It was Lysa who insisted Sansa would be safest masquerading as my natural daughter- we saw no other way to explain her sudden appearance at court. I misliked it greatly- Sansa is a gentle highborn daughter, one any man would be proud to own to, and to paint her as a common bastard pained me. But I saw no other choice, and Lysa was her aunt. Once we could be certain that Sansa was in no danger here, Lysa and I planned to reveal the truth to all of you and perhaps betroth Sansa to her dear cousin Robert, joining the Stark and Arryn lines at last. But before that…” He shakes his head tightly. “That singer took her from us, mad with jealousy. I will never forgive myself for not reaching her in time to save her.”

“After that, in the wake of my wife’s death, and with Robert to care for, so young and so ill, I thought it best to wait. So much was uncertain. I felt I had little authority to suddenly proclaim Sansa’s identity and risk war with the Iron Throne, after so many years of peace here in the Vale. But Robert’s condition continued to worsen, and it became clear to me, and to many of you, I suspect, that he would likely not live to see manhood. In order to preserve Lord Arryn’s line, other measures would have to be taken. It was there that the idea of wedding Sansa to our Harry struck me. I took little joy from it, but I knew she deserved a husband who would be worthy of her, who perhaps could protect her as I could not.” 

He lays a hand on Sansa’s shoulder. “After all this time, she is like a daughter to me, as much as Sweetrobin has been like the son I always wanted. The tourney seemed the ideal venue to introduce them, and to take stock of you, my lords and ladies, to judge if the time was right to reveal the truth. I always intended to at the tourney’s conclusion- but then came Ser Shadrich’s attack and Robert’s…” He trails off as if shaken. “I apologize. It is… still quite difficult for me. To think I could have lost not just one, but both of them today. Lady Jorelle Mormont deserves all of our gratitude for her valor, as do her companions. I am told none of them would have made it here without the determination of Lady Brienne of Tarth, who has pledged herself in service to the Starks.”

“To Lady Stark, yes,” Brienne says quietly, blue eyes unblinking as they calculate Baelish’s figure. Jory hopes she smells a rat as well. Brienne is not easily taken in, she knows- hopes.

“Which brings me to my final matter,” Baelish removes his hand from Sansa’s shoulder; she rubs at her eyes quickly as he does so, and then brings out a folded up letter from a pouch at his gilded belt. “The last many of us heard of the Stark cause, it had died along the Green Fork, although there have of course been many startling rumors... “ He clears his throat. “And now, I finally have confirmation. This letter came from Riverrun itself not six weeks past. I can reveal its contents now that I finally have your audience, and I urge you to spread it far and wide.” 

“It came sealed with Stark grey and Tully red and blue. At the time it was written, Riverrun was held once more by Robb Stark, his lady mother Catelyn Tully Stark, and his great uncle the Blackfish. His wife, Donella Bolton Stark, writes beseeching our aid one last time, writing of their desperation and fear for the coming winter, of the struggle to take back the North that awaits them… The Riverlands may be free of the Lannisters at present, but the North is held by Roose Bolton’s treachery… and the scourge of Ironborn. She begs for a mere fraction of our men-,”

“She’ll get a good sight more than that,” Horton Redfort vows.

“And she promises the hand of her goodsister Princess Arya, who was recovered by the grace of the gods, to our Robert.”

Sansa gasps aloud at that, a hand flying up to her mouth, her entire expression crumpling in shock. She cannot be pretending at that, Jory thinks, this is real. 

“Unfortunately, as we all know now,” Baelish says soberly, looking up from the letter, “a match between Arya Stark and Robert Arryn can never be, as much joy as it would have brought us all. But I know of one marriage that might yet still stand, between Sansa Stark… and Harrold Arryn, not just as lord and lady, but as King and Queen of the Vale.” He lets the hand holding the letter fall down to his waist, and looks round. “What say you, my lords and ladies, to the Starks’ call for aid?”

The reply, to neither Jory nor anyone else’s surprise, is both loud and unanimous, all decorum thrust aside in favor of a riot of affirmation and declarations of loyalty and justice. Harry Hardyng springs to his feet and takes Sansa’s hand in his own, Lady Anya swears to summon every vassal of House Waynwood with haste, and Adrian Gull-Arryn insists that House Arryn of Gulltown will begin making preparations to secure passage for the army from Gulltown to White Harbor immediately. Lord Horton claims he will begin writing with assurances to his great-niece tonight, and Yohn Royce vows he will fight side by side with Stark and Mormont alike, telling Jory they will see her home to her lady mother within three moons, if not sooner.

In the middle of all this, Jory feels like an island of cold unease, glancing from Brienne to wide-eyed Pod to the unmoved Hyle and back again, until someone touches her arm, and Sansa has somehow extricated herself from both Littlefinger and Hardyng in order to say, “Is it true? Are they… are they really alive? Is is true? All of them? My mother and- and Robb and Arya and my goodsister? They’re all… alive and together?” She sounds nothing like the confident young woman who played with ease upon men’s loyalties and pride just minutes ago, but a terrified child. 

Jory embraces her impulsively. “Have you seen the seals? Is the letter genuine?”

“I’ve never seen it in my life before today,” Sansa gasps into her shoulder, and then steps back, shaking her head, tears welling in her Tully blue eyes. “I…”

“My lady,” Brienne has crouched low to speak with her, as though she might a child. “Are you alright? Do you feel.. Are you in danger? From anyone in this room?” she presses, as Littlefinger is caught locked in conversation between an eager Harry Hardyng and grim Morton Waynwood.

“I don’t- I-,” Sansa is flushed and breathless, and Jory worries for an instant she might faint dead away. She finally manages, “I just want to go home. Please. Don’t… Just let me go home. If my mother is really…” Her hands are shaking badly, Jory notices, before she clenches them into fists and releases the tension. “Oh. Forgive me. I’ve been out of sorts all day.” Sansa straightens, seems to restrain herself, tucking her braid back behind her shoulder. “I am so grateful to you. Truly. You came all this way, and… and you saved me.”

“From the looks of it, you’re saving yourself,” Jory says honestly.

“No,” Sansa shakes her head, and her voice wavers. “No, I have Lord Baelish to thank for that. He has… been such an able tutor. And like a father to me, as he said.” The words seem to lodge in her throat, however favorable they sound. “I’m sorry. I must see to Sweetrobin, he… the maester will give him no more potions, and he always hated to sleep alone. Someone should be with him now.”

Before Jory or Brienne can say anything, Hyle cuts in. “Go. Now, before they’re all upon you again. We’ll make your excuses, my lady.” 

Sansa bobs in a neat curtsy, and flees.

“Do you really think she’s going to see Robert?” Brienne inquires to Jory in a low voice, as Sansa slips out the door before Littlefinger or any of the other lords can take notice- even her betrothed is oblivious.

Jory watches her go, at a loss for a moment, before she says, “Do you know what? I think she is. I think that was the truest thing that’s been said all night.” She suddenly feels a little weak-kneed herself. “I think I’ll have some more of that wine now.”

“Finally, we are in perfect agreement,” Hyle mutters. “Gods. I’ve watched mummer’s shows with less play-acting.”

Play-acting, Jory thinks. That’s an apt descriptor for it. A pleasing little song and dance, and now the lords of the Vale are all for war. Is this all it takes? All it ever took? She remembers when they declared Robb King in the North, how Riverrun sung and cheered for days, it seemed. She was thrilled and proud then, but how different was it from this? Was it any different at all? In minutes, he went from a boy lord to a warrior king in the eyes of his men. In the same span of time or less, his sister has gone from a bastard daughter to a rebel queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Next chapter we will be back in the North, as a lot of things are simultaneously happening there and I'm going to have to some rapid-fire POV hopping in coming chapters to explain all the shit going down.
> 
> 2\. I like writing Jory and Pod developing a big sister - little brother sibling relationship, as Pod has never had any brothers or sisters, and Jory desperately misses her own. I think it's plausible that someone as nonthreatening and friendly as Jory could coax Pod out of his shell and make him a little bolder and more secure in himself.
> 
> 3\. As much as Jory and company 100% do not trust that Baelish has genuine intentions, none of them has any specific hard evidence that he's committed any crimes. Don't get me wrong, it is not really a spoiler for this fic to say that Littlefinger is going to get what's coming to him, but at the moment, he's on top of the world, prepared to sweep in with the power of the Vale as the hero of the hour to save his beloved Catelyn. 
> 
> 4\. Pod rightfully points out that Jory is making a lot of assumptions and in fact knows nothing about what Sansa wants or if she even has any desire to go back to an uncertain and war-torn North when she could lead a very comfortable life in the safety of the Vale. Obviously, Sansa *does* want to go home, but Jory's motivations for wanting to bring her home may have more to do with Jory's desperation to regain some of her lost honor than actually helping Sansa (although of course we can see that Jory *does* care for Sansa's safety).
> 
> 5\. I think it is in character for Baelish to be able to spin a convincing (or what he thinks is convincing) tale of woe and fatherly concern to explain all his lies and deception with hiding Sansa as Alayne Stone in the Vale. He obviously attempts to play on their sympathy for Sweetrobin and desire to take part in the war- the other kingdoms (save maybe Dorne) may be exhausted of fighting, but the Vale is just getting started, feeling that this is a 'just' war they can throw their wait behind- while finally splitting off from the Iron Throne as an independent kingdom of their own. The fact that this all takes place at the Gates of the Moon, where the Arryns originally ruled as kings, is very meaningful to them.
> 
> 6\. Similarly, Sansa really takes a stand here, sort of like when Catelyn addresses all those bannerlords at the Crossroads when she's kidnapping Tyrion, to secure their loyalties. She leverages what she knows of various houses and their histories to compel them to feel sympathy and kinship with her- and does all this while in a state of terror and panic, because she is *this close* to finally getting to home. The news that not only are the Starks somewhat 'on the mend' and that Robb *isn't* dead, her mother *isn't* a captive of the Freys, and that Arya has been reunited with them is a serious shock to her. Sansa's spent months pretty much thinking she is alone and stands no chance of ever really seeing any of her family again, even if she returns to the North. Now she knows that her family actually is kind of together- without her, which I think is probably very painful to realize.
> 
> 7\. My headcanon of Harrold Hardyng is kind of a mixed bag. I think he's the sort of person who is quite immature for his age, despite being about 18, and who has never really had anyone push back at him or question his looks, talent, or character. He's used to getting what he wants whenever he wants it and he is very taken aback in canon when Sansa sort of forces him to actively pursue her, instead of just swooning into his arms. I think Sansa finds him attractive and wants to believe he could treat her well, but she trusts him about as far as she could throw him, and she doesn't take his track record of discarding women as a great sign. Here she is able to use his genuine shock that she is not Baelish's bastard daughter but in fact a 'lost princess' to her advantage- of course Harry is going to be all agape and eager to prove himself to her, and somewhat embarrassed of how poorly he treated her upon their initial introduction.
> 
> 8\. "But don't they all know Sansa is still technically married to Tyrion?" Yes, but Baelish has a pretty perfect witness in Pod- who he 100% recognizes even if he hasn't acknowledged it- in confirming that the marriage was never consummated. Furthermore, I think the Vale is going to actively want to believe that 'their' Sansa Stark who they plan to make Sansa Arryn after they 'save the North' is of course a virgin and was not in any way 'tainted' by marriage to Tyrion. I doubt Littlefinger will have much trouble finding enough septons to declare Sansa's past marriage invalid, especially if she details how she was far from willing at the altar.
> 
> 9\. You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com).


	73. Beth VIII - Barbrey I

300 AC - THE DREADFORT

Beth waits a week, to be sure Ramsay is far enough away from the Dreadfort that he could not be immediately summoned back by a scout. She wants him closer to Winterfell than here before she so much as moves a finger in revolt. The week passes with little fuss and a palpable air of relief settles over the castle. Not only is the Bastard to be gone for months, if not years, if the Boltons truly intend to last the winter behind the walls of Winterfell, but this time he has taken the Walders, most of his Boys and nearly all of his hounds with him.

Of Ramsay’s men, only Damon, Sour Alyn, and Grunt remain. Ramsay brought the rest and nearly all of the hunting hounds besides some of the fresh pups and the old bitches with him on his march to Winterfell. He’s taken half the garrison as well, leaving a scant three hundred men to defend the Dreadfort. Not that anyone is like to try to take it; the Manderlys took their men to Barrowton to pledge allegiance like all the other lords, and gods know Lady Donella Hornwood barely has more than a hundred men to her name at this point. 

But that’s alright. Beth doesn’t intend to ‘take’ the Dreadfort. That would be silly. Who ever heard of a serving girl stealing a castle from under men’s noses? She’s not Lann the Clever, she’s Beth Cassel, and she wants out of this castle. She doesn’t care if she freezes to death in the wood or drowns in the river. She will not abide another moon behind these walls. She can’t. Maester Uthor says they’ll have a white raven from the Citadel announcing winter any day now. Once the deep snows come, they will all be well and truly trapped here. 

Beth is not going to be here when the deep snows come. Either she will be free, or she will be dead and sleeping beneath the deep snows, like her father and Jory. She hasn’t thought of them in so long. Sometimes it is hard to remember the sound of Father’s voice rumbling in his throat, or Jory’s reckless grin. Sometimes she thinks they would be ashamed to see her so; their sweet Beth, dressed in rags, covered in lice and fleas and scabs, with a flayed man branded into the back of her skinny neck. Maybe they would rather she was dead with them; that way they could all be together.

Sometimes Beth rathers that too, but she is still a Cassel- she must remember that- and she is not dead yet, and if she is going to die, she is not going to die here. Let them run her down with their mangy dogs. At least she will smell the pine trees and feel the frost underfoot again. Besides, it’s not just about her. Palla can’t take much more. Last week she was late to come to Damon’s rooms, and he dragged her out, screaming and kicking, by the hair, and whipped her bloody in front of half the hall. At some point she ceased to jerk and fight against his grip and just sagged, boneless, across the table while he brought his greased whip down again and again against her bare back. 

Afterwards, she would not move, and they had to clear the table off around her. Her long hair was matted with blood to her shoulders. Eventually Turnip ran into the kitchens and came back with a bucket of warm water and a rag, and Beth and Bandy helped clean her up and get her back on her feet. That night they all slept together in one of the rooms behind the kitchens, with Old Nan on her dirty mattress on the floor. Her vision is fading fast, and it’s more and more difficult for her to walk unaided. They could ask the maester about getting her a cane, but then he might tell Damon how she is ailing, and Damon would put her down like a dog. That is one of the worst parts. When they run- and they are running soon- Old Nan can’t come with them. She can hardly walk down a corridor without getting winded or disoriented, nevermind leap up into the saddle or run through the forest. 

It was almost enough to make Beth want to reject their plan entirely. How can they leave Old Nan behind? She may not be able to work anymore, but she is still the nearest thing to a mother any of them has had in years. Sometimes her mind wanders and she doesn’t understand what is happening, sometimes she doesn’t recognize the sounds of their voices, but her stories stay the same. Sometimes she forgets and thinks they are all still at Winterfell, although she never slept on the floor, in the cold and the dark, there. She will ask after Bran and Rickon, the ‘little lords’ although they are- were- princes now. She will wonder aloud when Lord Ned and Lady Catelyn are returning. She will tell Beth to not keep her father waiting; he hates to eat his dinner without her.

But they have to. Palla says if Old Nan could understand, she would want them to leave while they still have the chance, and Bandy and Shyra agree. Turnip doesn’t want to go at all; he says he’d rather stay here where at least they have food and are warm enough during the day, but he’ll do what Palla tells him. Beth may be the only one of them who can read, but that is because while Palla and Turnip and the twins worked and played alongside their servant parents, Beth was educated like a lady with Sansa and Arya. She forgets that sometimes, but they never do. They look to her and Arra because they are the ones who can sign their own names and quickly decipher letters and maps. 

Truthfully, Beth does not know that she would have the strength to do this without Arra. Arra is so calm, so assured, that she leaves no room for doubt. She says if they are clever and careful this can work, so it must work. And she knows the Dreadfort better than any of them; they have been here for nearly eight months now, but Arra has known this place to be her home for years, she says, even if she was not born here. She won’t say where she was born; Beth has asked, but Arra doesn’t seem to like to speak of it, which Beth can understand. She doesn’t like to think about Winterfell or her old quarters with father above the barracks either. 

She will likely never see those warm, cozy rooms again. All their old furniture must be destroyed, and that one fine tapestry with their sigil that Father had up on the wall. She wonders if her old toys are still there, collecting dust under her bed or in the back of some wardrobe, or if they burned along with everything else. Maybe there is snow collecting on the bed she used to sleep in, drifting down through the collapsed roof. Beth isn’t a baby. Even if they do manage to escape the Dreadfort and flee the Bolton lands, where will they go? They can’t just settle down in the nearest village; the villagers would hound them out of terror, cast them back into the snow.

They need to go somewhere safer. Or as safe as anywhere is. But they can’t spend weeks on the road, either- they won’t be able to be on the roads at all, because Damon will surely send some men after them, and that is where they will search first. They will never make it to White Harbor, even if they risked stealing some supplies. They can’t cross the Last River and head for the Karhold; everyone knows Arnolf Karstark is a turncloak who’s styled himself Lord Karstark and allied with the Boltons. But they might make it to Hornwood. No. They can make it to Hornwood, Beth knows they can. They just have to think things through.

The men of the Dreadfort don’t fear Lady Donella, but that doesn’t mean they are going to march on her keep for the sake of a few runaways, either. They haven’t got the men for it, nor do they have Ramsay at their backs, snarling that if they don’t fight for him, he’ll gut them himself. Damon is lazy. Beth keeps telling herself that. He will be incensed that they got away, but he will be more concerned with making sure Ramsay or Lord Roose don’t get wind of this at Winterfell. If they can just stay ahead of the hunters long enough to reach the forest of Hornwood, they can disappear into Lady Donella’s lands.

Beth knows she will take them in. She must. Beth could have been her daughter, had Father wed her, as he planned to. And Lady Donella cared for Father; Beth remembers the soft look in her brown eyes. Had Father wed her before the Ironborn invaded, maybe Beth would be there now. Father might still be dead, but at least she would have a mother. She would be safe enough there, behind high castle walls. She would have her own room and fine dresses. Maybe she’d even have been sent to White Harbor to ward with the Manderlys. 

But Palla and Bandy and Shyra and Turnip… like as not they’d all still be here, suffering. Shyra’s bleeding started five days after Ramsay left with his men. She’s managed to hide it this time, burning the rags in the godswood, but what about the next turn of the moon? Or the one after that? Sooner or late someone will notice, and Damon will get wind of it, or Sour Alyn, or Grunt. Sour Alyn is already making japes about forbidding Beth from cutting her hair again; he says he likes them red. Beth keeps telling herself that she is only one-and-ten; surely she won’t flower for another year or so, but what if it comes early? She’s already in the middle of a growth spurt; what if her hips start to widen, too, or her breasts begin to come in? 

Mostly she loathes her own body; when she bathes once every other week or so, she looks at it with distant revulsion, as if staring at a carcass being picked at by crows. When she was little and silly she would think eagerly of when she’d begin to become a woman, of when she’d be older and pretty, as pretty as Sansa, she’d tell herself, as pretty as Jeyne. But Sansa and Jeyne are dead now, and they were never that much older than her to begin with, anyways. Beth thinks of what she might look like, at twelve or fourteen or sixteen, and all she can think of is a gaunt, hunched figure, red hair hidden under a filthy rag, some bastard child suckling greedily at her breasts. Another little Damon or Alyn or Grunt. 

She thinks she’d throw them down the well, even if it looked like her.

“You and your husband, did you ever have children, before he died?” she asked Arra once, as she bent over her needlework, patching up a tear in someone’s trousers. She can’t picture Arra as a mother; she’s too sharp and cold, and her voice doesn’t soothe, but prickles like ice. Still, mayhaps she’d be a good one. No one would dare hurt her baby; Arra would make them pay. She’d find a way- she’s a witch. That’s what they do.

“No,” Arra had said after a moment, voice flat. “We tried. It never took.” But then her tone had softened, if only for an instant, and she’d said, “I wish it had. I wanted his children. But it wasn’t the gods’ will.”

“I don’t think the gods have a will,” Beth had muttered. “They just like to see us hurt.”

“Then they are not so different from people,” Arra had retorted. “Smiling at each other’s pains.”

The plan is simple enough; Arra says these things have to be simple, or there are too many things at play and someone will make a stupid mistake. Three days from now it will be Damon’s seventeenth nameday. The fact that Beth even knows his name day disgusts her, but these are the horrible, mundane sort of things you learn about people. She knows when Damon’s name day is. She knows how Sour Alyn likes his food cooked. She knows that Skinner’s favorite color is red. She knows that Ramsay’s mother died four years past- Damon liked her because she would let him sleep on their floor while Damon’s own mother worked at the nearest brothel.

Whoreson, Palla calls Damon when he is not around, when it is just her and Beth hanging up clothes to dry in front of the fires in the hall. Damon Whoreson. All women are whores to him because his mother was one, that’s what Palla thinks. Beth doesn’t care. It doesn’t make it right. He should feel shamed. Jon Snow’s mother was probably a whore and now he is Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, that’s what she heard men saying over dinner months ago. What is Damon commander of? He’s just a castellan. He doesn’t even get to be a Snow; that’s only for lord’s children. 

Once she asked a giggly Jeyne what regular bastards were called- the ones who came of two common people, not a lord and a whore or a lord and a maidservant or a lord and some poor farmer’s wife. Slush, Jeyne has whispered in her ear, breath hot with amusement, and Beth had laughed too, guilty and giddy because they were making a grownup jape. Slush. The dirty snow you find at the bottoms of the walls, melting out in the sun. If Beth had a bastard with some man, that’s what they’d be, because she’s not a lady. They wouldn’t even get to be a Snow, they’d be Slush, and she would be a whore. At least their parents would have been even, then. Equals. She’d rather have a bastard child with a man she chose, even if he was ugly or fat or had nothing to his name, not even a croft, than be raped by some handsome lordling and left out in the cold. 

But because it will be Damon’s name day, Palla will have a good excuse to get him as drunk as possible. Turnip has already promised to make sure he’s pouring the strongest wine for Damon and his boys all night. They need to be as drunk and slow to react as possible, if this is going to work. 

Beth was going to steal a map, but Arra said that they might be able to track where they went depending on the map Beth took, so instead Beth has been memorizing a map of the lands in between the Dreadfort and Hornwood for the past week. She always had a good memory. So long as they head southwest, they should be alright. But they can’t go that way immediately. Palla was right all those months ago, when she japed about hiding in someone’s root cellar. 

Beth hasn’t been to see the woodswitch in months, but she knows the old woman’s got no lock on her cellar, and she has no love of Damon Dance-For-Me, who once tried to ride down her youngest son in the marketplace for a jape. They will hide in the cellar for a day and a night, then cross the river at the nearest footbridge, a mile south of the village. Then they will head on foot towards Hornwood, staying off the roads and hiding during the day, traveling by night, when it’s near impossible to track anyone. 

But in order to do any of that they need to leave the Dreadfort itself without being caught. And while Damon may be lazy and inexperienced, he is not such a fool as to not post guards on the walls and by the gates at all hours of the day and night. If they had hooks and rope, as Theon’s men had when they took Winterfell, this would be no trouble at all. But Beth doesn’t have any of that; they don’t even have any weapons beyond some stolen kitchen knives. If they want to get past the guards, they will need to create some sort of distraction.

Mayhaps more than one distraction. The Dreadfort has a good deal of wood to it, and wood burns quick under the right conditions. They need fires; and big enough fires to draw swarms of guards in a panic, not a meek little blaze that can be quickly stomped out. None of them can agree on the best locations to start fires in, but after several days of hushed arguments in the middle of the night, they settle on the stables, the kennels, and the godswood. Those three places are spread out far enough that it well send men scurrying from one to the other, and it will waste valuable time with them trying to extinguish three fires at once. 

They’ll start with the godswood. The fires in the stables and kennels will set the horses and dogs to screaming, and that will wake men quickly. The godswood should burn quietly. If any godly place can burn quietly.

“We’ll be condemned for this,” Palla had argued fiercely. “If anyone were to hear we’d burned a godswood- they’ve hung people for less! It’s sacrilege.”

“No one will know,” Shyra had tried to reassure her. “We can blame it on Damon and his men. No one has to know it was us.”

“I don’t want to rot in the ground when I die,” Turnip sounded close to tears. “I don’t want to rot- the gods will be angry with us, they’ll know-,”

Bandy had shrugged impassively, chewing on her scabby lower lip. “We’re already rotting here. Isn’t this punishment enough? What do I care what they do to us once we’re dead? Least we won’t feel it.”

“The gods won’t punish us,” Beth had said firmly. “They’ll know- they’ll know we had good cause. We’re not doing it out of hate. Besides, we won’t set the fire near the weirwood.” And that’s dead anyways, she wants to say, but can’t quite bring herself too. “If the gods can sense whether a man’s good or evil, they’ll know we were just trying to save ourselves.”

“Arra told you to set the fire there,” Palla had turned an accusing look on Beth. “Didn’t she? That grey girl of yours? She never talks to any of us near as much as she does you.”

“She helped me in the kitchens once,” Turnip had piped up. “Cook was yelling at me and she pushed a pile of dishes over, then slipped out before he could turn round. He blamed it on the wind coming in.”

“This isn’t Arra’s plan, it’s ours,” Beth had said, although it was true Arra had been the one to suggest the godswood as a place to start a fire. It was just easier not to dwell much on that. What did it matter? She wasn’t going to turn on them- she’d had ample opportunity to betray them to Damon, or even Ramsay before him, and she’d never breathed a word of it. “But she’s coming with us.”

“Does she even want to leave?” Bandy had asked in a strange sort of voice.

Beth had stared at her. “Of course she wants to leave. We all want to leave. Are you stupid?”

Bandy had shoved her then, scowling. “Shut up. I just don’t- I think she almost likes it here. Like she belongs here. No one ever tries to hurt her-,”

“Because she’s a witch,” Palla snapped in exasperation. “They don’t want to get cursed!”

Bandy had shrugged again. “Maybe. Maybe not. Last week past, I saw her sitting in the hall just before dawn, on my way to feed the horses. All by herself. At the high table. Do you know what they’d do to her, if they caught her sitting there?”

Beth had thought she’d like to see that. Watch Damon and Sour Alyn skulk into the great hall, only to be confronted by the sight of willowy Arra perched up at the lord’s table, regarding them coldly and keenly, a cup of mead in hand. Somehow it would seem to suit her. 

In fact, the night before Damon’s name day she dreams of it. Arra at the high table, that is, only she doesn’t wear that same old faded grey gown and frayed scarf knotted tightly around her neck, but real, new finery, resplendent in vivid red and pink. Her hair is down from its braid and spills like a dark curtain around her shoulders, and she has rubies at her throat and garnets on her white fingers. She does not sit alone; Ramsay and his boys had all joined her there, only they were corpses, stiff and bloated with rot, every single one of them. 

The roof of the hall has caved in and snowflakes swirl around the grand table, where Arra picks at her food, licking grease off a bone clenched between two fingernails, and wipes at her red, red mouth with a bloody cloth. A crow perches on Ramsay’s shoulder and pecks at his eyes, and another tears hunks of flesh from Damon’s mottled neck. Sour Alyn slumps forward into his meal, and Grunt gapes sightlessly out at the rest of the hall, chest riddled with wounds. 

Beth stands and watches from below, a flagon of wine in hand, staring in a mixture of reverence and terror at the grisly sight above her, and when a cold hand settles on her shoulder, whirls with a shriek. It’s Reek, only he looks like Theon again, his hair fresh and dark and his eyes gleaming with malice. He has all his fingers and all his white teeth, and she is more revolted by the sight of him restored to handsome youth than she ever was by his filthy, broken appearance as Reek. He holds a noose in hand, and as Beth struggles against his grip, kicking and clawing in mute horror, rasps in Old Nan’s voice, “Beth, Beth, it rhymes with death.”

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Barbrey wakes in the rooms she once dreamed of possessing. The last time she had set foot in Winterfell she’d been little more than a girl; fifteen and tall and fair, brimming with confidence and smug assurance, for she’d given up her maidenhead to Brandon not three moons past, and now she was visiting Winterfell, so sure she would be lady of it in the near future. She cannot remember the exact reason for their visit; perhaps Rickard Stark just meant to keep them sweet, since he had no intentions of either of his heir wedding northern. 

Her memories are too tainted with fury and pain to remember the man she knew as Lord Stark clearly, but she recalls he had Brandon’s look; dark brown hair and beard, although not as long as his wild son’s. Piercing grey eyes. She’d been bold and brazen then, but even those fierce eyes had given her pause, made her avert her gaze, flushed. No, now she remembers. They were there to present little Rickard to him, at that time the youngest of her brothers, named for the Warden of the North and just four years old. Yet another grasping attempt at courting favor from her father, but she’d thought it clever then, little fool that she was.

Her mother had still been alive, too, although Barba Flint had less than a decade left to live then. Her face is even more obscured by time and memory, but Barbrey remembers the sound of her voice, brash and husky, and the feel of her lined hands gripping her slim shoulders. “It’s fitting that you should have Winterfell,” she’d told Barbrey once, “and your sister should have the Dreadfort. You two are of my stock. Harder and colder than any of the sons your father has given me, for all that I love them dearly. They are Ryswells, the boys, through and through- hotheaded fools to the last of them, but damnably brave. And you two are my Flints. Tough as leather and cold as ice- and beautiful as snow,” she’d say, and Barbrey would smile proudly, admiring her appearance in the looking glass, while Bethany rolled her eyes and laughed at her vanity.

“When I am Lady Bolton,” she remembers her sister whispering to her in the dark of night, as they huddled under the furs together, “and you are Lady Stark, our children shall wed, and they will say we reunited the two greatest houses of the North with our graces. You would like that, wouldn’t you, Barb?” And her breath had tickled Barbrey’s neck as she chuckled. 

That had been even before the last visit to Winterfell, before Bethany had been wed. By the time Barbrey had come with her mother and youngest brother to Winterfell, Bethany had been wed near a year to Roose Bolton, and Barbrey had only seen her once in that time. At their reunion in the Rills, she seemed thinner and frailer, her cheekbones cutting into her face like glass, her lips devoid of color, and her eyes hard as stones in her skull. Mother had fretted so over her health, and Father had demanded to know what she was eating there, to seem so sickly.

She must have told them of the miscarriages in private, for in that single year she’d already had two. She must have told them of other things in private too, for Barbrey can recall watching her storm out of Father’s solar, Mother striding after her, demanding she come back and listen, just see sense- Roose had been out hunting at the time, of course. He’d return past sundown that night, in the best mood Barbrey had seen him in the entire fortnight of their visit. Bethany and him had even led the dancing that night at the feast held in their honor, Lord and Lady Bolton, and what a fine pair they had made, tall and lean and pale, and so graceful on the floor.

“It could be worse,” she’d told Bethany impetuously at some point. “Really. You act as though he were some savage from Skaagos. He is young and strong and has kept his hair and all his teeth. You knew you were not wedding a merry Manderly when Father made the match.”

She’d thought she’d understood then, because she had flowered and been nearly of age, but she had not. Of course she had not. Bethany had given her a look of utter contempt, started to say something, and then stopped herself. “How true,” her sister, her Beth, had said coldly. “I do forget myself. It is good of you to remind me of my fortunes. My lord husband is just as you say, Barbrey. I take great pride in our marriage.” 

“Perhaps he will cheer when you have a son,” Barbrey had suggested, with a flash of guilt. “He has no living kin left. I imagine it must have been lonesome for him.”

“The Dreadfort would still be lonesome if we had a dozen sons and daughters,” her sister had retorted, and then changed the subject to something more agreeable, like the weather.

Of course she’d pitied Bethany by the time she came to Winterfell- poor Beth, married to such a cold and unfeeling man, riddled with misfortunes- but her pity had never been an obstacle to her own pride. At the very least, no one would say that Brandon Stark was unfeeling! Brandon was all feeling- Brandon made her feel like the cold and stoic one, for he was so quick to laugh and smile- so quick to rage- sometimes it felt as though she were trying to tame a wild stallion, coax it close enough to slip a silk bridle round its head. 

And she’d thought she’d succeeded in that. Brandon saw fucking as yet another personal victory, a triumph over yet another enemy- her chastity, this time- “A bloody sword is a beautiful thing,” he’d said, and she’d smiled faintly up at him, privately rejoicing- a bloody sword was beautiful, but a silver chain was better, and she’d been convinced she’d had him on one now- he was still a Stark, and she was still a noblewoman, not some starry-eyed farm girl or a randy tavern worker. He could not deny her now. He thought he was claiming her body, but she was carving her name into his back, sealing her hold on Winterfell and a betrothal, and all it had taken was a little pain on her part and a good deal of pleasure.

How could she have known that in the same year, Rickard Stark would pledge Brandon to a bloody Tully?

When she’d come to Winterfell it was little Benjen Stark, all of eight, who had deigned to give her and little Rickard a tour, while her mother exchanged pleasantries with his father in the hall. Brandon had trailed after them like a lone wolf, smirking every time she glanced back at him, and they’d exchanged so many dangerous looks that by the time Benjen was showing them the private bedchambers she’d been tempted to slip off with Brandon, leaving their little brothers alone to play. But her good sense had won out, so she’d remained, and asked brazenly why Benjen skipped past one door, instead of flinging it open like the rest.

Brandon’s sly grin had vanished, and his tone had changed abruptly from teasing to cold. “Those were my lady mother’s rooms. They’ve been kept closed since she passed.”

Barbrey had felt her face crease in sympathy for him then, and had wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but of course she could not at the time, so instead she had comforted herself. When they were wed, those rooms would be hers someday, as Lady Stark, after his father had died. They would be open once more, and filled with light and laughter. Their children would scamper through them. They would make love in that bed, and it would be love then, not fiery passion, but real, tempered love of marriage and loyalty, not just conquering one another.

But it was not to be. When those rooms had at last been claimed once more, it had not been by Barbrey at all, but by little Cat Tully, pink-cheeked and red-haired, shivering herself silly in the cold, no doubt, escorted by a nervous, narrow-shouldered, inferior Ned. It never should have been them. It should have been Brandon and Barbrey. Winterfell should have been their home, their legacy, their birthright. Instead it passed to the weak-willed second son and his thin-skinned southern bride and their horde of coddled, cosseted, squealing offspring.

They had not even named their firstborn after Brandon at all- Brandon who had died a hero, Brandon who should have been Lord Stark- but after Robert bloody Baratheon, that pigheaded oaf, pining after Lyanna like a fool, Lyanna, who, during Barbrey’s visit to Winterfell, had slipped off near every day to play at swords in the godwood. That would have come to a firm end when Barbrey had wed Brandon. She would not have suffered the indignity of a goodsister dressing up like a squire in secret, lying to her father’s face, getting up to gods knew what with stableboys, racing in and out of the wolfswood on her beast of a horse, sneering and snickering and acting like a child at feasts, squabbling with her brothers.

Her one solace, all these years, had been Donella. It was Donella who would restore what was lost. Donella would wrest that title from Catelyn Tully and claim it for her own, along with their precious little son. She would be the Lady Stark that Barbrey could not. She would be Bethany’s pride, long after her body had been laid to rest. Barbrey had anticipated a struggle for power within the Starks themselves. She had thought they might meet with conflict in the future from Ned Stark, or his wife, or the bastard son. She had worried after Roose’s pathetic spawn too, but at least he had not been raised up alongside the trueborn children the way Ned Stark had seen fit to do with Jon Snow. 

She had never thought it would all be torn apart by Roose. Barbrey has loathed him for years now- how could she not? But at times she had still respected his strength, just as she had Brandon’s. He was never a good man, or an honorable one, but he commanded obedience, if not respect, and Donella’s second son would bring back the respect once he was old enough to claim the Dreadfort and the Bastard had been dealt with. Still, she could never have foreseen-

It does her no good to think on it. She does not think Donella is dead, only fighting a useless war in the Riverlands, just as she has been for years now, only with far fewer men and allies this time, and a dead husband and missing child to boot. That was the last word Barbrey had in Barrowton, before the Boltons and Freys arrived. Rumors that the last of Starks- which by now must just be Donella and Catelyn, if she yet lives- had managed to reclaim Riverrun, likely by the skin of their teeth. And of course the Lannisters had far greater problems now, with all that fuss in the capitol over cuckoldry and incest. 

Still. There seemed little hope of Donella ever returning home, and Barbrey had come to accept it, just as she had accepted Bethany’s death. She could do nothing to help her niece, as much as it pained her. She had to remain here to carve out a new path for Lysara.

She lies awake in bed now, in what was once Catelyn Tully’s bed, thinking of the child. She has seen her many times by now, and held her several, all under the watchful eye of Bolton and Frey alike. The girl wailed and screamed in her lap until Barbrey soothed her with some snippet of a song in the Old Tongue, and then she’d relaxed slightly, letting her head of auburn curls loll against Barbrey’s arm. She’s a clever babe, this one- nearly six moons old now and recognizes her own name already, turns her head when she’s called, and smiles sometimes, too, drooling as she teeths and burbling to herself. She likes Roose’s fat Frey wife best, although she sometimes settles for the other handmaidens. She only seems to like Barbrey when she’s singing.

That’s alright. Barbrey doesn’t need the child to like her. Donella was never all that fond of her as a little child either. That came later, with time. Which is what Barbrey needs. Time with her grand-niece. Well away from Roose Bolton. Permanently. She turns over with a sigh. Beron is missing from her bed, which displeases her. He has been her serjeant, captain of her household’s guard, since the end of her marriage to Willam. She named him thus six moons after her husband’s horse had been returned to her, but not his bones. He was barely older than her then, both of them little more than children, really. 

She brought him into her bed another six moons after that, in the wake of his own young wife’s death. A year seemed enough respect for a man she’d been fond of, truly, but barely had the time to get to know. Willam had been kind, understanding in ways she had not expected, ways Brandon never would have been. It had shocked her, his softness, how gentle he seemed with her. Perhaps it was for the best it had not lasted. It would have made her weak. Complacent. She might have come to love him, but it would have ruined her drive, her passion. Still, he was a good man, who had deserved far better than he got.

Beron is kind enough too, she supposes, but she seldom sees it. He knows very well she does not want his kindness, nor his pity, nor the fond sort of smiles he gives his only son. He still behaves in such a manner with her, at times, but sparingly. She is glad of it. She doesn’t love him, nor he her. Neither of them need one another’s love or sorrow. Sometimes it is just enough to have someone to hold onto. She sits up in bed, debating calling for a maid, but she’s not in the mood to start her day just yet. There’s noise from the distant yard, and she suspects Roose’s thrice-cursed bastard may have just arrived this morn.

If she can look at him without vomiting or tearing out his eyes, it will be a success.

There’s a brief rap at her door. Barbrey pulls on her robe, and calls out hoarsely, “Enter.”

Beron files in, already dressed in full armor- he always keeps his sword and shield close, behind these walls, and Barbrey is more than approving of that- alongside one of the twins, the girls Donella sent to her from the Twins over a year ago. Serra or Sarra, she is still never quite sure which until they are right in front of her. Loyal, though, she will give them that. They know exactly the rewards and consequences they might face from her, and they’ve chosen wisely for such young maids.

“My lady,” the girl curtsies, and Beron says, “Lady Serra has some news for you, m’lady.”

He gives her a knowing sort of look over Serra’s shoulder, then steps back out, shutting the door behind him.

Serra scurries over to her bedside. “You were right, my lady,” she says breathlessly. “Sarra and I brought those new gloves we made to the barracks, for the men, and they were ever so grateful, and-,”

“And what did you hear there?” Barbrey questions sharply. That was the entire point of this endeavor. Roose only permits his own outriders to leave Winterfell, men personally loyal to the Boltons and Freys, not any of the other lords present. It is his way of tightening the channel of information to barely more than a trickle which flows right back to him.

“Nothing, but some outriders had come in with Lord Ramsay’s men, and they were saying,” Serra swallows, hard. “They were saying, my lady, that there’s movement coming out of the Neck. We heard them in the corridor; they didn’t hear us going by at all.”

“Crannogmen?” Barbrey arches an eyebrow. Howland Reed is a sniveling little coward and she refuses to believe he’s suddenly developed an iron will to go with his poisoned bronze knives and spears.

“Some, but mostly northmen. An army,” Serra says, perched on the edge of the bed, poor motherless child, so easy to please. “At least a few thousand. Streaming out of the Neck. They said Lord Roose wouldn’t be pleased to hear it.”

“No,” Barbrey stretches languidly, feeling more than ready to begin her day, all at once. “No, I imagine he won’t, sweetling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. I am going to begin having to divide some chapters by POV in order to communicate a lot of stuff happening roughly around the same time. I promise chapters will likely never be divided by more than 2 POVs, so I'm not going to be jumping from Nell to Dana to Jory to Beth, don't worry. I really don't want to confuse anyone, but the alternative is some weirdly short or weirdly long chapters, and I don't want to do that back-and-forth seesawing in length.
> 
> 2\. Basically, both Beth and Barbrey's POVs in this chapter take place right around the time during which Nell and co. have retaken Moat Cailin and are on track to Winterfell. They still have some great distance to cover, and the weather is only getting worse, as Jyanna predicted, but they are a hell of a lot closer than many people such as Barbrey had assumed.
> 
> 3\. If Beth's plan seems a little wack, that's probably because she's eleven. On the other hand, I wouldn't exactly describe the likes of Damon and Sour Alyn as really being all that... great... at effectively managing a castle and its weakened garrison. The Dreadfort has definitely lost some of its teeth in the absence of Ramsay and most of his men and hounds. 
> 
> 4\. I dislike introducing another POV this late in the game, but in the grand scheme of things we won't be hearing that much from Barbrey, and I did need someone present at Winterfell for plot reasons. So Roose has gathered most of the northern lords and their scant men at Winterfell, Stannis is on the march (even though Barbrey did not immediately mention him in this chapter), and Ramsay has just arrived in time for his wedding to the fake Arya aka Jeyne Poole. Lysara is also present, and, all things considered, a healthy six month old. Barbrey's #1 priority is currently keeping Lysara safe and stabbing Roose in the back, preferably multiple times. We will be seeing more of the overall going-ons at Winterfell and the dynamics between Barbrey and Roose and Ramsay and Fat Walda and more of the Frey women who are present there: (Serra and Sarra, the twins Nell sent to Barbrey age ago), as well as Marianne and Marissa, who accompanied Walda as her handmaidens.
> 
> 5\. Barbrey is fun to write because she just feels like a villain, even though she ostensibly has good intentions (or at least wants Nell and her daughter to be safe). Obviously her descriptions of the Starks and her feelings towards both generations of them are heavily biased and skewed. She's not the nicest of people, nor the most compassionate. Her ideas about marriage and power are a little (a lot) fucked up. But I do find her to be a pretty interesting character and I like writing her scheming ways and begrudging affection for her family. 
> 
> 6\. Next chapter will likely also be a split-POV, but hopefully it should still be fun and have much more action in it than this one, which was pretty much all internal plotting by Beth and Barbrey. We're really in the thick of it now, see you all next week!
> 
> 7\. You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com).


	74. Beth IX - Barbrey II

300 AC - THE DREADFORT

Beth remembers being told once by someone, she can’t remember who, that it was easy to get a good night’s sleep after a day’s work well done. When she sees Grunt pass out drunk at the high table, Alyn tipsily totter off, and Damon having to lean slightly on Palla to get back to his room, she feels a wave of tired content slip over her like a warm quilt. She does mean to get some sleep tonight, after all. If they just stay up anxiously waiting for the hour of the wolf to strike, they’ll be an exhausted mess of nerves, each and every one of them. They need to at least try to nap beforehand. 

As the hall begins to clear, the men of the garrison returning to their duties and the servants scurrying in to begin clearing the tables, Beth busies herself with carrying empty flagons and pitchers of wine and mead back into the hot kitchens, careful not to behave any differently than she does any other night. The survivors of Winterfell are hardly the only servants here, and some people would be loyal to the Boltons even after they’d skinned half their back off. They don’t know any other way to be. If one of the other servants were to catch on, they’d report it to Damon or Maester Uthor immediately, and then it’d be all their heads.

She thinks of Kyra’s skull, still posted above the gatehouse on a pike, by now worn smooth and yellowed white by the elements, the constant deluge of snow and rain. There was six inches of snow on the ground three days past, but the rain from yesterday melted it down even further, keep the top glossy slick and hard. She hopes that means they won’t leave as many obvious tracks. They’re going to loop around the village in an effort to confuse any hunters, but there is no real way to ensure they won’t be tracked down, only to pray that Ramsay took all the best hounds and left the runts and the whelps.

It takes over an hour every night to clear the entire hall and sort the dishes for washing, and since dinner went longer than usual tonight, everyone is in a rush to be off to bed, yanking off their smocks and aprons and pulling off their gloves. Beth joins the throng of exhausted people trailing off to their usual sleeping quarters, and quickly catches up to the twins and Turnip, as they make for their spot in one of the storerooms above the cellars, where Old Nan sits with her knitting by a brazier. Beth doesn’t know how she can even manage it with her failing sight, but her knitting looks as even as always. 

Shyra busies herself with sorting the furs, cloaks, and hats and gloves they’ve all filched bit by bit over the past fortnight. It’s not much, but Beth is old enough to realize now that cold kills the quickest. They will have to stuff their shoes and keep their hands in fists inside their gloves if they want to avoid frostbite. But right now they are warm and dry, and as odd as it feels, Beth lies down on her usual ragged mound of blankets to try to sleep. Turnip is anxious, curling up against Old Nan and asking her for a story as though he were a baby. Bandy douses the brazier with a handful of water from the bucket in the corner, until it fades to scarlet embers glowing in the dark.

“Aye, I’ll give you a story,” Old Nan agrees. As she begins to speak Beth lets her eyelids flutter closed, while Shyra sits down with her back against the wall; she is the lightest sleeper of them all, and the only one who can be counted upon to wake at the right time in order to get the rest of them up and moving. Even so, Palla should be back from Damon’s rooms within an hour or so, and she will rouse them if Shyra doesn’t.

Old Nan is telling some tale of Karlon Stark and House Bolton; the forming of House Karstark, Beth remembers that one. The Boltons rebelled in every other generation, hounding the Starks at every turn, unwilling to recognize their authority as Kings of Winter. Twice they put Winterfell to the torch, and twice the Starks rebuilt and came for them. Only when the Andals invaded did the two houses agree to put their hatred aside, and the Red Kings became the lords of the Dreadfort. They even came together to defeat the Andal warlord Argos Sevenstar at the Weeping Water, not far from here, and when the battle was through Starks and Boltons alike rejoiced and drank and ate together, surrounded by the corpses of their enemies. 

But it was not to last. Eventually the Boltons rose up in rebellion again, seeking their old kingship and an independent rule. Whenever Stark kings grew weak, the lords of the Dreadfort began to prowl at their lands, eager for bloodshed. A thousand years past, when the world was young and green, the Boltons even joined with the treacherous Greystarks of Wolf’s Den. The Starks expected betrayal from their old enemies, but never their own distant kin, a cadet branch. For this indignity the Greystarks were killed to the last man, woman, and child; the Boltons suffered heavy losses as well, but were allowed to rule on past their punishment. 

In their final and last- well, second-to-last rebellion, the Boltons were put down once again, this time by wily young Karlon Stark, who raised an army on behalf of his elder brothers and put the Dreadfort to the torch. The bodies of the Boltons clogged the Weeping Water for weeks afterwards, and the river ran red with their blood. For this Karlon was granted the lands that would go on to form the Karhold- Karl’s Hold- and House Karstark was formed, just seven hundred years before Aegon and his sisters began their conquest. Karl took a Bolton bride to wife, but his own daughters and granddaughters went on to marry back into the Stark line, and so the two houses prospered. 

The Boltons, nearly extinguished, slowly and steadily rebuilt their line and their fortress, shamed to the last, scorned and humiliated, reviled by their peers and mocked by the Karstarks most of all, who never hesitated to remind them of their losses. But they remained loyal, and the North remained united, untouched by much of the war that went on to ravage the South. They bent the knee alongside Torrhen and the rest when faced with Aegon’s dragons. And when Baratheon and Stark rebelled against the Targaryens, the Boltons were among the first to answer the call, and all agreed young Roose fought bravely at the Trident.

Beth wonders if Old Nan even remembers where she is. Does she remember what the Boltons have done to them? Does she remember how the Starks left them for the dogs? There is a hard lump in her throat. Why didn’t King Robb come back sooner, when they hard the Ironborn had Winterfell? Why didn’t Lady Catelyn come back for her sons? Why did Lord Ned have to march south in the first place? Part of her hates them all. Part of her wishes she’d never been born a Cassel in the first place. What is it worth, to be born into service to another family? But that’s over now, for she is the only Cassel left. Everyone else is dead. Dead and gone. 

“And when I was not yet grey of hair,” Old Nan is saying almost dreamily now, as Turnip begins to snore, “the Karstarks themselves visited Winterfell; Walton and his wild wife, proud Rickard and their maid daughter…”

Beth had never known Lord Rickard even had a sister, is her last thought before she falls asleep.

She wakes to Shyra shaking her awake. The moon is pale and high in the sky outside the narrow strip of window. “Is it time already?” Beth asks blearily, sitting up. Turnip is still fast asleep, his head in Old Nan’s lap as she dozes in her chair. Bandy is lying curled around the still warm brazier. 

“Palla should be back by now,” Shyra hisses. “Something’s wrong.”

Beth feels a jolt of fear, scaring her awake. The sleep in her eyes seems to melt away. She scrambles up. “We have to find her.”

“We need to go,” Shyra retorts in a furious whisper. “We have to get to the godswood and set the first fire-,”

“We can’t leave Palla!” Beth snaps.

Shyra just shakes her head, but says instead, “I’ll get Turnip and Bandy up and go to the wood. Arra said she would be there. Maybe Palla is with her. You do what you want. Once the fires are set and the men raise the alarm, we run.”

The temptation to go with them is strong. Palla’s not a little girl; she can meet them at the hunter’s gate, which will be the easiest for the six of them to get open quickly. But Beth can’t. She just can’t. “I’m going to get Palla,” she replies, and with a dreadful sort of courage, finds herself rising fluidly to her feet, heaving on her fur, and cramming her feet back into her shoes. She leans over and presses a quick kiss to Old Nan’s withered cheek; the woman doesn’t stir. 

Then she runs.

Beth knows the way to Damon’s rooms well enough by now. She picks her way through the castle silently, avoiding the corridors were men might be alert and on guard, hurrying up a back stairwell and skirting past a sleeping guard reeking of drink. She pauses outside Damon’s door, and a horrible feeling begins to drip-drip-drip into the pit of her stomach. She can’t hear anything. Beth hesitates, almost turns around and leaves. She puts her bare hand up to the slick wood of the door, and tries to open it. It’s unbarred. Something hears her prayer and it does not creak. The room is near pitch black aside from the faint light of the nearly dead hearth. 

Beth peers into the dark frantically, then almost yelps when she makes out Palla’s pale and frightened face. Damon is asleep in bed beside her; Palla must have been trying to work up the nerve to creep out without waking him. It’s unusual that he’d even let her sleep with him; ordinarily he’d have sent her out once he was done with her. Beth doesn’t want to risk being caught holding Damon’s door open, and so eases her way inside the room, letting it nearly shut behind her, gesturing for Palla to hurry up. 

Palla is nearly naked; oh so slowly she manages to get upright and then scuttle backwards off the bed, almost snagging her foot on the covers, before sliding off it. Beth almost smiles in relief as Palla hurries forward, and then it vanishes when she trips over what must be Damon’s discarded clothes on the floor; something metal jangles loudly against the floor- a belt buckle, maybe. They both freeze, and out of instinct Beth sinks into a crouch against the door, while Palla brings her hands up to her face in horror.

Damon sits upright in bed, and Beth wants to scream. No, no, no- he was supposed to stay asleep! She’d been certain he was drunk enough! “What are you doing?” he asks Palla, and Beth realizes a moment later that he can’t see her from his position on the bed. Slowly, she crawls forward; if he gets out of bed right now, he will see her up against the door.

“I need to use the privy,” Palla stammers. 

Beth carefully crawls over Damon’s clothes; she hears him shift on the mattress.

“No, you don’t,” he decides. “Come back to bed.”

Palla’s voice rises slightly in panic. “M’lord, I have to-,”

“Come here,” he snaps, then rolls over with a groan. “Gods, my head is pounding. You shouldn’t have given me more wine. Stupid bitch. Come here, I said. My name day’s not over yet.”

Yes, it is, Beth thinks savagely, as she crawls under the bed without a sound. How are they going to get out? She can hear Palla make a small noise and slowly walk back to the bed; the mattress creaks. There are some more noises above her, and Beth’s hand brushes something under the bed. Her fist tightens around it. It’s his whip. 

Slowly, she begins to push it towards the side of bed; it whispers over the floor like a snake.

Palla is crying and there’s a sharp smack. “Still playing the timid maid, are we?” Damon is saying. He sounds happy to be angry, as always. Eager for an excuse to make someone hurt. “If I wanted that I’d pay one of those stable rats a visit, or your little Beth-”

Beth pushes the whip all the way out from under the bed, praying, praying-

Palla cries out in pain and either falls or scrambles off the mattress, landing on the cold floor atop the whip. For a split second, she makes the barest hint of eye contact with Beth, lying pressed against the floor under the bedframe. Then she staggers back up on her feet, yanking the long coil of the whip up with her.

Damon chuckles. He is at least a little drunk, and careless. “What do you have there?”

There’s a crack so loud it could split wood and his chuckling turns into a yelp of pain. It’s now or never. Beth rolls out from under the bed as Palla lunges for him. Beth grabs the closest pillow and leaps up onto the mattress- Damon cries out again, but it’s choked off by the pillow Beth all but tackles him with, pressing it down hard against his face, and Palla looks at her, to the whip, then makes a wordless, soundless snarl, and loops it around his slim neck.

“Pull,” Beth growls.

Damon thrashes, nearly throwing her off- he’s strong but nowhere near as big as Sour Alyn or Ramsay, and he’s still drunk enough that he’s slower and weaker than usual. Beth keeps the pillow pressed down, blocking out his shouts; if anyone hears this, they’re dead. Palla pulls, teeth grinding, putting all her body into it- it nearly slips from her hands once, but she keeps ahold of it, and Beth keeps all her weight on his chest- his legs are kicking uselessly and his arms flail and rip at her, but she’s got no long hair for him to yank at, and the fur she’s wearing blocks him from grabbing her by the arms and wrenching her off him.

Palla pulls harder, straining, cursing under her breath, and his muffled shouts die away. Beth lowers the pillow and sees his face going from red to purple, making gasping, rattling, choking noises. She stares down at this dying man- this boy, really, newly seven-and-ten, and her fear and disgust are almost drowned at by her hate. But he doesn’t even see her; his eyes are bulging, twitching, and Beth keeps her weight on his chest, driving her knee into his sternum, and Palla keeps pulling, panting breathlessly, and then he just… stops.

No more movement, no more rattling breaths. Palla keeps pulling until Beth gets off of Damon’s chest, then finally relents. They have no words for each other, and there is no moment of shock or terror. I’m blooded, Beth thinks, I’ve killed my first man, and the familiar look Palla gives her tells her that they are bound together by it now. Palla dresses, stealing Damon’s cloak, and they leave the room silently, both holding onto the ends of the greased whip, now flecked with spittle and sweat as well. The halls are silent, and Beth smells the first hint of smoke on the air as they make their way outside towards the godswood.

Then she sees them; the twins and Turnip, running their way, panting with the exertion to keep silent as they run. Palla skids to a halt, as does Beth, as they meet them, all fighting to keep the voices down. “What’s going on?” Beth demands. “Did you start the fire?”

“No,” Bandy chokes out, “She did,” and Turnip jerks his head back at the godswood.

“Let’s go,” Palla says, “come on, the stables now-,”

“No,” Shyra says raggedly. “We don’t need any more fire.”

“What?” Beth scowls. “What do you mean-,”

“It went up like tinder,” Turnip says, eyes wide. 

“She’s burning the whole thing? It was just to distract them!”

“Where is Arra? Is she still there?”

“We’re going,” Shyra says, already moving in the direction of the gate. “Beth, come on-,”

“We can’t leave her!” Beth helped save Palla. She can save Arra too, she knows it, even from herself. She doesn’t belong here anymore than the rest of them. She said she’d come with them. She helped them do all this. She helped save their lives. “I’ll get her.”

“You’ll die,” Palla says flatly, yanking on the whip to get Beth follow her, but Beth refuses. The guards aren’t shouting yet. There’s still time. “Beth, don’t be a fool-,”

Beth tugs back on the whip, and Palla glares, then lets it go, shaking her hand as if in revulsion. “Hurry.”

Beth runs for the godswood while the others run for the gate. It doesn’t take her very long; her feet all but lift off from the ground, she’s running so fast, and she feels so strong and free, like a wild thing, until she reaches the ajar door, which is warm to the touch, disturbing against the cold of the night. It’s drizzling lightly, but it hasn’t dampered the blaze- and that is what the godswood is. This is no small fire or even a bonfire, but an out of control blaze, creeping across mounds of dead leaves and mulch, igniting on broken branches and withered stumps, smoke beginning to properly billow, flames to crackle-

It reminds her of how Winterfell burned and Beth stands there in horror in the doorway, until she darts forward, calling for Arra. She’s not hard to find. The girl in grey stands watching the flames begin to snarl and roar, watching bushes and dead hedges be consumed as the fire leaps from tree to tree and scours the ground, as the acre is slowly eaten away from the very center, like a black pit in the middle of an old fruit. A fiery rot. “Arra!” Beth lunges for her arm, but misses; Arra side-steps it and turns, in the light of the flames her grey-blue eyes seem more silver than anything else. The sheen of the fire turns her skin golden as a summer sunset; she should be sweating and frazzled from the heat, but instead she seems to drink it in.

“Arra, let’s go, we have to go now-,” Beth reaches for her again, but when her hand brushes Arra’s, it is cold as ice. She jerks back, shocked and a little afraid.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Arra spares her the briefest of glances, then returns her hungry gaze to the flames. “I want to watch it burn.”

“If you stay, they will find you. Or you’ll burn with it,” Beth warns- why is Arra, always so clever and sensible, behaving like this? She sounds more like a stubborn child than near a woman grown.

“They won’t find me,” Arra says. “I’ve been here a long time, Beth, and you were the first to ever find me.”

“What?” Beth steps back a little further, some instinct screaming at her to go, run, now-

Arra glances back at her, and it is not an understanding smile or exasperated look or even a furious scowl. It is distant and foreign and inhuman, as though they were not even the same breed. She raises her hands to her throat and undoes the scarf there, then lets the wind tear it away. The light of the fires is strong enough for Beth to see. Her throat is horrifically discolored, rent, a patchwork of mottled skin and contusions, and when she speaks again, the rattle is closer to Damon’s muffled dying wails than anything else.

Beth has to concentrate to hear her.

“Like this,” Arra says. “As I am now. A dead thing. Waiting to burn so there can be new growth. Waiting for my husband to return to me.” She sniffs the air like an animal. “Do you think he can smell it from Winterfell? A man thrice cursed must keep his senses keen.”

“Who did that to you?” Beth reaches in horror for her throat. Arra catches her hands in one of her own, and the cold is so sharp it burns; she cries out.

“Poor Beth,” Arra says. “I did that. Before you were ever born, when the Targaryens yet ruled and Stark and his heir still lived.” She lets go, Beth recoils, whimpering. “I am sorry, or I ought to be,” Arra says. “It was easier to be kind when I could not smell the smoke and feel the heat. It makes me feel half alive again. But you have my thanks. Your friends gathered the wood and branches and leaves and brought the oil. And you gave me strength.”

“You’re mad,” says Beth. “You’re not- you’re not dead, you’re right here-,”

“I am dead,” Arra turns back to the flames, licking at the earth, drawing closer. “And I am right here. You and I share a birth and a death. My mother was a Burley of the mountain clans. My father was a leal servant of House Stark. When I came of age I wed a Bolton, and spent nine moons in service here, as have you. Like you, I met death with a noose around my neck, only it was my hands that put it there.”

Beth begins to weep, helplessly- what else can she do? “Stop it. Stop saying those things, you’re lying, it’s not true, you’re real, you speak, you touch, they’ve seen you-,”

“Aye, they have. Did you think the dead were beyond the eyes of men? They are all around you. You see them every night in your sleep, and on these walls and under your feet. That squealing child Ramsay and his little boys have seen me. Damon Dead-for-You has seen me. They simply deny it to themselves. Easy enough for the likes of them. There is no pleasure in looking at a corpse you did not make yourself. I touched because you wanted to be held. I spoke because you wanted someone to speak. Your friends know me because you wanted me known.”

“Then I’m mad,” Beth feels caught in a dream or nightmare, like she’s stuck in waist-high mud, drowning. “This isn’t right. No. You’re lying. That’s not- Lord Roose wed a Ryswell, not a- a-,”

“A Karstark,” Arra says. “I was born Arrana Karstark. It was considered a fine match, in my time. I was eager enough to be wed. I liked the look of Roose. I was hungry for it. I knew him to be cold, and I found him to be cruel, so I strove to mirror him. Men have their sacred quests. I saw marriage as mine,” she recounts with such passion and fervor that she could be Old Nan in the grips of one of her wild tales. “I sought to prove myself worthy of him. It was for nought. My husband had little interest in sharpening me so we were two of a kind. What good is that for a leech to suckle at? He wanted me soft and pliant and ready for the cut. He did not want a wife. He wanted a wound.”

She sighs, a ragged exhale. “So I gave him one he could not feed from. I saw no end to it. My kin would have rathered me dead than see me dishonor myself. I could not run and I tired of the fight, so I made my own end. I watched when they found my body. Roose was angry- he’d have to put off his next hunt to make the arrangements for my burial. I wondered if time might soften him. It only made him greedy. He wed again, and I went to sleep.”

“And then you came,” she says, “and we shared a noose, we did, my Beth. A noose and a Burley for a mother and a hate of this place.” Arra sighs again, as if in exhilaration. “It does me good to watch it burn.”

“The gods,” says Beth. “The gods will hate you for this. It’s a sin. You’re burning the weirwood.”

“I am already a sin,” Arra tells her. “And that tree died long ago. The gods know my aim. Here I will stay, until my lord husband returns. And then we shall see what is sharper- my sin or his. I will bed him down in the crypts, and peel off his skin, and feed him his swollen leeches. I will hunt him down the Weeping River and back. I will hang him from the mill, cut him down, and wed his corpse again. I mean to take my pleasure at last, in life or in death, and I will not be denied it.”

Beth looks at her, tears streaming down her face, the flames closer now. She can hear the first faint cries of alarm in the distance.

“If you mean to die, then stay,” Arra tells her. “If you mean to live, then run. I am in your debt, Beth Cassel. You made a witch of me. What a bridal gift.” She hums; a dry crackle in her throat, and smiles and laughs a little as the flames reach for the moon. The shouts grow louder.

Beth coughs and chokes on the smoke, tosses Damon’s whip into the fire, and runs. 

She is luckier now than the last time she ran through a castle towards a gate, smoke in her eyes and lungs. Perhaps she’s a faster runner now, or mayhaps Arra gave her a dead girl’s blessing. Beth doesn’t know, because Beth doesn’t think, she just moves. Her feet beat against the ground and then the small gate is up ahead. They have only gotten it open enough to crawl under, but she doesn’t need to be told. Beth scrambles under as the twins urge her on, then they all let go and let it crash back down. Men on the walls are shouting and moving, but they are looking inside the castle, frantically trying to determine the source of the smoke. 

Beth and the rest vanish into the black as the dogs begin to howl in their kennel. 

Bandy and Shyra want to run straight for the witch’s cottage, but Beth and Palla force them to take a winding path off the road into the village, along the frigid rushing river, slipping and sliding in the mud and slush there. They run back and forth in the dark, trying to make their tracks as confusing as possible, and then they scramble over a low wall and through a defeated corn field, the desiccated remains of the stalks brushing against their legs. The witch’s cottage is dark, and the gnarled old tree in the back is still full of crows.

None of the crows make any noise beyond the shifting and beating of wings, except for one of the bigger ones, which caws as if in recognition, and then takes off into the night all alone. The cellar doors are unlocked, as hoped for. Beth doesn’t know what they would have done otherwise. Find a latrine or hayloft to hide in for the night, maybe. Very slowly she pries one open, and Shyra yanks open the other, and Palla all but picks Turnip up and drops him down into the cellar. Then the rest of them follow, closing the doors after them. 

The cellar is cold and dark but at least it is dry. They burrow down amongst old sacks and some rotting crates, and listen to the faint rushing of the river. They are still so close to the Dreadfort, just a short ride away, but it seems like a lifetime now. Beth is shaking all over. “Did Arra burn?” Turnip whispers to her. “Or did they catch her?”

Beth strokes his hair and says nothing, the image seared into her mind’s eye; a lone dark figure before the fiery maw. She will see that picture every night until she dies, she’s sure of it. Ghosts are not real, and even if they were, they couldn’t speak to you or touch you or read, could they? But monsters are real. They’re not supposed to be, but they are. So if they could claw their way out of Old Nan’s stories and into Beth’s life, she wonders if the dead could too. 

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Barbey has only ever attended three weddings in her life, and this farce will be the fourth. She knows well enough that Arya Stark had grey eyes, not brown- she remembers seeing them peering curiously up at her the first time she brought Donella to Winterfell. Truthfully, she’d gotten a little savage jab of satisfaction from it; how it must have torn at Catelyn Tully, that her only child with the Stark look resembled her husband’s bastard more closely than her. Surely that must have stung every time she took the girl up in her arms, and saw Ned Stark in one eye and Jon Snow in the other. 

Poor Catelyn, to have to suffer that indignity every night at the dinner table. Even soft-spoken Donella Hornwood could not tolerate Halys’ bastard boy in her household, and Hornwood was a fool in most things, but wise in that- as soon as Larence Snow was weaned, he sent him north to the Glovers, to be given a lord’s education and a warrior’s training, but never a seat at his table. Bastards are like dogs, and she thinks Roose would agree with her in this. They have their uses, and one can be fond of them, even love them, but one must always keep a wary eye, particularly when they mingle with the purebred litter. They’ve a nasty habit of biting when they’re hungry. 

She supposes she could do her level best to inform everyone present that this is not Ned’s darling girl at all, but quite likely some other child of the household who the Lannisters plucked up ages ago, but what would be the point? If the northern lords and ladies here meant to make outright war with Roose, they would never have come to Barrowton to pledge their allegiance in the first place. Although doubtless some of them are wishing they’d hesitated now that rumors of not one but two armies on the march are beginning to trickle through the castle. 

It matters not whether this is yet another bastard child or not, being wed to Roose’s own wily bastard. He still has Lysara, who is the very picture of her father, save those pale grey Bolton eyes. It’s obvious the babe is the genuine article, and that is enough to stay most men from lunging for their swords and calling their assembled vassals here to arms. Not that it would be much of a fight, regardless. Between his own men and the Freys, with the added garrison Ramsay brought from the Dreadfort, Roose has at least thirty six hundred men, twice as much as all the other northmen combined. Even the powerful Manderlys could only salvage three hundred to march from their city. 

Aye, they might fight in these halls, and perhaps win, but it would be brutal and with no clear outcome- and Roose could put a blade to his granddaughter’s throat at any moment and end it all right then and there. Robb Stark is dead. His siblings are dead, save Jon Snow at the Wall, now the Lord Commander, if the tales are to be believed. Barbrey supposes it was having something to strive for for once in his life that gave the lad the edge to claim that title. Perhaps he inherited some persuasive powers from his Dornish mother. To think they used to whisper that Brandon had bedded Ashara Dayne at Harrenhal, when all along it was good, sweet Ned, the timid little lout that he was at that age. She must have been very drunk indeed, Barbrey decided long ago. 

Barbrey was never at Harrenhal; she’d been preparing for her wedding to Willam, who had no great love of tourneys either. They’d only been married for three moons, not even half a year, when word had came of Lyanna’s disappearance and Brandon’s rage. Willam had wasted no time at all in calling for his sword and saddle; he’d been eager for the fight, grateful for a chance to prove himself in war. It was as if he had no wife at all; when he did remember himself, the coldness had already settled onto her like a shroud, and she was not as warm nor affectionate as she could have been when she saw him go.

Sometimes she wishes she had ridden after him and kissed him, not out of love or duty but so he might have something to urge him homeward. Mayhaps if he’d felt she loved him or even lusted for him he’d have come home with the rest, not volunteered to go even further south to Dorne with Ned Stark. Mayhaps that would have saved Oswell Whent from cutting him down in single combat. Barbrey’s only pleasure was that Willam took Whent, a man twice his age and experience, a knight of the Kingsguard and a tourney champion, down with him. 

He lingers in her mind’s eye, how he looked on their wedding day. Willam was not so handsome as Brandon, nor as witty and keen. He’d not the passion in his blood. She’d had to fight to keep her disappoint from showing. Brandon had been tall and dark of hair, with such striking grey eyes. Willam had been ash blonde and only of height with her, and his eyes were brown and as plain as his freckled face. His nose had been broken and healed back crooked, his fingers were short and stubby, and he fought with an axe and like an axe- all blunt and crude and hacking, nothing like the casual grace Brandon displayed in his sparring matches.

The Dustins were a fine family, of course, although whittled down to Willam and two much younger sisters, one of whom’s whelps she will have to someday leave Barrow Hall to- thank the gods they both had all girls, or there would have been much more fuss over her ‘depriving’ some poor little lordling of his rights- but they were not the Starks. Barrow Hall seemed a shack, compared to the majesty of Winterfell. Willam seemed a farmer’s son compared to Brandon. She’d been furious on their wedding day, but done an admirable job of masking it, conversing politely with the guests and praising the decorations in the godswood-

And then he’d come in with his men, and while he was still not handsome nor alluring, the fine yellow of his doublet had made his blonde hair seemed to shine in the winter sunlight, and his eyes had been warm with anticipation, and his laughter had died away when he took in the sight of her, and as rigidly as she’d held herself, so proud and privately indignant, something about his smile had made her a little less angry at the injustice of her life. In spite of herself, she’d smiled back, although she’d refused to call him Will during the feast, and he’d ignored her disapproval of his drinking games with his townsfolk, and afterwards, well, the bedding had not been what she’d call a delight or excitement, but she’d known he’d sensed that he was not her first, for all her dismissive talk of how there was little chance of any Ryswell woman bleeding, they spent so much time in the saddle. He’d known, and she’d seen it on his face, but he’d said nothing, nor treated her any less dutifully for it. 

They might never have loved one another, but they could have been happy. When he’d left and she’d hoped she might be pregnant, she’d thought of how she would not mind a child with his eyes, even if they weren’t the grey she’d longed for. He would have been a good father; he was a lighthearted sort, always swinging some child up onto his shoulders when he walked through the Barrowton and spoke with his people. He’d love them. That had perplexed her, then. He’d loved these people, and how they’d adored him, and although three moons could never have been enough time for her to learn to love him, it was enough time for her to learn to love his people, his home, humble as it was.

She does love them. What and who she loves is few and far between, such is a widow’s fate, but Barrowton and its people have her love and her duty all the same. So when Roose came with his men, and she knew she could let them past her gates or watch it all burn, she’d ordered them open, although she’d banned his bastard from her keep. She may never have been a Dustin by blood, but she is still their lady, and every man, woman, and child in the Barrowlands is guaranteed her protection, her care, however cold a care it might be at times. She would die before she let them be put to the sword or the torch. And these hundred men she brought to Winterfell with her, they would readily die for her, so she needs be careful how she spends their lives.

Perhaps if she’d been lady of Winterfell, and its people her own, she’d have more care for the child being prepared for her wedding today, who seems on the verge of tears. Barbrey pities the girl, truly. But no one is going to rouse these northmen on her behalf, at least not yet. Let Roose have this. Let him wed her to his bastard and see how well that serves him- Ramsay is a brute, and if they suspected before, they will all see it now. Let them all brood and burn for vengeance until both armies are a little closer. Damn these snows and winds. True winter had held off until now. If Stannis were at one gate, and the northmen at the other, whether they are led by Harry Karstark or the Greatjon, they’d all be a little bolder.

But not yet. Barbrey didn’t come this far to die on the end of a Bolton spear in Winterfell’s hall. She’ll give Roose his death when he’s far from his men, his sword, and his grimy bastard son. She thinks she’ll hold Lysara in her arms and watch while Beron hacks off his head, so she might see her first proper execution before she can even toddle. That’s how one raises a strong child. Let them know death as well as they do life. She watched her first man hang at six. Bethany and her had snuck away from their governess to see it down. How he jerked and flailed on the rope; it was almost comical. Almost. When his face purpled it had turned her stomach and she’d buried her head in Beth’s chest; her sister had watch, stone-faced. She was always the braver one, when they were girls. It was why Barbrey sought to outdo her once they’d flowered; she had to be bold then, or forever live in Beth’s long shadow. 

“But Brandon Stark is fine to look at,” her sister had murmured when she was four-and-ten and Barbrey three-and-ten, as they watched him spar with Roger. Barbrey had loved him more, then, fiercely, possessively, because the thought of Bethany having him had made her afraid. No, not this too. Bethany had everything. She was the better hunter, faster rider, more graceful dancer. She made smoother conversation than Barbrey. Their father adored her. Their mother lavished her with attention. Her face was slightly softer, kinder, more winsome. Her hair was thicker and lusher. Even her name was more melodic, and her singing voice just as strong and rich.

Barbrey easily outpaced her when it came to their lessons- sums, reading and writing, geography, history- but no one cared much about that. She could have hated Beth. Instead she’d loved her more, in defence of herself. And yet when Bethany had said that, Barbrey had immediately replied, “He is, and he promised to take me on his hunt tomorrow. But you’ve a dress fitting with Mother and the seamstress. Shall we wait?” It had been a silent challenge.

Bethany had glanced at her, knowingly, then said, “No. Go ahead, and bag me a goose for dinner, won’t you?”

Now Barbrey watches another seamstress, reluctantly brought from White Harbor, adjust the last touches to Arya Stark’s gown. The bodice has had to be taken in quite severely, and the skirt hemmed up; the girl is supposed to be eleven or twelve, although she looks tall enough to pass for thirteen, yet she’s got little to no chest and nonexistent hips. If Barbrey doesn’t slip her some moon tea on the morrow, Jenny Slate or Lyessa Flint is sure to- now, there’s a woman with rage in her eyes and mouth and every venomous word. 

Lyessa Flint is the current Widow of Widow’s Watch- their line is cursed, and everyone knows it, the husbands never last long- it was autumn sickness that took Lyessa’s man and her newborn babe two years past, but it was Bolton and Frey blades that killed her son, her heir, her Robin. Lyessa left her new heir, her second son Cregan, at home, and her youngest son and daughters too, but she came with her men here, still dressed in mourning black, and when she looks at Roose Bolton and Hosteen and Aenys Frey, everyone feels the sudden chill.

Lyessa sits in a chair by the recently repaired window in this bedchamber, knitting, giving off rather the impression of a house spider in her corner web. Marissa Frey is being a dear and sorting through her dyed wools for her, squatting on a low stool like a child, although the girl is four-and-ten herself. Hosteen Frey has been trying to negotiate a match between her and Jenny Slate’s son, the heir to Blackpool, who’s just a boy of seven. Jenny Slate, born a wild Fingerflint, all but barked her laughter in his face, while her soft-spoken husband, Robard, had to step in and assuage the Freys’ wounded pride. Everyone knows who rules that marriage, although Robbie Slate doesn’t often seem to mind his wife’s outspoken nature. 

When the Starks finally called their banners, old Dormund Slate answered, but forced his only son and heir to stay back at Blackpool; rumor has it poor Robbie was infuriated and it almost came to blows between father and son. But mayhaps Dormund had the right of it- he did not survive the war long, but he left behind a living heir, more than many of his peers could say. Still, most of the men mock Robard for being browbeaten into bringing his wife to Winterfell with him, leaving their two children behind with their grandmother. Once this castle was considered the most secure in all the North. Now it is no place for women or children, and Robard will have no one to blame but himself if one of Ramsay’s dogs or some Frey whelp decides they want a taste of Jenny, once they’re sick of those filthy washerwomen.

Babrey makes brief eye contact with Jenny Slate now; she looks so much like her sister Danelle that it is a bit alarming, only young Dana Flint never had the never to glower at Barbrey like that, dark eyebrows knit together. Jenny blames her for not ordering Danelle back to Barrowton after Donella’s wedding. She argues that Dana was still a ward of House Dustin at the time, even if she’d come of age, and Barbrey should have forced her back to the Barrowlands, rather than see her march south with the rest. Jenny neglects the fact, of course, that their own father and uncles were there too- any of them could have thrown Dana in the back of a wagon and sent her packing to the Finger, but they were likely too busy drinking themselves sick and brawling with the Widowflints.

The seamstress is taking her leave now; Marianne Frey and Serra and Sarra are trying to help Arya with her hair; it’s pretty enough, dark brown and thick, but straight as a needle and just seems to flop against her scalp and neck no matter what they do. “A braided bun,” Marianne suggests tensely, after a moment. “We can use one of the nicer combs in it, then.” She holds up a burnished iron one for inspection.

The girl pretending to be Arya looks on the verge of bursting into tears and just nods shakily to whatever is said to her.

Jonelle Cerwyn is sitting on the edge of the bed, habitually smoothing out the sheets with one hand. Father and brother both dead and a dozen men vying for her hand in marriage so they might claim Castle Cerwyn too. She’s fortunate Bolton wed that shrill pig of a girl and didn’t wait until he came back to the North, or he might have claimed her for his third bride instead. Barbrey has never thought much of dull, homely Jonelle, with her plain oval face, big brown eyes, and lank brown hair, but she supposes there is something to be said for a woman who’s managed to rule alone in a time like this. 

Jonelle says now, to her surprise, “They say Baratheon and his men are but a turn of the moon away.” Her tone is calm, concerned but not frightened, as if she were making light conversation. The whispering and chatter of the other women stills. Arya is very still as Marianne adjusts the comb in her hair, her face flushed scarlet. While any one of them might very well like to say, “Good, I hope the shriveled bastard gets here quicker so we might see Bolton’s head on a spike,” no one is going to risk any semblances of… mixed loyalties getting back to Roose. Besides, Barbrey doubts any of them, herself included, are eagerly awaiting the likes of Stannis Baratheon as their great savior. He’s not renowned for his mercy, and they’ve all more or less pledged themselves to the Bolton cause, even if it was that or a blade in the gut. 

And none of them have any great desire to see a Baratheon ruling from Winterfell, either.

“More than that,” Lyessa Flint finally replies, after an untenable silence. “That blizzard is coming down from the mountains, and the wind moves faster than men and horses. It’ll be near two moons, mark me.”

“Well,” Jenny Slate all but snarls, brimming with sarcasm, “thank the gods we can rely on Lord Roose’s able and willing protection. I know it warms my heart to think of his courage in battle against our enemies.”

“Of course,” says Barbrey, “but we must all agree Lord Bolton is far more suited to the rear than the vanguard. Why, I should think it will be Arya’s brave groom who will ride out to face those southern invaders. Young Ramsay has never shied from a battle before. You are so fortunate, Lady Arya, to be wedding a man such as he, with a warrior’s fierce heart.”

And a warrior’s short lifespan, too. That mongrel won’t live to see his twenty first nameday, never mind his twenty fifth. 

“I hope he does not mean to send out all our men at once,” Marissa says in a small voice. “That would be ill-advised… would it not?”

“Certainly,” replies Jonelle. “No. I am sure Lord Roose will prefer to divide his forces in two, rather than risk leaving us innocents unguarded.”

Barbrey looks around the room. They are all staring at each other, gazes darting from face to face, except for the false Arya, who is staring at the floor. Yes. She had misjudged Jonelle Cerwyn indeed. She’s very correct. Roose will not want to face two armies at once. He will want to quickly and quietly deal with Stannis’ stragglers, wagering on an easy triumph over them once they’ve been beaten and battered by the elements and the unfamiliar terrain. He will send half his men and sent his idiot son out to do his bidding, as usual. And then they will just have to see, won’t they? They don’t need to kill them all. Just their commanders. The rest will be easily subdued once the men who put the fear of the gods into them are dead and hanging from the walls.

And would that not make for a pretty picture, to see corpses replacing pink Bolton banners? Barbrey thinks so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Sorry for a repeat of the Beth-Barbrey split POV, but in order for the timeline to function properly I needed them in this chapter. Next chapter we will be seeing Jory and Nell again as the Valemen gather at Gulltown and the northern army continues to march on Winterfell, while Stannis does likewise.
> 
> 2\. It's a headcanon of mine (and a popular theory for some fans) that House Karstark, founded after Karlon Stark helped put down a rebellion, was in fact founded by Karlon Stark crushing yet another Bolton rebellion against Stark rule. Which would sort of make the Karstarks just as much 'ancient rivals' of the Boltons as the Starks themselves. Obviously House Karstark has come to play a larger role in this fic as it progresses; a fun little tidbit is that in the very beginning of this story, part of Nell's 'assigned reading' by Sara Snow is a (made-up) book called The Sons of Winter- concerning the formation of House Karstark and its split from the main Stark line, the wars with the Boltons, etc. 
> 
> 3\. Beth is pretty disenfranchised with the entire nobility at this point. I think it is fair for her to feel some resentment towards the Starks as well, given her current situation (although it was Rodrik's choice to leave Winterfell with such a light garrison that it could be easily taken by 30 determined Ironborn). This is the family hers pledged to serve, and how did it end up for them? Well, they're all dead, and she's the only one left, essentially a slave with no hope of anyone swooping in to rescue her and the rest of them. Her arc has really taken her from dreaming of being a 'true' lady and marrying into a noble house to uplift her station in life... to basically being like 'you know what? this is all Bullshit'. 
> 
> 4\. So we finally have the 'who the hell is Arra' reveal. I knew from the start of this story that given all the dark fantasy and gothic romance elements, at some point I was including a Literal Ghost. Now, some of you may be saying, "just because ASOIAF is fantasy and has dragons and magic and skinchanging, doesn't mean you can just throw in a ghost! you're breaking immersion!". That's fine. An alternate interpretation of this would be a mass hysteria or shared delusion of several deeply traumatized and scarred children, who 'invent' an imaginary friend/savior figure for themselves in order to keep up the will to survive their violent environment. Beth herself is obviously questioning this- was there *ever* an Arra, or was this something she created so she wouldn't just lay down and die? 
> 
> 5\. Because Arra's ranting and raving is confusing: she is claiming to have been Arrana Karstark, younger sister of Rickard Karstark, first wife of Roose Bolton. It is canon that Roose was married before Bethany Ryswell; that marriage produced no children and his wife presumably died young, of what, we don't know. In this case, Arra says she committed suicide rather than face what she deemed a failure of a marriage wherein she was regarded as little more than an object by her husband and had no friends or family available for support and comfort. She claims a mother from Clan Burley and a 'death by hanging' in common with Beth as her grounds for being made material to her. 
> 
> 6\. If the godswood is the 'heart' of a castle, than Arra's choice is to burn that heart out of the Dreadfort, whether it offends the old gods or not. I think it's interesting to show different interpretations of the same religion/religious figures in a story- while the old gods have (mostly) been a comfort to characters like Nell and Dana, they are not necessarily that for other characters like Arra or even Beth. 
> 
> 7\. I don't want to just rewrite Theon's ADWD chapters from Barbrey's POV, as that would be very boring. Instead what I mostly wanted to get across in her chapter was that Roose's hold on Winterfell is tenuous indeed; if he didn't have twice as many men as all the other lords gathered together, he'd be dead already. There's also a lot of pissed off ladies present; from the Frey girls to Lyessa Flint to Jonelle Cerwyn to Dana's big sister, Jenny Slate! 
> 
> 8\. Barbrey and Bethany had a very close but also at times very tense relationship. Barbrey is often still in that teenaged girl mindset. She loved Bethany but she was also very jealous of her. She could have maybe come to love Willam, but they (sadly) never got that chance, as they only had three months of marriage together before he left for the war. She continues to idealize Brandon as the embodiment of what a man should be. 
> 
> 9\. It's looking like there might be a long line to stab Roose. 
> 
> 10\. You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/). I recently posted a mock soundtrack for this fic there. See you all next week!


	75. Jorelle VIII - Donella L

300 AC - GULLTOWN

Jory has never been to a proper city before- she’s only ever seen White Harbor from a distance, while they were marching south to the Neck- and so she’s not at all ashamed of her reaction upon seeing Gulltown perched neatly inside of the inlets of the bay. From a distance, with snow flurrying overhead and bright shafts of sunlight peeking in and out from behind the clouds, Gulltown’s white walls seem to glow serenely, like something out of a story, and the distant cry of gulls and the crash of the white-capped waves against the shore only heighten the feeling.

Hyle is certainly pleased; “I thought we’d be cooped up in a shoddy little fishing port for a few days,” he declares to no one in particular, then spurs his stallion ahead, leaving Jory, Brienne, and Pod in the dust. This is hardly out of the ordinary; since their admission of sorts into the fledgling court of Sansa and Harry, Hyle has been for the first time in the long-term company of other young knights, and the effects are obvious. Jory no longer has to brace herself for his ‘shining wit’ at every meal, for he’s off drinking and playing dice with the rest. 

She will give Hunt this- to her knowledge (or, to hear Pod tell it), he has never disparaged Brienne in the company of the other men, referencing her as ‘Lady Brienne’ if at all, and rumor has it that when some gangly squire made a crude comment wondering if Jory would find his ‘sword’ easier to wield than her own, Hyle viciously mocked his spots for the remainder of the meal, and Wallace Waynwood nearly challenged him to a duel in defence of her honor. Jory is slightly surprised by the former- she would have expected Hyle to join right in with the perverted japes, but mayhaps he’s become fonder of her than he lets on- and a bit exasperated by the latter- Wallace is sweet but she does not need him to fight any battles on her behalf.

That had only led to thinking about Gendry, again, and wishing he were here with them, as ludicrous as it might sound. She could have introduced him to Mya- she’s accompanying them to Gulltown, to what seems like Pod and Lothor Brune’s delight- and he might have known his own kin for the first time since childhood. Then she pushes the thought aside. Gendry would hate this; surrounded by untested young knights and squires full of bravado and arrogance, fighting on behalf of yet another lord and lady he feels no particular allegiance or duty to. Even if he might make a pretty penny in a city like Gulltown with his talents as a smith. 

And Gulltown is beautiful, to be sure. One of the only cities in the Vale, and its largest town, all shielded behind pristine white walls. The streets are clean- although perhaps the inch or so of snow on the ground is just lending them a pleasant cover- and there are no sense that anything is falling into disrepair or ruin here. The various shops and markets all seem in fine condition and the streets are patrolled by members of the city watch, most in the colors of House Grafton, scarlet red and black. 

The port and harbor are bustling with ships and sailors of all sorts- Jory feels as though she were a puppet on a string, head constantly turning this way and that, picking up snippets of arguments and laughter and shouting in a multitude of languages, and there are children everywhere she looks, more than she’s seen in a very long time, rushing down slippery steps and under archways, playing games in back allies and around their parents’ stalls. It smells, to be fair, like the salty copper of the ocean and the stench of fish, something that reminds Jory for an instant of home; Bear Island has no city or even any proper towns, just scattered villages, but there are thriving fish markets every week, and she’s walked along them with her sisters, greeting familiar faces, hearing the same old banter and stories day in and day out. 

She picks up snippets of wild tales even now- some fish seller is claiming that the High Septon had Cersei Lannister stripped nude and forced to walk through the city while the commons hissed and jeered, and a crowd of sailors outside a tavern are swearing up and down that the Stormlands have been invaded by the Golden Company, led by some long-exiled lord seeking his revenge. If you believe that sort of nonsense, they may even have a ‘genuine Targaryen’ among them. Aye, and so does every other family in southern Westeros, they all swear up and down every child a little paler and more towheaded than usual is the blood of the dragon, Hyle would say.

To think this was where the very first battle of the Rebellion was fought- Jory cannot picture the city under siege; it seems so neat and orderly now that she can’t imagine blood and gore drenching the white walls or battle cries drowning out the constant roar of the waves. Here was where Robert Baratheon slew Marq Grafton in single combat; she wonders at Jon Arryn’s mercy, that the Graftons have been permitted to continue rule of this city, where Lord Gerold, Marq’s own heir, has been lord since his father’s death. She wonders if the city rejoiced when Arryn and Baratheon had finally wrested control of it from the loyalists, or if they cursed them for their revolt, certain they’d all been doomed to a turncloak’s death.

But they are rejoicing for Sansa and Harry. Jory cannot understand it; the vast majority of these people must have scarcely any idea who Sansa is, but when she rides through the gates on a white gelding beside her handsome betrothed, with her hair’s brown dye mostly washed out so it shines auburn bronze once more, and her head held high despite her mourning blacks for poor little Lord Robert- they react as if it were the Maiden herself come to visit. Screaming and shouting in glee and forming excited throngs on every corner; men lifting up their children onto their shoulders and pointing, and cries of “Your Grace!” and “Harry the Heir!” and “Princess Sansa!” and “Winterfell!”

Are they really so eager to be finally free of the Iron Throne? Does it heighten their pride, to think of themselves as an independent kingdom? Is it merely the fact that Sansa is beautiful and Harry so handsome, and so elegantly attired, even without crowns atop their heads? Is it any different from Robb and Donella’s coronation at Riverrun? Jory was there. Most of the river lords had never met either Robb nor Nell before. They did not know them, all they knew was that Robb had won back Riverrun and saved Lord Tully from the Kingslayer and that the Starks, Lady Catelyn’s husband and daughters, had been grievously wronged by the Lannisters. 

That was all it took. Jory stood there with them, clapping and cheering until she was hoarse, screaming, “The King in the North!” and “Queen Nell!” along with the rest. It had felt so good and right and vindicated then- they deserved this, they were going to have their revenge, their justice, she would have done anything for them. She would have fought any battle, risen to any challenge- or so she thought. When pressed, her spine turned from steel to twigs, and she snapped and broke. Heat rises in her face at the thought. She failed Nell, but she will not fail Sansa, or Brienne, or Pod. She saved Sansa from Shadrich. Surely she can be proud of that. 

But she doesn’t feel proud and triumphant, she feels uneasy. Robert Arryn’s coffin was so small when interred in the crypts under the Gates of the Moon. She’d never attended a child’s funeral before. There was weeping and wailing and hymns to the Seven, and to his credit Harry Hardyng- Harry Arryn- kept a somber face and did not look smug or gleeful in the least, for all that he was coming into his seat at the cost of his kin’s life, and Littlefinger’s face was a mask of grave sorrow, but his eyes far too bright, and not with unshed tears. Sansa was weeping, though, Jory saw- not enough to be a spectacle, but she bowed her head and seemed to earnestly pray and spent longer than most beside the small, frail corpse, kneeling in silent vigil. 

Robert was sickly and weak. His death shocked no one. Jory keeps telling herself that, but something feels off all the same. _The sweetsleep_ , Sansa had said when she heard Robert had collapsed. _The sweetsleep_ , she’d said, and _I’m so stupid_. What was that supposed to mean? Why would she call herself stupid? For leaving Robert alone at the tourney? He’d had the maester at his side, there was nothing Sansa could have done. The sweetsleep was just to quiet his fits, Lady Anya had mentioned at one point, it was no real cure for his illness on its own. 

But Sansa had seemed to think it had caused his bleeding, not his illness.

Jory feels a bit sick herself whenever she dwells on it for long. Just let me go home, Sansa had said when Brienne had tried to ask her if she felt safe around Littlefinger. That wasn’t a ‘no’, but it was hardly a ‘yes’, either, and if he was threatening her in some manner she couldn’t just come out and tell them, could she? But Gulltown is not the place to test Littlefinger, Brienne has warned her. He used to rule the ports here, pricing customs, before Lord Arryn brought him to court, and even the Waynwoods, now forever in his debt, acknowledge that he still has rule of the streets, too, for the Graftons count themselves among his many friends.

If anyone is going to levy any accusations, now is not the time, and here is not the place. They’ve got to get some forty thousand men, the ripe bulk of the Vale’s military, from Gulltown to White Harbor. Fortunately there’s plenty of ships to take them, and plenty of coin to pay them with, but when Jory had envisioned, triumphantly returning to the North, it had been a vision of a quick hop-and-jump around the Fingers and past the Three Sisters up into White Harbor. Perhaps several of them in a small, humble fishing boat. Not an entire fleet. But does however long it will take to transport all these men really matter, when they bring so much might? 

Well, it does depending on the weather in the North. Jory can only imagine the look on everyone’s faces if they arrive at White Harbor to find the city snowed in and travel any further north impossible. They can’t have come so far only to trip up at the end. Winterfell, they promised. And Bear Island, Jory has promised herself. Her honor back and her family’s pride and then home to see her father and his forge and wait out the worst few years of winter and then first chance she gets, as soon as it’s safe, as soon as she can manage it, she’s coming back down to the Riverlands to see Gendry and the orphans at the inn and the Elder Brother and his flock on the Isle. She swore she’d come back. 

Once they’ve reached the city centre, with the gleaming Sept of Maris towering at one end of the blustery plaza and the Gull Tower at the other end, the party gathered are almost immediately besieged by messengers. The Graftons insist on hosting their new rulers- why, Harry can be crowned in their own keep. But oh no, the Gull-Arryns are here in full force as well, and they contend that it makes far more sense for Harry and Sansa to stay with them, since their keep overlooks the port and provides easy access to the harbor. 

Myranda Royce sidles her mare up alongside Jory and smiles in a conspiratorial manner. Jory has begun to notice that all of Myranda’s smiles are conspiratorial, and if the world was one great jest and she the only one in on it. She can’t decide if she finds this refreshing or irritating. Myranda dusts snow snowflakes from her dark purple cloak, and leans ever closer. “The Graftons rule the city in name,” she murmurs, “but the Gull-Arryns keep everyone’s wages paid. Court the favor of one, and risk offending the other.”

“I thought the Gull-Arryns had married into trade,” Jory mutters, “and so no one cared much for them.”

“They care enough to keep them sweet,” Myranda grins. “Why do you think Lady Anya’s prized eldest daughter was married to one? They’re outrageously rich- that’s why their falcon’s gold.”

The sigil of House Arryn of Gulltown is near identical to that of their senior branch, only the falcon on their shields are gold, rather than pure white. Jory glances back over towards Sansa and Harry who are in the middle of the small circle of arguing emissaries, with Petyr Baelish and Anya Waynwood both attempting to calm things- Lord Gerold Grafton is incensed at the Gull-Arryns nerve and is busy accusing Lord Benedict Gull-Arryn of trying to buy the crowns from their heads, nevermind that both Harry and Sansa are due to wear replicas of the legendary Falcon Crown surrendered by Sharra Arryn to Visenya during the Conquest.

Harry looks irritated by the entire procedure, shifting in the saddle and exhaling in annoyance, but seemingly content to let his foster mother fight it out for him. Or mayhaps he simply doesn’t care- “That one will decide where they stay based off which is closer to the nearest brothel,” Hyle says under his breath snidely, causing Brienne to flush, Jory to roll her eyes, and Myranda Royce to all but seize with laughter. Hyle, realizing Myranda heard him, flushes himself, going red as a boy, to Jory’s smug delight.

Sansa’s gelding whinnies loudly, and then Jory hears her voice cutting across the din, “Ser Damon!” Jory has no idea who that might be, and looks around in confusion before she vaguely recognizes the burly knight who wheels towards Sansa. Sansa looks around nervously for a moment, as all the arguing has momentarily died down, and then squares her shoulders and says boldly, “Ser Damon, would you be so kind to host us at Gull Tower? If Ser Harrold is to be crowned there, it ought to be in the Sept of Maris, in full view of the Seven.”

That is the end of that.

Gull Tower is just that, a singular tower jutting out a small keep. The entire structure holds a garrison of no more than a hundred men, and you could walk the span of the walls and up and down the tower stairs in no time at all. It is small and humble and the accommodations are simple, but Harry seems too besotted with Sansa to openly complain, and if any of the lords and ladies present are disgruntled, they’re all too polite to say anything. They will be in Gulltown for no more than a week while the army of the Vale is assembled; many of them already marched with them from the Gates of the Moon. Jory is exhausted and the injury to her head and ear still bother her, so she spends most of the first day or two sleeping. 

On the third day she wakes to the sound of excited chatter in the next room, and when she comes out in a dressing gown with her hair braided back, finds Pod wielding a shining, well-made short sword with two hands in an experimental parry. Brienne is nowhere to be seen; she’s been loathe to leave Sansa’s side since they finally found her. But Hyle is leaning against the hearth with his arms folded casually across a brand new brown and white surcoat. He sees Jory’s questioning look and says, “I did manage to scrounge up some winnings from the tourney, before it went to hells and back.”

“I’m surprised you’re letting Pod handle it,” she retorts, although she smiles at Pod. “Widen your stance. There you go!”

“Why not?” Hyle scoffs. “It’s his.”

Jory and Pod both turn to look at him in shock. “It’s mine?” Pod says, eyes widening.

“You like to remind me you’re not my squire,” Hyle shrugs, “at least this way I can always remind you that you owe me your first real steel.”

Pod goes pink, lowers the sword, fidgeting. “I- thank you, Ser,” he finally says. “No one’s ever…”

Gotten him a gift before, Jory surmises. She squeezes Pod’s shoulder. “You deserve it. You’ve been such a help to us. Not many squires would have made it up into the mountains with no more than the clothes on their back!”

Rather than staying to gloat, as she’d expected he might, Hyle makes himself scarce after that and Jory is only able to track him down a little while later in the small yard full of training knights. She dodges around Mychel Redfort sparring breathlessly with Roland Waynwood, returns Wallace’s eager wave from the far side of the yard, and finally makes her way up to Hyle, who is polishing his own old blade, his back against the white stone wall. 

“Why did you buy him a sword?” she asks, sitting down beside him. “You’ve no love for him. You spent most of your time berating or mocking the poor boy.”

“I have to love him like my own son to get him a proper weapon?” Hyle retorts, not raising his gaze from his steel. 

“You could have gotten yourself a new blade instead.”

“I could have,” he says. “I nearly did. He’s almost three-and-ten. He’s getting too old to be running around with that runty little tourney sword. I was blooded at four-and-ten. His time’s coming.”

“Don’t speak like an old man, you’ll make me laugh,” Jory snorts. She still can’t say she likes Hyle Hunt, or considers him a true friend, but- she does trust him well enough, by now. “I didn’t think you cared for anyone but yourself, is all. But that was nobly done.”

Hyle shrugs, then finally glances up at her. For a moment she forgets his usual sneering remarks and sly smiles and remembers that he is, after all, not much older than her, only twenty. Granted, what has he done with those twenty years besides act like a proper bastard and chase skirts, but his life has barely begun. 

“Well,” he says, “as you once told me, my lady, a good smith is worth a dozen middling hedge knights.”

“I meant what I said then, in the wood.” Jory is not ashamed, nor will she eagerly recant it- he’s behaved abominably towards Brienne, and his jeering speaks to his character as much as this one act of kindness does. “But this wasn’t the work of a miserable little prick.”

“A charitable little prick, then,” he gives a mock bow and she huffs in amusement and stands up. “I should find Sansa and Brienne.”

Gull Tower has one, singular, ladies’ solar. It is sparsely decorated; the Shetts aren’t very wealthy, but the windows are larger than typical and so the room is often full of light. Sansa is speaking with Myranda Royce and a few beaming seamstresses when Jory slips inside; Myranda notices her first and waves her over.

“Lady Jorelle,” Sansa says, without missing a beat, smiling that serene, woman’s smile, although her eyes are still a child’s wary blue and framed by long lashes. “As one of my ladies in waiting you must have a proper wardrobe. Myranda, add her to the list?”

“I must what?” Jory echoes her dubiously.

“Your clothes,” Myranda says. “They’re horrid.” But she smiles to show she seems to mean no real offense.

“Myranda,” Sansa hisses under her breath; she looks apologetically at Jory. “I mean no offense by it, only- if Harry is to be king and I am his betrothed, I must have ladies of mine own, and they will need proper attire and allowances, and-,” she seems slightly overwhelmed at the thought, but forges ahead, “and promises of my faith in them. So I mean to appoint Lady Brienne my sworn shield-,”

“My lady,” Brienne says, “I could not-,”

“You very well can,” Myranda cuts her off smoothly, “I’ve been hearing the most extraordinary rumors- Podrick Payne claims you fought off seven bandits at once!”

“That’s not quite what-,”

“Brienne is more than deserving of it,” Jory says clearly and concisely, shooting Brienne a look. Now is not the time to politely demur on grounds of her guilt towards Lady Catelyn. “I am sure she will serve you well, Princess.”

“Sansa,” says Sansa, “you must call me Sansa. I don’t feel like a princess, I-,” she catches herself, and smiles. “And I would feel very silly being called Your Grace when Harry and I are not even wed. He is the one with the claim to the Vale. These are his people.”

“The wedding will be delayed, then,” Jory had been wondering about that, concerned it might happen right here, right now. Sansa is not a little girl, of course, and the marriage is an integral part of the alliance, but she is still just three-and-ten, barely much older than Pod. Mother always said it was sheer foolhardiness to be wedding girls younger than six-and-ten; they were more like to suffer needlessly in the birthing bed, undeveloped as they were. 

“I have requested that the wedding happen in the presence of my family,” Sansa’s voice seems to shake slightly on the last word, but it is just for a moment. “I have already testified to several septas the truth of my marriage to Lord Tyrion.” She straightens slightly, to her full height. “I was brought unwilling to the altar and it went unconsummated.”

“No doubts it,” Myranda assures her, kissing her on the cheek. “And they say time and distance stokes men’s passions, so you can be sure when you and Harry are finally wed-,” she cuts herself off with a muffled snicker as several other ladies enter the room. 

Jory might have her pride, but she is not going to turn down the offer of new clothes. The seamstresses of Gulltown are efficient and talented; she can’t resist the girlish smile that creeps onto her face when she runs her hands over several new dresses and pairs of tunics and breeches, even a new leather jerkin and a warm mink-trimmed cloak. Brienne has new boots, ones that properly fit her feet, and even Mya Stone is seen in a fine midnight blue gown at the feast held before the the first ships to White Harbor are due to depart.

Jory is watching Lothor Brune once again attempt to charm the oblivious Mya when Pod comes back to the seat beside her, red-faced from being dragged into a dance by Damon Shett’s youngest daughter. “Littlefinger was fighting with someone in the stairwell,” he mutters to her.

“My gods,” Jory exhales. “You are quite the little spymaster, aren’t you?”

He pulls a sour face at ‘little’, and she claps him on the back in penance. “Do you know who?”

“One of the Valemen,” Pod shrugs, which is hardly very helpful. Jory groans, stands up, and goes to investigate herself. If she runs into Baelish, she’ll tell him she’s looking for the privy. Or pretend to be drunker than she is, which is not very, despite Hyle’s claims of her being a lightweight. He’s one to talk, little man that he is. 

In the narrow stairwell outside the small feasting hall, Jory peeks over the stone bannister and just briefly catches a glimpse of Baelish’s grey-streaked brown hair slicked back in its usual style as he begins to come back up. Further down below, a knight storms off- black and red, she thinks quickly, whose colors are black and red on white- Corbray, it’s got to be Corbray, the one always starting fights. What grudge does he have against Littlefinger?

But he’s already disappeared out of sight, and she needs to move before Baelish spots her on the landing. Jory turns right around and moves back towards the feasting hall, only to bump into Wallace Waynwood. Littlefinger reaches the top of the stairs, makes some jape under his breath about young lovers when he sees Jory reaching out to steady a shaky Wallace, and continues on his way.

“Thank you,” Jory tells poor Wallace, who looks all the more confused. “Er- are you alright, Ser?”

He doesn’t seem drunk, not quite, but he is pale except for splotches of red in his cheeks and he smells of mead. Flushing courage down your gullet, Aly would call drinking before the even of a battle, but their only battle on the morrow will be against the sea. “My lady,” he says, flushing all the more, hesitates, and then blurts out, “I’ve- I’ve c-come to t-t-tell you of my intentions.”

Jory looks at him, now the more befuddled one. “Your… intentions?”

“Yes,” he swallows, apple bobbing in his throat. “I know this is… s-s-sudden, and it is not as I would have p-p-pref-f-ferred, but- if we are t-to go t-to war, I must t-tell you.”

She has a horrible sinking feeling. “What are your intentions, my lord?”

“When we arrive in White Harbor, I will write your lady mother and ask her if we might wed,” he says, and Jory is too surprised that he managed to get the entire sentence out without a single stutter or hesitation to do much of anything. Wallace smiles slightly, and takes her hand in his own. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but she makes a fist with her other hand all the same, hanging loosely at her side. 

“Ser Wallace, I don’t-,”

“You must know I c-care for you,” he says. “From… from the m-moment I saw you, my lady. You are b-brave and b-beautiful and… and I know I c-could be a good husband t-to you.”

“My lord,” Jory says carefully. “You are a Waynwood. I am sure your lady mother would not think a Mormont a proper match-,”

“M-mother has given me her approval,” he counters. “I am her youngest son. She only wants t-to s-see me wed.”

“I would not be a fit wife for you,” Jory slowly extricates her hand from his, steeling herself against the falling look on his face. “You have been very kind, and- but I couldn’t, Wallace. I have my own duties, and I mean to fight as well-,”

“I would p-pro-t-tect you,” he says frantically. “I could, I know I’m not as exp-perienced as some, but I would d-defend you ably…” he trails off at the look on her face. “B-but you g-g-gave me your favor.” It sounds so crestfallen, like a child realizing the last slice of dessert is gone.

As a friend, Jory almost says, then realizes how ludicrous that sounds. She misjudged this, misjudged him. Chivalry is everything here, and when she conceded to give him her favor at the tourney, he clearly took it as an acceptance of his… courting. Right. She’s been being courted and she hadn’t even realized it. Never mind that they’ve known one another for barely a month. She is seven-and-ten and most noblewomen her age would be betrothed by now. Wallace must have been desperate to forge a betrothal between them before the real fighting began.

She feels angry and a little sad and very embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” Jory says, struggling to keep her tone even. “I- I misunderstood, Wallace. It was never my intent to… to lead you to believe I return affections that are…” Gods, Dacey would know what to say. He looks as though he wants to throw himself down the stairs. She doesn’t want to be cruel, but she can’t just stand there and let him think he has any claim to her!

“Is it Ser Hyle?” He takes a slight step back. “Are you… th-that is to say, are you and he…”

“No,” Jory all but barks. “Gods, no- I- Ser Wallace, I thank you so very much for your offer, and I am sure you will make some lady very happy, but I cannot- I must ask you not to pursue this.” There. That didn’t sound too horrible, did it? “The truth is…,” she flounders, and then with a jolt of honesty- or something like it- “I am promised to another.”

“You are?” he gapes at her. “I- f-forgive me, my lady, I d-did not know-,”

“It’s not your fault. I… he is a man of the Riverlands. I pledged myself to him before coming here.” Well, that’s not strictly true, but she did pledge to return to see him once more, even if it was just that- to see him- and- Gendry’s face swims in her mind, and she feels the blaze of the forge against her skin once more. It makes her feel a little surer and steadier, warmer. “You could not have known. It was my mistake in giving you my favor. I had never… I’d never attended a tourney before.”

He nods jerkily, looks at her a moment longer, then wheels around and marches right back into the hall. Jory exhales, then blanches as Brienne steps out from the doorway. “Were you eavesdropping on me, Brienne of Tarth?”

“Yes,” says Brienne mildly. She hands Jory a cup of something strong, to her surprise. “You did well.”

“I did well in making him feel a fool?”

“You did well in standing your ground,” Brienne reasons. “Men from families like his are not used to being denied.”

Brienne should know, Jory thinks guiltily. She takes a sip, then grimaces. “What is this?”

“Black tar rum,” Brienne says, she leans back against the doorframe; in a properly fitted gown of cerulean, her blue eyes shine in the torchlight, and she holds herself with an uneasy sort of confidence, like a foal that’s just begun to trot. She still wears her sword on her belt.

“You look like one of my sisters,” Jory says, taking another sip.

“I look like a northwoman?” Brienne seems amused by this.

“You look… assured.” Jory decides. “It’s nice.”

“When I broke my last betrothal,” Brienne says, “my father gave me a cup of black tar rum after the lord had gone. I had a few sips, and then after he had left I drank near half the bottle. I was sick in bed for two days after.” 

“Did you break his heart, too?” Jory smiles wanly.

“No,” says Brienne. “I broke his left knee cap, his right arm, and his collarbone.”

She laughs so hard she almost spits the rum right back up.

The day of their departure dawns bright and clear and awash with news spilling out of the port- Lyn Corbray’s been found dead behind some brothel, his throat slashed by a thief- the Golden Company is marching on Storm’s End and flying Targaryen colors in Westeros for the first time in sixteen years- Kevan Lannister has been murdered and the Red Keep is up in arms as Lannisters and Tyrells point fingers and the Sparrows riot in the streets- and perhaps most importantly, or least, there’s been a white raven from the Citadel. Winter has come. 

300 AC - THE BARROWLANDS

Nell could cry when she sees the Barrowlands spread out before her again for the first time in two years, the rolling golden brown hills and sprawling meadows all blanketed with snow. She’d forgotten what the clear horizon here looked like, how it felt to watch the wind snake across the fields, and the sight of the narrow road darting off from the Kingsroad in the direction of Barrowton is tempting. Too tempting. Under ideal circumstances- spotless days in deep summer, for example- it would take their army thirty days of brisk marching and riding to get from Moat Cailin all the way up to Winterfell.

These are not ideal circumstances. The blizzard Jyanna Reed predicted coming down from the mountains hasn’t hit them yet, and likely won’t maroon them on the road unless they tarry, but the weather has been steadily worsening. It’s snowing for longer amounts of time every day, the wind howls and moans at night, and she’s beginning to shiver in the saddle no matter how warm her fur cloak. Most of their men haven’t experienced in twenty years, and some of them- like her- have never truly lived through one. Nell may have been born in winter, but it had melted into spring by the time she was two years old. She has no memory of it. And summer snows, as Barbrey would tell her when she was young, are very different from winter ones.

They’ve been marching for a fortnight. The last few days their pace has slowed a good deal. They haven’t lost any horses or men yet to exposure, but she’s concerned. The only consolation is that they’ve picked up freeriders who came rushing up from White Harbor when they heard northmen were marching on the Boltons, and that they don’t have to worry about being ambushed on the road by Baratheon’s men- if Stannis is marching on Winterfell from Deepwood, he must be nearly in the eye of the storm, with no easy road to rely on, in unfamiliar woodlands. She’s not sure if she ought to want him as delayed as possible. If they can take Winterfell while he’s still stranded by the blizzard, they’ll be in a much better position to negotiate. But that’s looking less and less likely when they’re hardly charging up the Kingsroad themselves.

Everyone’s mood is predictably terse as a result. When they marched souths there were songs and japes and boys playing games every time they stopped to rest. Nell remembers, all those boys barely more than children, twelve and three and four-and-ten, who tried so hard to be men on the march, but as soon as they had the chance would be wrestling around on the ground and chasing each other, laughing and shouting and riling up the dogs. There is none of that now. It might as well be one massive funeral procession. There was some initial cries of relief and celebration once they were properly through of the Neck, but aside from that it has mostly been quiet, grueling, and tedious. 

The wolf pack has split off, though. Arya said as much this morning as they broke their fast in a huddled group on the side of the road under a hastily erected tent. “Nymeria’s going east,” Arya had reported as casually as if she were commenting on the weather. “I felt her, last night. We were running towards the river.” The White Knife. Beyond that lies the Hornwood and the Dreadfort, among other keeps. 

“Easier game there in the woods, mayhaps,” Harry had said, as he filled his cup with icy water from the nearest stream. “There’s not to much pick up after we’ve moved through the land, and they don’t dare go after this many men.”

That’s a relief. The last thing Nell needs is reports of stragglers being dragged off by ravenous wolves, on top of everything else.

“No,” Arya had said, as she licked some butter off her finger, to Catelyn’s visible but restrained dismay, “we’re looking for something.”

 _We’re_. Not ‘she’ or ‘they’re’. Nell glances at Robb, who as usual refuses to eat much, especially in the morning. Are the shadows under his eyes worse, or is just the grim light of daybreak? She puts another strip of nearly raw bacon on his plate, and murmurs, “Please just try,” when he picks it up and makes no moves to put it in his mouth. He puts it back down, grease flecked on his stiff, pale fingers, and drinks a little water instead. As long as he can take water, he’s alright, she tells herself. Mother was alright until she refused water. 

“Well, I certainly hope you can help her find it,” Dana says with forced brightness. “And mayhaps once they’re done with their errand, they can come back round and help us besiege Winterfell, eh?”

Oly Frey laughs at that, and Lyra Mormont rolls her eyes but smiles around her bite of oatmeal, reaching over to pet Grey Wind, who is lapping at a cracked bowl of water on the floor.

Harry means to send outriders to Barrowton, just to scout and see what information or men they might pick up, but there’s banners flapping in the distance by the time everyone is back on the march. Nell spots the tell-tale Dustin black-and-yellow and the Ryswell black-and-bronze, and instinctively spurs her horse out of the line and off the road, towards the riders. Robb follows, then pulls his agitated stallion back- she knows the marching is miserable for him, for horses hate him now- and lets Grey Wind lope ahead after her. 

Nell hears a distant cry, looks back, and sees Harry Karstark’s warhorse outpace both Robb and keep neck and neck pace with Grey before breaking ahead- only because Grey Wind trusts him, she thinks, for she’s seen him easily overtake men on horseback before- and then he’s all but reaching for her reins, cursing under his breath as they near the riders. “Are you out of your mind?” he snarls. “It could be a trap, you see familiar banners and you just go flying off the road-,” as their mounts slow to a canter, he glances back, scowls even more, if that’s possible, and bellows, “KEEP HER BACK, GODS DAMN YOU!”

Nell turns and squints at the sight of Arya’s tiny figure on her old mare being cut off by what looks like Maege Mormont and Clegane, likely arguing all the while. Catelyn has ridden up alongside Robb with Dana, watching from a distance.

“I feel as though I’m herding shadowcats,” Harry says sarcastically, a hand on his sword as the Dustin and Ryswell men draw new. “Truly. How do you think I’ll fare, one against a dozen?”

“Catelyn swears she glimpsed you fighting four Freys at once when we reclaimed Riverrun,” Nell says tightly. “I’m sure you’d manage.”

“Your Grace!” She doesn’t recognize any of the Ryswell men, although their colors are correct- these aren’t traitors flying stolen banners- but she does recognize several of the Dustin men.

“Conall, Dane,” she says, identifying two just from a glimpse, faces she used to see every day around Barrow Hall and on the streets of the town, and then brightens when she catches a glimpse of a bearded face. “Beron,” she says in relief, “did my aunt send you?”

The bearded face stills. “My father went to Winterfell to protect your lady aunt, Your Grace,” Denys, son of Beron, tells her. Nell stares at him for a moment, trying to reconcile the bearded man who she realizes now is much younger than she’d assumed, with the clean shaven, pretty boy she remembers. When last she saw Denys, he was avoiding her eyes and studying the ground as their party rode out from Barrowton for the Dreadfort. Before that, she’d raced horses and kissed him not far from here. 

“Well met, Master Denys,” she says instead, stamping out the flicker of the girl inside her and sliding into her crisp queen’s voice instead. “I trust you have men and horses for us.”

She has her pick of the herds, and selects an ashen grey stallion with a shining black mane. Wisp, she decides she’ll call him, for her girlhood pony. Harry looks bemused by the name, but holds his tongue, refusing a new horse out of loyalty to his trusty steed, whose neck he pats affectionately. 

They continue on their way the next day near four hundred men stronger for it. It’s better than nothing, she tells herself. The men of Barrowton report a white raven from the Citadel not two days past. They can finally stop warning of ‘real’ winter. It’s here. Arya takes Mors out hawking with Dana and Lyra at least once a day, and twice comes back with hares for supper. She seems more spirited, less cautious and sullen the further north they move, and Nell can tell Catelyn is relieved by it. Perhaps finally getting to see her father’s bones has helped as well. 

Nell wonders if she saw him die, then decides it’s best not to think on that.

Mostly she tries to keep her thoughts centered on Lysara. It disturbs her to realize that she can’t even picture a face when it comes to her daughter- she was just two moons old when she was taken, she had the same scrunched up pink face as all infants, but now is six moons, a real child- mayhaps even beginning to teeth, and Nell knows nothing of her. Nothing. She doesn’t know what Lysara looks like beyond her auburn hair and pale eyes, she doesn’t know what makes her laugh and smile, she doesn’t know what she likes to play with or how she likes to sleep, she doesn’t know what frightens or her or makes her cry.

Sometimes it feels like she’s trying to remember someone who was never there at all. 

“Once you have her in your arms again, it will be as if no time’s passed at all,” Catelyn tries to console her. “Trust me, Nell. She’ll come to know you as her mother again. She’s so young; she won’t remember any of this.”

Nell almost wishes Lysara would, so she’d know her mother fought to get back to her, how Nell never wanted to leave her, never, she swore she’d find her, and she will, she has- But it is hard. It would be easier if she could commiserate and remember with Robb. But he could no sooner reminisce about their babe with her than he could grow horns. He remembers the feeling of holding something small and warm in his arms, and he says he remember what she smelled like, that oddly sweet smell all babies seem to share, but he doesn’t remember the birth. Doesn’t remember seeing her for the first time. Doesn’t remember naming her.

Nell tells him like she would tell a child a story, most nights, omits nothing, tries to whisper the memories back into his ear, curled up with him under the furs, her hand on his cold, cold chest. “You said,” she whispers, listening to the wind howl and sometimes, Grey Wind howl along with it, “you said to me, _I love you. I love our daughter. Our babe. I will love you if you give me another girl, I will love you if you give me no more children at all_. When I told you about my father, you told me, _You were a child. A little girl. He had no cause to treat his wife and daughter like that. No one does_. You promised me his bastard’s head. You said you believed me, you trusted me, because I was your wife and your queen and you loved me. You named our babe for someone very dear to me. That is how much you loved her. I could see it in your eyes.”

His eyes were always so expressive, that deep, beautiful blue. She’d never found any treachery or deception in them. He’d never lied to her. Could she say the same? Sometimes, especially in the nights, she wishes it had been her. He could have gone on without her. It would have broken his heart to lose her, but he would have survived, would have been strong for their child. Had the Brotherhood found her corpse in the river, they would not have wasted Beric’s last life on her. She would have been dead, and at peace, or something like it, and Robb would have fought and won and taken his revenge and he could have kept Lysara safe. He would have succeeded where she failed.

He regards her in the dark for a moment longer, than closes those hollow grey eyes. She’s almost relieved to be able to stop searching them for some spark of recognition and remembrance. She’d hoped that the closer they drew to Winterfell, to his birthplace, his home, that he might begin to improve, come back to himself. But she cannot forget Harry’s words, either. _Must you have your head in his jaws before you see it?_

Nell hadn’t thought he could dream anymore, but she doesn’t know what else to call the twitches and whimpers that overtake him that night. She wakes in a cold sweat to find him convulsing and trembling beside her, eyelids twitching, and when she calls out in a quiet, hoarse voice for Grey Wind, there is no response. The wolf, the warg- whatever Grey Wind is now, if he is part of Robb or Robb part of him, he doesn’t come. “Robb, wake up, it’s just a dream,” she murmurs, pulling the furs from his chest, then starts when she sees how the wound is weeping black blood, the scab broken over yet again.

“No,” Nell whispers to herself, her unease growing into genuine terror. “No, no, not like this-,” She grabs at his shoulder and shakes him, claws at his sternum with her nails, all but straddles him and slaps at his face. “Wake up, wake up, don’t- don’t you dare, Robb, wake up!”

His eyes snap open with a muffled shout and his right hand wraps around her throat as he bucks underneath her. They roll over on the bedspread and Nell makes a hoarse choked off noise of sheer fear because while he’s not throttling her, she can’t speak- he lets go and she inhales and exhales frantically as he slumps down beside her. His blood is on her scratchy woolen shift and the palms of her hands. He coughs, the sound rattling in his throat, and wipes something dark from his mouth. 

Nell blinks back hot tears. “Don’t leave me,” she all but snarls, voice ragged and wretched in her throat. “Don’t- I thought you were dying.”

“I’m here now,” he says. “I’m here. Don’t cry. Nell.”

She can’t look at him. She won’t. She rolls over, away from him, heart pounding. After a moment he slowly puts an arm around her waist, the way he always would when they shared a bed at Riverrun. “I can give you his head,” he says. “I can give you that. Both their heads and the babe. Will that make you happy? Don’t cry.”

 _Our babe_ , she wants to correct him, but finds it easier to let sleep take her back instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Sorry about not getting this out earlier; I had a busier week than usual and lost out on some writing time as a result. I've been trying to keep chapters at 5000+ words for a little while now to make up for the slower updating schedule.
> 
> 2\. Jory's never been been to White Harbor; she spent pretty much her whole life on Bear Island prior to the big march south. Some other big stuff is going on in the periphery of this fic- Cersei's forced march of shame, the invasion of the Stormlands by Jon Conn, Young Griff, and the Golden Company, and then at the very end of her narrative, news of Kevan Lannister's assassination and the official arrival of winter.
> 
> 3\. Jory and co. are all on Red Alert when it comes to Littlefinger, but are also mindful of the fact that Sansa just really, really, wants to get home in one piece. And much like a young Robert, Harry... has very little interest in the mundane aspects of ruling. The Gulltown Arryns are canonically looked down upon by the snotty Vale lords for having married into tradesmen and merchants. They don't really give a fuck, as it's made them very, very rich.
> 
> 4\. Because Sansa has managed to get the actual wedding postponed, Harry would be the only one being officially crowned 'King of the Vale' here. I didn't cover the actual coronation because Jory's section was already long enough.
> 
> 5\. Hyle did a good deed without being browbeaten into it! Progress! (Ironically enough, both Jory and Hyle have no idea that Pod has, in fact, killed his first man already- Ser Mandon Moore back at the Battle of the Blackwater).
> 
> 6\. Yeesh, poor Wallace. And Jory "I totally have a boyfriend, but you wouldn't know him, he doesn't go to this school" Mormont. Don't tell me Brienne never had a rebellious stage. She's only just turned 20. She's still in the middle of one.
> 
> 7\. I apologize for the Nell section being considerably shorter but since less plot was actually happening there, it made sense. Harry is tired. He needs some coffee. And Nymeria is leading her massive wolf pack east. I wonder why? Plus a throwback to Denys from Chapter 2, way back when. Nell's not the only one who's had to grow up fast.
> 
> 8\. Next chapter we will be seeing Beth and Barb again. And Stannis, very soon (as in, very, very soon, I promise). As always, you can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com).


	76. Beth X - Barbrey III

300 AC - THE HORNWOOD

Beth thinks they have been running for at least ten days when they hear the dogs. The first day, they dozed fitfully in a huddled lump in the witch’s root cellar, only to waken with a jolt at dawn to hear the sounds of Alyn leading men through the village. There was a lot of shouting and dogs barking and roosters crowing as the Dreadton roused itself in confusion, and Bandy kept crying and saying they need to make a run for it before they’re found, but Beth insisted they stay put, and Palla agreed. They moved further back and spread out against the earthen walls, pulled old burlap sacks and half-rotten crates over themselves, and waited. 

And waited. Until finally they could hear the familiar snuffling of the hounds outside, and Alyn’s furious tones, and the muffled replies of the witch and her family, until finally someone yanked the cellar doors open. The wood had groaned and a rush of cold air had come into the dark space. Beth had watched from a corner as Ribcage, half blind as he was, sniffed the air, and Alyn crouched down to peer into the darkness. Beth had tried to go far away inside her head, to forget she had a body at all, so she would not move even a muscle. Neither had anyone else. Ribcage had turned his snout away, and Alyn had stood back up, kicking the cellar doors shut again. 

After that, they’d just waited until nightfall, and clambered out, keeping low to the ground to avoid being seen. Beth had been giddy with hunger and exhilaration that they’d succeeded so far, even if the distant smell of smoke from the Dreadfort had made her sick. Turnip kept asking about Arra and if she was dead or going to join them, until Shyra told him to shut up. They crossed the Weeping Water at the rickety little walker’s bridge on the outskirts of the village, trying to be as quiet and quick as possible. Once over it, with a river between them and the Dreadfort, they’d all found a burst of speed and started moving as quickly as possible, above all trying to keep from getting wet. They’d stolen furs and cloaks and hats and gloves, but if they got wet they’d get cold that much faster, and if they got too cold they’d die. 

It had not snowed for the first three days, and then it had on the fourth. The fresh snow made it easier to see their surroundings by nightfall, glowing white on the ground in the moonlight, but it also made Beth worry about them leaving tracks. They couldn’t afford to waste much time in trying to hide their trail, but sometimes they’d take turns dragging logs or bundles of sticks behind them in an attempt to obscure their footprints at much as possible. Twice they dared to start a small fire deep in the wood, only at night, when no one would be outside to see the smoke. But that made Beth too nervous; what if someone found the remains of their campfires and reported it back to the Dreadfort? They were still on Bolton land.

They hadn’t been able to bring much food with them, and they were through with it by the sixth day, even with very careful rationing of the bread and cheese and some scraps of dried fruit. On the seventh night they crept into a small village and Turnip dared to climb through a broken kitchen window in order to steal some bread. It was the riskiest thing they’d done the entire time of their escape, and Palla had been convinced he’d be caught and they’d be captured by the villagers and handed right back over to Sour Alyn. But he hadn’t, and they’d gorged themselves on two loaves of bread and some very sour and almost rock hard berries Shyra and Bandy plucked from some bushes. The berries had made nearly everyone feel sick to their stomach for hours afterwards, but no one had vomited them back up, and Beth had tried to make everyone keep drinking water whenever they could find it, even if they weren’t thirsty. 

On the eighth day, their hiding place in a cave where they were trying to get some scant sleep was almost discovered by a woodcutter, but then he’d heard his son yelling for him and gone away, and they’d had time to make a run for it. On the ninth day, she was certain they were close to the Hornwood. They’d gone past three hills and what seemed like the correct amount of streams, and the village where they’d spent a day hiding inside an abandoned mill had seemed like it might be the last village she recalled from the map- the last Bolton village. Beyond that, the woods had loomed darker and deeper, and the trees were bigger, stronger, and despite the hunger and the cold and the creeping exhaustion that made her feel faint at times, Beth had been sure this was it. 

They were almost there. They’d almost made it. On the tenth day, they’d taken the risk of traveling during the daylight hours when Palla spotted was looked like a marker alongside a low stone wall. The sigil didn’t really look much like a bullmoose, more like a crude outline, but it wasn’t the X of the flayed man, so they’d clambered over the wall and moved more boldly, with unfounded confidence, certain they were very, very close to safety. Then, late in the afternoon, they’d heard the first faint barking of the dogs and the bellow of a horn. 

What follows Beth can’t even think straight about; Palla goes pale as snow and the twins begin to tremble. Turnip timidly suggests turning back- mayhaps they won’t be punished as badly if they willingly surrender themselves to Alyn and Grunt. Beth nearly hits him. “They haven’t seen us yet,” she says. “They might smell us, but they haven’t seen us. It will be dark soon. When the sun goes down, they’ll have to make camp for the night. They’ll light a fire and we’ll know where they are, and we can just keep running in the opposite direction. We’ll get closer to the castle, and we’ll be safe.”

“We’re nowhere near Hornwood castle,” Palla hisses. “They’ll catch us for sure, and when they do-,”

“You an’ Palla killed Damon, an’ Arra burned the godswood,” Bandy says. “They’ll kill us all. They’ll bring our heads back for the wall, like Kyra,” she’d begun to sob a little then.

Beth’s head begins to pound. “No,” she says. “No, they won’t catch us. They won’t. We got this far. Didn’t we? We just have to be careful. We can make it. We’re on Hornwood lands now. People will help us-,”

“No one is goin’ to help us,” Shyra snaps. “They don’t care! They crossed right over into Hornwood territory, they did! They know Lady Hornwood won’t do anything!”

The dogs bay again, louder, in the distance, and there’s no more time for arguing. They’re too busy running. They run, and stop to catch their breath for a few minutes, and sometimes just hide, waiting to hear if they’re still being tracked, and then run again when they hear the dogs- it feels like a sick game, like hide-and-seek or Come Into My Castle. Beth knows they cannot keep this pace up forever. Palla, the eldest and strongest of them- even she is lagging and panting, and Turnip keeps clutching at the stitch in his side. Shyra says they should have stolen horses. Bandy says that’s stupid, they would have tracked the horses down even quicker.

“Keep going,” Beth rasps, after swallowing a mouthful of freezing water from a trickling stream, and they begin to run again. The sunlight starts to drain from the wood. She can smell torches, carried on the wind. She wishes it would snow, or rain again, but the moon is rising clear as anything overhead, illuminating the six inches of snow on the ground, and it is clear that Alyn has no intentions of stopping. 

They’re going to be caught, she realizes with a terrible jolt then. Sooner or later, they will be caught. The men are on horseback, and they are on foot, weighed down by their furs. If they take off the heavy furs and cloaks to run faster, they will freeze quicker until they can’t move at all. If they try to wait and hide, they will be found by the dogs. They are deep in the wood now. There is nowhere else to go. She does not have to say it; they all seem to know it, even Turnip, whose snot has frozen across his trembling lips. 

“We have to split up,” says Palla. “They won’t find all of us.”

They might, but she’s right. Their only chance is to split up and hope that whoever is caught is enough of a distraction that one or two of the others can escape. Shyra wraps her arms around Bandy, who clings back to her, their brown hair intermingling as if they were becoming one twin. Turnip starts to reach for Beth’s hand, then jerks his hand back as if scared she’ll turn on him. Beth feels a horrible, ugly lump of sadness in her throat. It wasn’t enough. Even with- even with Arra’s help and all their planning, it wasn’t enough. They were stupid to think they’d get away.

She remembers how it felt to be naked with her hands bound to a wooden post in front of her, and someone circling with a whip, laughing. She remembers how it felt to have the X branded into her neck, how she could smell her flesh cooking. She remembers a thousand cruelties and pains and humiliations. She remembers her father’s kindly brown eyes and Jory ruffling her curls, back when her hair was long. There’s another howl, even closer, and Turnip sniffles. 

But Palla starts. “That was no dog.”

Beth listens, even through her growing terror. Again, the howl, bouncing off the trees, and an answering chorus. That’s a wolf. She knows that much. She’s heard plenty of direwolves howl, when there were still Starks in Winterfell instead of corpses. And not just one. Many. An entire pack. “If we keep goin’, we’ll run right into them,” Shyra says shakily. “They’ll tear us apart, they will- they’re hungry!”

Beth stands there, listens to the faint baying of the dogs, excited now that they smell the wolves as well. Once she dreamed a girl in grey who told her to listen. Just listen. To what, Beth did not know then. She thinks she does now. She still thinks she might be mad. She feels so sure. Once when she was a Cassel and had a father who loved her, she would embroider their sigil on kerchiefs for her papa. Ten white wolf heads. Four three two one. Four three two one. She remembers mumbling it under her breath to keep track as she sewed, despite Sansa and Jeyne giggling at her. They are dead now. But she’s still here.

A wolf howls. Four three two one. Another wolf howls. Ten wolves is a pack. A pack is strong. Once there were four wolves; her father and her mother and her and Jory. Now they are all dead, and it’s just Beth. Four three two one. The dogs are barking and men are shouting close by, but the howling nearly drowns them out. Beth looks at Palla and Turnip and the twins. “We have to,” she says. You are never alone. She doesn’t quite remember what her father’s voice sounded like anymore, but she can pretend.

Palla picks up Turnip, the smallest of them all, only eight, and tiny even for eight. She sets him on her her back, arranges her arms under short legs. “Hold on.” He locks his arms obediently around her neck. Beth gathers her fur close around her. Bandy and Shyra release their tight embrace, but continue to hold hands, a tremulous link between their two bodies. Beth inhales the air around her, which is cold and sharp as knives. It burns down her throat like smoke. She looks through the dark trees and their branches, twisting in the wind. 

She runs. She does not run bravely; she runs like a frightened rabbit, skittish and heart-pounding, but she runs all the same, towards howling wolves, and away from the howling dogs. She runs downhill, scrambles across a dried out stream bed, clambers up the rocky other side, losing a glove in the process, trips and falls, is hauled back on her feet by Bandy, keeps running. She can hear their horses now, and their shouts. Gradually the others disappear from her line of sight; Palla forges ahead to the right, clutching Turnip, and the twins vanish into the foliage to the left.

Beth looks back at her death racing after her, and sees Sour Alyn on horseback with a large deerhound loping ahead. He sees her glimpse him, and his face twists into a vicious snarl. It almost doesn’t matter. It could be Ramsay. It could be Damon come back from the dead. It could be anyone. If she keeps looking back at him, he will catch her, so she turns round and continues to run until her legs feel as though they might melt from the exertion. She’s so cold she’s hot, so hot she’s cold. Her hat is ripped off, her hair snarls on branches, one of the dogs draws closer enough that she can feel its breath hot on the back of her leg.

It lunges forward with a snarl, teeth clamping just above her ankle, and Beth trips, falls, rolls, until she is tumbling forward down a slope, girl-and-dog, dog-and-girl, and she fists her hands in its wet fur and rips and tears and screams into its ears as it releases her leg only to go in for a bite to her thigh. Beth’s back slams into the hard, packed snow, she feels its teeth snap at her hip, and then it’s ripped away, and there’s an awful crack of small bones snapping. Like when a cat kills a rabbit. Only there is no cat here, and no rabbit. The wolf in front of her crunches down on the deerhound in its jaws, blood spraying across the snow, then tosses it aside with a snarl. Beth stares into gold eyes, and gold eyes stare into her. 

“Summer?” she whispers, but that’s wrong. Summer’s eyes were more witchy yellow than harvest moon gold, and his fur was a lighter shade of grey.

A horse is all but shrieking in terror nearby.

It is not a wolf, it is a direwolf, and the biggest creature she has ever seen in her life, so close to her. It pants, exhaling warm air into the cold night. Beth stares back at it, head throbbing and back aching, then scrambles to her feet. The wolf lunges; she shrieks- it brushes past her, all but knocking her back to the forest floor, and surges towards Alyn’s mount; Beth sees him fighting to keep hold of the reins, swinging his sword wildly; it grazes the direwolf, but the horse bucks, throws him, and runs, dragging him with it, his foot caught in the stirrups. Beth watches his thrashing, screaming form collide with a heavy tree trunk, flip over it, and disappear into the undergrowth, his shouting replaced by the sounds of the horses hooves galloping away.

Beth looks in wonder at the wolf- mayhaps this is just a pleasant dream- but she- and she doesn’t know it’s a she, she just thinks it’s a she, maybe because there was always something a little wolfish in Arra’s blue-grey eyes, for all that she turned out to be a Karstark through and through- and then it’s gone, pursuing the horse, howling again. The answering chorus is all around her, thrumming through the trees. Beth turns right back around, and keeps running. 

She runs straight into another rider, or nearly; Beth bursts out into a small clearing only to see a black gelding cutting across it, straight for her; she throws herself to the side; the rider spots her and manages to turn, circling back around. Beth snatches up a large stone and throws it; it misses by a mile. “GET AWAY FROM ME!” she screams, hoping this will attract the attention of the direwolf. She still hears the howling, but no furry shapes emerge. She can’t run anymore; her leg hurts, badly; she can see she’s leaving a faint blood trail across the snow, and her heart feels like it might explode in her chest.

The gelding slows to a canter as it approaches, and Beth continues to scramble backwards; the snow is a bit deeper here, and so she’s moving slower. The rider slides out of the saddle; a short man, she thinks, she doesn’t recognize him as one of the Bolton guards- he raises his torch, and she realizes he is not wearing red and pink at all, and his cloak is dark green. Then he gets close enough that she sees he is no man at all- just a boy, three-and-ten or maybe four-and-ten. His long dark hair is braided tightly back from his face, and his features are very sharp and pointed.

“Get away from me,” she says again, no energy left to scream. She raises a bare, bloodied hand, as if that will do her any good. “The wolves are here. They’ll kill you too.”

Instead of continuing to advance on her, he crouches down. Beth stills. A flicker of recognition blooms in her chest. He looks like-

He holds a hand out to her, not to take, but so she can watch him make a fist. He takes the fist and raps it against his chest. 

“Sorry,” she breathes, understanding now, who he is and what he’s saying. “Sorry.”

He nods, then jerks his head towards the torch in his hand, and points at her. His mouth twitches slightly. 

Beth slowly feels at her auburn hair, tangled clump that it is, spilling around her ears. Fire hair, he’s saying. Once a young Ironborn tried to touch her hair and tell her that. Lucky hair. He is in front of her now, helping her onto her feet. He pauses and looks to her, tilting his head, and she understands he is asking if she can walk. 

“Yes,” she says, and begins to stumble forwards, but it’s hard. He switches the hand clutching the torch and loops the other under her armpit, propelling her forward with him. She can hear something crashing through the bushes nearby, but Wex Pyke seems unafraid. He helps her mount his gelding first, then clambers up into the saddle in front of her. Beth holds onto his shoulders, then realizes she’ll fall and locks an arm around his narrow waist instead. He’s still as skinny and angular as she remembers, although he’s a bit taller. 

She doesn’t know where they’re going, and she finds she doesn’t much care, so long as it’s away from her. They ride for a little while; not long enough for her to be lulled to sleep by the motion of the horse. She keeps her eyes closed all the same, and the sounds of the wood blur together. Wolves howl, dogs bark, and men and horses scream. Then they are replaced by new sounds; wood crackles and burns, people speak and doors slam open and shut along with running feet. Banners flap in the breeze. When she opens her eyes, there is light all around her; the village Wex is riding into is blazing with it; everywhere she looks torches and braziers are lit; everything glows umber and orange.

None of the men she sees look familiar. Some of them to have no real armor at all; other seem proper knights. The prevalent color seems to be green, with purple and blue and orange thrown in. She clings to the sight of the orange, and looks around frantically for any glimpse of her friends. She tries to call out their names, but all that comes out is a hoarse gasp. Wex glances back at her, brow furrowed. 

He guides the gelding to a halt in front of a ramshackle village tavern; the sort of place that doubles as an alehouse and a meeting hall and whatever the people need it to be. There are candles burning in all the windows. When she looks up, the first stars are appearing. The door swings open as Wex slips silently out of the saddle, and a woman comes out, a child in her arms. Beth first sees that the child is Turnip, and cries out for him, and then sees that she knows this woman, too. The woman sees her; she looks confused, and then, as Wex helps Beth climb down from the saddle, she asks carefully, as if afraid of spooking her, “What is your name, child? Don’t worry, you’re safe enough here. A hundred good men are cleansing my wood with Bolton blood.”

Beth stares up at Lady Donella Hornwood; her hair has gone completely snow white, and there are more lines in her face than ever before. She looks as though she’d aged a decade in two years. Beth feels much the same. She tries to speak, but still no words come out, and then finally gasps, “Cassel. Cassel, the wolves- did you send them- I don’t- Turnip, what’s wrong with Turnip-,”

“Nothing, nothing, the poor lad is just exhausted,” Lady Hornwood tries to soothe her, even as her dark eyes rove across Beth’s face, searching for the pretty little girl from Winterfell, not the ragged, scarred and filthy thing in front of her. “Cassel? Are you… are you Beth Cassel, Ser Rodrik’s little girl?”

“BETH!” someone shouts. 

Beth turns, still dazed, to see Palla running towards her, tripping over her mud-stained skirt. Her hair is flying in her face and she’s panting, but alive. “Beth, you’re alright, you-,” She spots Wex and recognition floods her; she skids to a halt. “You,” her tone shifts to disgust and a little fear- “Get away from her, squid!”

“It’s alright,” Lady Donella is soothing, reaching a hand towards Palla, who shies away. “Wex rode here with three hundred men of House Manderly, as well as Flints of Widow’s Watch and Woolfields of Ramsgate-,”

“Where’re the twins?” Beth chokes out, the words in one ear and out the other. “Where’s Bandy and Shyra, are they- did you find them too?”

“They came here with a wolf!” Palla is torn between glaring at Wex, who looks unruffled, and reaching for Turnip, still clinging to Lady Hornwood. “A great direwolf, it just- it walked out of the woods with them on either side of it, like something from a story! You’d never believe it, Beth, I saw another wolf, it pulled Grunt out of the saddle, and it- it just ripped and-,”

Beth has a hundred questions, but the lights keep swimming in her wet eyes, and her surroundings feel like they’re slowly rotating around her, again and again. “Come inside,” Lady Donella is saying, “you’re shivering, child-,”

Beth doesn’t hear the rest; her legs give out, and she crumples towards the ground, only held up by the combined effort of Wex and Palla, who is still cursing at him.

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Barbrey lifts the babe up so she might press a chubby palm to the frigid glass of the windowpane, then smiles slightly when the child recoils. Lysara Stark may be a daughter of autumn, but she’s no more taste for the cold than most, it would seem. Her small hands goes to up her mouth, where she proceeds to chew on her pink fingers thoughtfully, drooling around her single sprouting tooth. Truth be told, Barbrey never had much affection for infants, even when she visited Bethany six months after her sole successful childbirth. Donella looked a good deal like her daughter at this age, although the hair was darker and had less of a curl to it, and her limbs were shorter. She couldn’t sit up on her own this early yet, either, but her daughter can, and now ably rips Barbrey’s shoulders as she peers around the barren nursery. 

Roose’s fat wife rests in a rocking chair in the corner beside Lysara’s cradle, her hands resting atop her own belly. Given her girth, Barbrey was surprised as most when the pregnancy was publicly announced no more than a week after the Bastard’s wedding. But the look on his face was almost worth it; Ramsay looked as if he’d been slapped in the face with a gauntlet, and if his sire noticed his wounded, angry stares from the opposite end of the high table, he gave no sign of it. But that is just like Roose, isn’t it? To toy with everyone, even his own child? He’d continued eating his meal calmly and contentedly after the announcement and the smattering of applause that had followed, ignoring the whispers and murmuring, the dark looks tossed his and his wife’s way before Abel the bard began a new song from his dais. 

Walda Bolton had not looked nearly as smug; if anything, she’d seemed frightened, her small blue eyes darting from her husband to Ramsay and back again, seemingly reluctant to even finish off her meal. Barbrey is not sure who she is more afraid of; Roose, Ramsay, or the murderer roaming their halls. For they do have a murderer. Or murderers. It’s not even been a fortnight since that cursed wedding, and there’s been four deaths since then. Not all proved murders, of course- if a man falls off a wall or down a flight of stairs, who’s to say he was not simply drunk, or slipping on ice underfoot? But two were found dead and naked, one with his cock lopped off and shoved in his mouth. Ramsay was in a fury over the latter; it was one of his Boys, the one they call Yellow Dick.

It wasn’t quite yellow, as it turns out, but Barbrey would wager it looks better in his mouth than it ever did poking out of his breeches.

Between that and the Freys’ growing insistence that the Manderlys must have had the three envoys they sent to White Harbor months ago killed, and the fact that the blizzard has now descended over the castle, blanketing them in fresh, suffocating snow every night, and the uncertainty of how close or far Baratheon’s men are from them- well, Barbrey is shocked there haven’t been more deaths, and it nearly came to a duel this morning. Then Roose insisted on questioning the creature formerly known as Theon Greyjoy, which was another chore for Barbrey to tend to. Theon or Reek or whatever one calls him, has about as good a chance of successfully subduing and killing a man as would a toothless old woman. Is there an assassin roaming the halls of Winterfell, sent by Stannis Baratheon to stoke them into battling each other before he reaches them? Barbrey is doubtful. Most of the northmen here hold one grudge or another- murdered brothers, fathers, sons. Barbrey only wishes they had the sense to hold off a little while longer. The time to strike is when the Boltons and Freys are divided, when Roose has caved and sent men out to deal with Stannis. 

If it comes to warring now, it won’t end well for anyone. If she thought otherwise, she’d have Beron slitting throats whenever it struck her fancy. He may no longer be in the prime of his life, but if it came down to a fight between him and the Bastard, she’d wager on Beron. Youthful strength is one thing. Hardened experience is another. Ramsay made his infamy slaughtering peasants and men taken by surprise, expecting friends and being met with savage foes. Cassel was a doddering old fool who still thought he could fight at fifty as he had at thirty. The Ironborn were a motley group of ignorant louts who would have killed each other over stolen armor or a whore. The boy has yet to meet his proper match, and when he does, and it comes down to two swords, not a knife in the back or an arrow from afar, he’ll learn very quickly that his luck has run out.

All the same, it is fortunate no one has noticed the swords missing from the crypts yet. There might yet be something sweet found in killing Roose Bolton with Brandon Stark’s blade, even if Ice is lost to them. 

Barbrey turns away from the window, Lysara babbling in her arms, and coldly regards Walda, who flinches slightly at her hard stare. “It would do us all more good to see the child out and about, not cooped up in this nursery,” she casts a disdainful stare around the room, which once held the Stark children as babes and toddlers. Since then it has been burned and looted and nearly all of the original furniture and furnishings destroyed, save for a few scattered toys. Lysara is particularly fond of chewing on a wooden carved wolf. Barbrey smooths back her coppery curls, adjusts one of her tiny deerskin slippers.

“My lord husband only worries for her safety, my lady,” Walda says after a moment’s hesitation. “He fears there are those who would wish her ill, or seek to use her for their own gain.”

“Those among us who would wish the heir of Robb Stark’s body ill?” Barbrey asks sardonically. “Aye, perhaps his murderers.” She is not afraid to speak bluntly in front of Walda; it’s obvious there’s little trust for Roose in her, and she stands to gain nothing by informing her husband of Barbrey’s impudence. Roose knows well enough by now he dare not make any direct moves against the lords or ladies present, not unless he is provoked first.

Walda’s gaze drifts from Barbrey to the snowflakes flurrying outside the nursery windows. The rocking chair creaks uneasily. Lysara smiles and reaches for Walda, but Barbrey cannot bring herself to hand the child back over. “I would like to take my niece to the godswood,” she says after a moment. “So we might pray together. Surely Lord Roose cannot object to that.”

Walda seems as if she had not heard her for a moment, then slowly stands from the rocking chair, wincing. “I know you do not trust me,” she says, very quietly, for there is a guard just outside the nursery door. “But I would not have any harm come to Lysara, either.”

“Certainly,” says Barbrey. “If she dies, who will marry whatever wretched little whelp you eventually birth?”

Walda flushes. “Even if I have a daughter-,”

“Pray you have a daughter,” Barbrey tells her coldly. “She might live longer then a son, who Ramsay Snow would see at the bottom of a well before he reached six moons.”

Walda stiffens, her small hand forming a claw over her belly. “I will never let that monster hurt my babe.”

“Then I suppose you will join them at the bottom of the well, for no northman here will raise a finger in defense of Roose’s spawn,” Barbrey says. “Now, may I take the princess to the godswood or not?”

“We need not be enemies,” Walda replies, frowning. “I can help you, if you would only-,”

“Help me?” Barbrey scoffs. “How, pray tell?”

“Roose never intends to leave the Dreadfort to Ramsay,” Walda says in a rush. “He means for our child to claim it, and Ramsay and Lady Arya to have Winterfell, as the cadet branch of House Bolton.”

That does give Barbrey pause. For too long she’s only thought of Ramsay as his father’s dog, barking and biting on command, but perhaps the dog can be used against the master, if he’s hungry enough. 

Walda is looking at her expectantly; Barbrey will concede that if she were wholly loyal to Roose, she would have never revealed such a thing. 

“Even ruined, Winterfell is a far sweeter prize than the Dreadfort,” she says instead. “Can he not see the sense in that?”

“Ramsay doesn’t care about sense. He wants respect. He wants to be Lord Bolton the Dreadfort, not Lord Bolton of Winterfell.”

“Lord Bolton the lesser,” Barbrey smiles thinly. “Well, Roose never did like to share.” She inclines her head to the door. “Now, continue to make yourself useful and procure an escort for myself and the babe.”

Lysara is busy trying to pull her hair loose from its widow’s knot; Barbrey disentangles her small fingers with a scowl as she follows Walda out of the room. True to form, it is the captain they called Steelshanks who is appointed to escort her and the babe to the godswood; Roose must be leery of assigning a minor guard who Barbrey might successfully berate or threaten into leaving her and Lsyara alone. Although it is not as if the godswood itself offers any easy escape, not unless Barbrey sprouts wings. 

For his part, she does not loathe Walton as much as she does most of Roose’s men; he’s quiet, even dour, and respectful, not attempting to engage her in conversation as she walks confidently in the direction of the wood after seeing Lysara properly bundled in a fur blanket and affixing her wool bonnet. The snowfall has temporarily lightened somewhat, but it is still difficult to see very far ahead through the swirling wind and mist, and so Barbrey does not notice the two men standing outside the newly rebuilt stables until the taller of the two pushes off from the wall and into their path.

“My lord,” Walton greets Ramsay plainly, if deferentially, nodding his head, despite the fact that he stands two inches taller than the boy. 

Barbrey lets her dark gaze rover over the imbecile once again. Travel and rationing have leaned him down some, although not by much, as he is as ugly as ever, although dressed in finer clothes than he ever could have dreamed of wearing before his ‘official’ legitimization. 

His face is pink and blotchy from the cold, despite his warm, layered clothes; black slashes with dyed pink fur and a garnet encrusted belt. He’s wearing his customary single earring, and his hair is longer than it was when she first laid eyes on him at the Dreadfort; thick and dark, it falls to his shoulders, as long as his father’s. And they have the same eyes; dead and cold. 

“There she is,” he says, after smiling widely at Barbrey, his attention turning to Lysara, who peers up at him curiously from Barbrey’s eyes, swaddled as she is by fur and heavy wool. “My little niece. It’s a pity we don’t see more of her in the feasting hall, but my lord father is so protective.” He bends slightly so he can get a better look at the babe; Barbrey leans back slightly in barely masked revulsion. Ramsay notices, and smirks all the more.

“Is something wrong, my lady? The weather not to your liking? You and Stannis both, we pray.”

One of his cronies, Lewyn or Luton, sniggers from his position against the stable wall, chewing on something noisily. 

Barbrey wonders if he was there when they butchered Sara Snow out in the wood that night, after dragging her from her bed and throwing her over the back of some saddle. She wonders if he raped her, too. Barbrey has never thought of herself as being overly familiar with her lessers, but Sara was kin to her, her cousin’s daughter, and she was a good woman. She remembers her as a little girl at the wedding of Roose and Bethany, sitting on her father’s lap. Mark was such a gentle sort, one would never have believed he was of Ryswell blood. 

At her own bedding, he’d picked Barbrey up and ran with her to the bedchamber, chuckling as she demanded he put her down this instant, mindless of the fact that he’d just saved her from humiliation and perverse japes. Mark died with Willam, at that tower in Dorne, defeated by Ser Gerold Hightower himself, leaving behind his bastard girl. He’d wanted Sara raised by his kin so she might be spared some of the brutality of a common woman’s life. He’d wanted her brought up with a lady’s education and graces, if not a lady’s title. All of that care and affection, only to be effortlessly torn to pieces when Roose’s bastard decided he wanted her. 

“I’ve seen my share of winters,” she says, “a little snow does not bother me.” Her emphasis on ‘little Snow’ is not lost on him.

Ramsay’s look darkens. “Of course,” he says. “I forget how much of life you’ve seen, my lady. Not like this little one,” his voice goes high and mocking; he grips one of Lysara’s small feet, the babe stares back at him, fixated on his Bolton eyes. Ramsay does not just share those eyes with Roose. 

Barbrey wrenches the child away from him, turning slightly so he cannot easily reach her. “I am taking Lysara to pray with me. We mustn’t tarry long; the wind could kick up again.”

“Lysara,” Ramsay echoes her, as if he hadn’t even bothered to remember the babe’s name, although she knows he must. “Yes. A pretty name, for a pretty babe. I’m sure she’ll be as much of a beauty as her mother was, when she’s grown some.” He narrows his pale eyes at Barbrey, who stares back, refusing to give him the reaction he craves. “We must remember to pray for you as well, Lady Barbrey. To have weathered so many losses… truly, you are the picture of strength.” His lips pull back, revealing his crooked teeth. “Lysara… wasn’t there a Sara once, in your household?”

“Sarra and Serra Frey are among my ladies at present.” She almost regrets mentioning their names in front of him, or any woman’s- Barbrey has no love for the Freys, but she would not wish Ramsay on any maid, even that pretender they all claim is Arya. 

“Sweet little maids, they are,” he says, “but that’s not who I meant. Yes- Sara Snow, wasn’t it?” He grins. “Yes, your Nell’s precious governess. I remember her. So gentle and well-spoken, you could almost forget she was just a bastard.” She can see it in his eyes. He remembers her perfectly, along with all the others. She’s heard him calling for his dogs. There is a Sara among them, a sleek grey bitch with a savage growl. When he is dead, Barbrey means to purchase a farmer’s pig for her supper, and name it Ramsay.

“You of all people, my lord,” Barbrey says, “must have sympathized with the circumstances of her birth. And to think her lord father provided for her in his will and claimed her as his own, and she just a mere woman. I cannot think of many other men who would do such a thing.” Like Roose, she means, who did not claim you as his until you were sixteen and of age, you belligerent, treacherous craven.

Ramsay’s sick grin is momentarily replaced with a snarl, before he composes himself as Walton shifts uneasily in his armor. “She was a fortunate one, aye. A shame she chose to throw it all away and run off like that. Let’s hope this Sara won’t be half as wanton, eh?” 

Barbrey barely restrains herself from slapping him into a daze. Instead she replies tightly, “And it is a shame you will be seeing so little of your niece, when I hear your lord father means to rule from the Dreadfort once our battle with Baratheon is done. But doubtless you are looking forward to assisting with the slow reconstruction of your new home?” She jerks her chin at the new stables behind him. “Perhaps next you might build a new mill, to remind you of your childhood.”

He flushes red as his cloak in fury, and Barbrey turns on her heel and strides away, snapping at Steelshanks to keep up.

He follows into the godswood so far as the hot springs, then stays there, keeping her and the babe in his line of sight, but going no further. Barbrey continues on towards the heart tree, snow crunching pleasantly underfoot. With the warmth of the springs at her back, the cold is not so bitter, and Lysara, who has never been in any godswood before, is all agog, eyes flitting here and there, straining to reach the red, red leaves of the tree just overhead. 

Barbrey shushes her, then stiffly crouches in the snow, leery of kneeling and soaking through her heavy black skirts. The solemn face of the heart tree glowers back at her, nowhere near as reassuring as the much smaller weirwood in the godswood of Barrowton. This is the tree she would have prayed at, had she wed Brandon. This is the tree they would have been wed before, the tree they would have named their children under. This place would have felt like home to her.

Now it just feels like regret, and grief. She watched Nell wed Robb Stark here; so buoyant with pride. She should have put her foot down; insisted Nell stay back, intervened, made the foolish, stubborn child see sense. But Nell had taken her repeated warnings to hasten a pregnancy along to heart. Barbrey does blame herself for that. Had she been less insistent on the matter of a Stark son, Nell might have seen the sense in staying behind. They might still have lost the war, but at least they would still hold the North. They could have remarried her to one of the younger brothers, and she’d have enjoyed a long regency waiting for him to come of age.

But then Lysara would not exist. Barbrey glances down at the babe, chewing on one of her bonnet strings. She strokes her head. “We shall pray that one day you will see your mother,” she murmurs. “And we shall pray that one day very soon, we will see your grandfather and uncle dead. Isn’t that right, sweetling?”

Lysara hiccups in agreement, yawning. Barbrey presses a tentative kiss to her head, then bows her head in prayer. She cannot be certain how long she crouches there, but the snapping of twigs underfoot alerts her. Barbrey jerks up, ready to lambast Walton for intruding, but finds herself face to face with the Turncloak himself instead. He must have been walking through the wood; that seems to be all he does, these days. Walk and walk and walk, like a prisoner making a penitent march. She supposes it gives him something to do other than cower in a corner, waiting for Ramsay to take notice again. 

They are all well aware of the fit the Bastard thrown when first deprived sole control over his ‘Reek’. Now Greyjoy is allowed to freely roam the castle only because he can barely clutch a cup of ale, nevermind a knife, and has the body of a shriveled old man, not the young warrior he once was. His hair is white and thinning at the scalp, his teeth are a broken jumble in his scabby mouth, and he hobbles everywhere he walks. He might be dressed in proper clothes now, not filthy rags, but men look at him with disgust and contempt wherever he goes.

And why not? It is in no small part due to him that they are all here now, although he’s likely too mad to realize it. 

“Your god is more like to be found at the bottom of the moat than in this wood, Greyjoy,” Barbrey says after a moment, having risen to her feet and only met with silence from him. He looks slightly dazed, dark eyes haunted and glossy as though he were running a fever. 

“Did you hear it too?” he asks instead.

Barbrey shifts her grip on Lysara protectively; he is quite mad, after all, and had Nell has the fortune to conceive a child on her wedding night and stayed in the North to birth it, he would have dashed that babe’s brains out along with the little princes’. “Hear what?” she inquires sharply.

He doesn’t immediately respond. “It was speaking to me,” he says after a moment. “The tree. It’s never done that before… before, my lady.” He looks almost… contented, but only for an instant, before all trace of dreamy giddiness vanishes from his wrinkled, pasty face. He bows his head, murmuring an apology, and moves to shuffle away. 

“Once Robb Stark was like a brother to you, was he not?” Barbrey says spitefully after him. “And now you cannot even look upon his child.”

Theon Greyjoy does not turn back to face her, but he does halt, his narrow shoulders trembling as if with repressed sobs. 

“A pity,” she says. “You and I both had ample cause to hate Ned Stark. Had you stayed your hand, you might have prospered in the new North my niece would have built. Now you will die in the only castle you ever reaved, Greyjoy.”

Lysara babbles something again, and Theon turns quickly as if called by name. His broken gaze passes over her round little face, and then tears away again, as if scalded. “She looks like Rickon,” he says, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Tell me,” says Barbrey, “did you look that babe in the eyes while you murdered him?”

She may have loathed Catelyn Tully for claiming what ought to have been hers, but she would have never wished the loss of a child upon her, particularly one so violent. Butchered in their very beds.

“I never,” Theon whispers, shaking his head. “I never- that wasn’t me-,”

“No, that was some other man, was it? Not you, Reek,” she spits. “Leave me, before I call Steelshanks over and have him drown you in the springs. Roose cannot shield you from the wrath forever.” 

He shakes violently and shuffles away from her; Lysara looks up at Barbrey, who fights to smooth away the angry lines of her face. “Don’t cry,” she says, though the babe shows no signs of distress. “Hush now. Soon this farce will be over, my sweet, and you shall have a fine new seat in your ancestors' hall.”

The leaves of the weirwood tree rustle suddenly in the wind, but it does sound uncannily like a child’s whispering. Barbrey starts suddenly, feeling an uncommon pulse of genuine unease in her chest, and the heat of the nearby springs seems to fall away entirely, replaced by a new and unfamiliar cold. Lysara reaches for the tree again, but Barbrey pulls her away, ignoring her whine of upset. “It’s getting too cold for you.”

The cold, uneasy feeling fades once she is back indoors, only to return with a vengeance that night, when the castle comes alive with shouts and torches to reveal the newly built stables collapsed, killing two grooms and twenty six horses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. So now we see the reason why there seem to be less-than-would-be-expected men of House Manderly, House Hornwood, House Widowflint, etc present at Winterfell. The fact that Donella Hornwood was not, in fact, kidnapped and murdered by Ramsay a year and a half ago is finally coming back into play, much to Beth's good fortune! I worried that her section of this chapter might seem 'off' in terms of tone but ultimately I think it was nice to have a hope spot and some sense of justice in there. It says a lot about the survivor's bond between these kids that even when they believe they're about to be captured and brutally killed, they still try to look out for each other.
> 
> 2\. Turns out Nymeria and company were looking for less of a 'what' and more of a 'who'. Also, Wex is back in the picture! Much like in canon, here we see he survived Ramsay's sack of Winterfell and eventually got caught up by House Manderly. I really enjoyed writing the one brief scene he and Beth had way back when, so I'm glad they get to interact again in the narrative.
> 
> 3\. Nell instructed Walda to try to gain Barbrey's trust in order to save Lysara, but given Barbrey's rampant suspicion, that's easier said than done. That said, Walda brings up something which I think will also play a large role in canon- Ramsay doesn't really want Winterfell. What he wants is for his father to fully recognize and embrace him as his rightful heir and to step into his seat the Dreadfort as the undisputed Lord Bolton. His entire identity is wrapped up in trying to prove himself to Roose and prove himself 'worthy' of the Bolton name. The fact that Roose is now slated to have another trueborn child who will get the Dreadfort while Ramsay is stuck at Winterfell with the 'leftovers' of House Stark's legacy infuriates him. 
> 
> 4\. Barbrey is, unwisely or not, more contemptuous towards Ramsay than frightened. She basically feels that he is overhyped and that all his 'victories' have been against people who didn't stand much of a chance in the first place, or who he took by surprise. She regards Roose as the real threat. That said, she is also genuinely vengeful on behalf of Sara Snow too. There's also something a bit freaky about the fact that Ramsay and Nell have very similar eyes, so Lysara is literally seeing part of her mother on her uncle's face. 
> 
> 5\. We don't see Barbrey's whole 'I wanted to be a Stark, too' spiel here with Theon because she blames him in part for the entire downfall of the Starks and the loss of Winterfell to the Boltons. Given her interest in Lysara's future, she has a grudge against Theon that she doesn't really have in canon. (Also, I just didn't want to rewrite Theon's scenes from ADOD). 
> 
> 6\. "Has Bran learned how to use weirwood trees as his private cellphone network?" Well, we'll be finding out real soon. Next chapter will involve a snowstorm, a lot of Stannis, probably some bloodshed. 
> 
> 7\. You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com).


	77. Barbrey IV - Donella LI

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Barbrey is almost pleased with the smell of blood; it temporarily masks the rancid smell of shit. Since the collapse of the stables, the majority of the horses have been moved in doors, lest they freeze to death in the cold, and as a result, the castle smells. They’ll kill some horses for their meat, a taste Barbrey is well-acquainted with; horses never went to waste in the Rills, but the rest… Well, the rest shit towers and piss buckets, and the Great Hall looks more a pigsty than what was once a grand feasting place. 

Of course, now it looks a proper slaughterhouse. It had to happen eventually, and today it so went that the latest corpse to be found was one of Ramsay’s squires, the Frey boy- she can never keep them straight, but it was the bigger one. A plump little ingrate, much like the rest of his kin. Hosteen Frey had come in clutching his body with the other Walder- no, the one they call Big Walder, despite being smaller. She will never make sense of these southrons. Big Walder, sly little fox that he was- she’d seen those shifty eyes on a thousand men before- had immediately pointed fingers at the Manderlys, and so it went, and so it went-

“So young,” Wyman Manderly had said, still shoving his face with sausage, but for the first time Barbrey had glimpsed something colder and harder in those watery eyes, lurking behind that jolly red face hanging with jowls and whiskers, “Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived, he would have grown up to be a Frey.”

That had set them all off like stallions in heat. Barbrey could confess to leaning forward eagerly in her seat, even as her own elderly father braced her with an arm and drew his own steel- as if withered old Rodrik Ryswell, five-and-sixty, could have held off any of them! Luckily, the brawl had not reached the dais, but the smell of the blood and gore had wafted over to them all the same. To his credit, Roose had not been slow on the draw- forty of his own men had sprung into action to stop the fighting, but it was too late by then for six Manderly soldiers and two Frey men.

Barbrey had torn off another strip of jerky with her teeth and watched with great pleasure as Luton, that was his name, leering, lurking, lewd Luton, one of Ramsay’s favorites, writhed on the ground, sobbing in pain, as the clashing of steel finally came to a halt. Crying for his mother like a child, trying to hold in his entrails, seeing his own breakfast spill out onto the floor, no doubt. Barbrey had seen plenty of men die in her life, some very violently, but it’d been all she could stomach to fight back a smile at this. Ramsay had curled his lip in disgust at his friend’s wails, snatched a spear from the nearest guard, and driven it into Luton’s chest, one-handed. 

Then Roose had declared- quite conveniently- that word had arrived that Stannis’ men were just a three days’ march away, and sent them all on their way. The Manderlys, the Freys, the lot of them. Sixteen hundred Freys and some three hundred Manderlys, escorted out separate gates without so much as a ‘safe travels’. She wonders if Roose imagines they will fall on each other as soon as they’re half a day’s ride from Winterfell, not that the small number of Manderly men would stand much of a chance against the Frey host. Then again, Hother Umber has been rumbling to her father about Mors plotting something- Mors, who supposedly stayed behind to mind Last Hearth. Barbrey can’t imagine what; the Umbers only brought four hundred men, and she earnestly believes that was no trick- their lands are sparsely populated as it is, and the majority of their young, fit men followed the Jons south to war. They do call it ‘Last Hearth’ for a reason. What, is Mors camped out in the woods with a few green boys and old men, covered in war paint and foliage? 

Then the damned bard had begun wailing and strumming his worn down lute, and Barbrey had taken advantage of the clean-up of the hall and the sounds of the mediocre, in her opinion, music to steal out into a corridor with her father. She might have flagged down the Slates or Jonelle Cerwyn as well, but Roose might have taken notice of that, and wiry old Ondrew Locke was too busy helping the maester get Wyman Manderly, still gushing blood, onto a stretcher. Barbrey doubts that one will live out the week. Even if his wound was not fatal, Roose cannot tolerate another open act of rebellion. He will see Wyman smothered with a pillow or his medicine tainted if he has to.

“The time to act is soon,” she tells her father as soon as they are in an abandoned stairwell. Beron is keeping watch nearby. “It is just as I have said. He’s divided his men.”

Barbrey has never pretended to be close to her father; Rodrik was never a man who expressed much interest in his daughters, not when he had so many fine sons to tend to, but she does think him more open to her advice now that she is a weary and wizened old widow and not a troublesome girl anymore. Or perhaps it is just that his fire and his pride have dimmed over the years. The deaths of Young Roose, then Rickard, then Roger have crushed him; anyone who knows him can attest to that. He walks with a hunch now, and his hands sometimes shake when he is in his cups. They were his pride and joy, his precious sons. Now they are just memories, and his heir is Roger’s eldest, young Mark, newly one-and-ten. 

He looks at her now, dark eyes in an old, lined face, framed by bristly grey hair on all sides- Ryswell men never bald, that’s true enough, they only look more and more horsey as they age. Strong teeth, though. Her father is one of the few elderly men she knows with all of his in one place. “He still holds two thousand loyal swords to our fifteen hundred,” he says gruffly. “You know I lost my taste for wagers long ago, daughter.”

“Then don’t make it a wager, make it a promise,” Barbrey hisses. “We have waited long enough. Now is the time, Father. Nightfall- tonight or tomorrow night, surely. Before it is too late. We know their patrol schedules, we know his habits- if we make our intentions known now, that we mean to rise up now, the rest will join us. How loyal are his men, truly? They must know it is a lost cause.”

“You keep saying that,” he says, “but Roose has not lost yet. And we do not know how close the northmen coming up the Kingsgoard are. If we act too soon-”

Barbrey stiffens. “Lost your nerve already, have you?” She scans his old face almost anxiously. “Two years ago, you would already have your spear thrust through his chest, the way his bastard finished off his friend. Who killed my bold father and replaced him with a timid old man?” 

Speaking to him like that as a girl would have earned her a thrashing, but she has not been a girl for many years now, and he has had no power over her since her marriage, she’s made well sure of that. Even now, he does not rile as he would have even two years ago, does not spit and curse her for her insolence. Rodrik says instead, “Killed once by the Kingslayer, when he slaughtered my boy Roose. Again by the Young Wolf, when he took Rickard’s head. And then once more by Bolton himself, when his men murdered poor Roger.”

“Then take your vengeance,” Barbrey says viciously, “or must I wield your steel for you?”

He takes her hard by the arm, his breath hot on her face as he snarls a whisper. “I’ll have my vengeance. But you are just as brazen now as you ever were. We must do this carefully. Are the swords still there?”

Most in the godswood, aye, she thinks. Bundled in the bushes around the hotsprings and tucked under snowbanks and crevices in the walls. All it will take is a public summons to prayer. Northmen often pray together, particularly for victory in battle. They will go in praying, and come out ready for bloodshed. It will have to be quick, and it will have to be decisive. They don’t need to kill all of Roose’s men, only ensure he and his bastard are among the first to die. How difficult could that be? Ramsay is eager for any fight, and stupid enough to run headlong into it. Roose is more like to run, but he can’t go very far, can he? 

“Yes,” she breathes instead, and he releases her, apparently satisfied. 

“Tonight,” he says. “We’ll offer our prayers for the departed troops tonight. You must keep the babe as close as you can. That is crucial.”

She scoffs in response; Lysara is the only person behind these walls who truly matters. “Fat Walda already fancies me an ally against her wicked husband and stepson. That should be easy enough.”

They go their separate ways after that; she and Beron move towards the kitchens instead, like as not to smell better and be cleaner than the bloody mess that is the Great Hall at present, only to find Jenny Slate arguing with Lyessa Flint outside the storerooms. About the false Arya, no doubt. Barbrey is quite sure neither is at all convinced of the girl’s identity, but that does not seem to matter to hotheaded Jenny, who grows more and more enraged at every whisper about the child’s treatment at Ramsay’s hands. 

“-say she’s covered in bite marks, chained to the bedpost, it cannot stand-,”  
“I do hope I’m not interrupting,” Barbrey says as she approaches, narrowing her eyes at Jenny, who looks fit to steam like a kettle, and nodding to Lyessa, who gives her a slight incline of her head in response. “I’d no idea you wished to play handmaiden to a girl half your age, Jenny.”

“Another bath,” Jenny snaps. “The turncloak and some maids were just in here- the girl is bathed every bloody day! In winter! What is he- this cannot stand. Roose so eagerly claimed her a Stark- is this not then her castle?”

“Aye, look at their banners,” Lyessa says dryly, gesturing to a nearby Bolton banner draped across the wall.

Jenny flares all the more. “He dared not name her a hostage outright, and so he ought to play by the rules of his own game. He wed her to his son and thus gave her a wife’s rights. If she cannot demand them for herself, I will. She cannot be held in one room- it’s been nearly a month since the wedding! She should be given free reign of the castle, a proper wardrobe as befitting her position, the choice of her own ladies-,”

“Who?” Barbrey asks sardonically. “That wretched singer’s daughters? You and I? You’ll forgive me for showing more concern for my infant niece than for the noble lady Arya,” her tone drips with sarcasm on the last three words, making her meaning clear. Jenny knows well enough that they mean to revolt soon, and here she is still, nattering on about the ‘wifely rights’ of an impostor. Is she mad, or just stubborn? 

“You are a cold shrew of a woman, Dustin,” Jenny says, “if you can ignore the suffering of that child, no matter her blood. One of my maids went to help change her bedlinens not a week past. It looked as though she’d been ravaged by a fucking bear,” she drops the pretense entirely and reverts to the snarling whelp of a Fingerflint she was born, as expected. They all curse like whores and sailors, women and men of that house like, “bled straight through to the mattress. Any man who can treat a woman so deserves to be ravaged himself, with a spear up the-,”

Two kitchen girls come bustling out of one of the store rooms, heaving a sack of grain between them, and they all fall silent, waiting for them to pass.

“Aye, I am a cold shrew, and you a fiery little stoat,” Barbrey tells her flatly. “Mind your tongue around the Boltons and tell your husband to keep his steel sharp. Let us pray he doesn’t need to wear it out defending you the next time you think to curse Ramsay’s name. Robard’s a slight man; how do you think he would fare against that beast?”

Jenny looks fit to slap her, Beron sighs, and Lyessa seems to be dreading the thought of having to pull them off each other, when there’s a distant, piercing scream, not the familiar shout of a boy at play or even a man shouting in pain, but a woman’s, high and shrill, coming from outside. They all start uneasily, and then there’s a general chorus of alarm, men shouting and running, and a sharp trumpet blast. 

Have we been found out so soon, Barbrey thinks for an instant, before Lyessa says crisply and curtly, “I will summon my men immediately. Barbrey, the babe. Jenny, see if Lady Arya is still abed.”

Barbrey does not have to be told twice. Beron and her take off at a near run in the direction of the nursery, past scores of guards all heading for the walls to see what caused the commotion. Some remain at their posts, however, and the one at the end of the corridor where the nursery is located remains, looking distinctly ill at ease, although he does not stop them from racing past him. The guard outside the nursery is sitting down, to Barbrey’s fury. 

“UP, you useless lout!” she all but screeches at him, only for Beron to race ahead and prod at him with a booted foot. The ‘resting’ guard topples over, throat neatly slit. At the sound of the shouting, a door across the hall slams open, and Marianne Vance, Marissa Frey, and Sarra and Serra spill out, gawping at her as Beron throws his weight against the locked nursery door and the other guard comes running, shouting down the stairwell for reinforcements. 

“What is-,”

The nursery door crashes open with a splintering of wood, and Barbrey darts into the room at the head of the pack only to see a maid with a long black braid clutching the squalling babe in her arms, as another woman, much older and grey-haired, finishes lowering what seems to be a long rope out the window. There is a moment of mute shock, before Barbrey identifies the older woman as Myrtle, who Abel the bard claimed as his ‘old mother’ despite her looking nothing like him, and the black-haired one as Willow, one of his ‘sisters’. 

Myrtle lunges at Beron far too quickly for a woman of her age, her knife moving like it were an extension of her wrinkled hand, but he crashes into her as Barbrey and the other women rush Willow, who is clambering up into the windowsill, Lysara in one arm, grabbing for the rope with the other. Marianne is the fastest and manages to snatch her long braid like the reins of a horse, while Barbrey all but shoves the cradle out of the way as the twins try to get at her legs. Beron is still struggling with old Myrtle, at least until Barbrey hears a sudden moan and the tell-tale sound of steel grinding against bone behind her. 

“Kneeler! Cunt!” Willow manages to drive a knee into Serra Frey’s mouth; she stumbles backwards, with a wail, a tooth in hand, while Marianne lunges for the baby.

“Don’t let her drop her!” Barbrey shouts, trying to get at the shutters to try to close at least one and force Willow down from the window. 

Marissa Frey has only succeeded in pulling down the curtains, which topple over her and Sarra, momentarily blinding them. 

“Let! Go! Of the Princess!” Marianne has nearly joined Willow in the windowsill, and for a few moments Barbrey fears all three are about to topple out. More guards have poured into the room behind them, but Beron is shouting for them to hold back, lest the crowding cause Willow to jump with the babe. 

Finally Willow releases the rope, pulls a knife and slashes wildly behind her head; it’s sharp enough to shear through her thin, greasy braid with one swipe, and score a line down Marianne’s cheekbone. The Vance girl recoils with a yelp and comes away with a braid in hand, Willow triumphantly swings one leg over the sill- and then Serra Frey grabs hold of her arm holding the knife, pinning it down with all her slight weight. Unbalanced on the icy sill, Willow slips, Barbrey lunges forwards, fingertips skimming across the wildling’s smock- Willow screams and topples over-

Marianne grabs one of Lysara’s flailing, chubby legs with one hand and manages to yank the babe out of Willow’s grasp just in time, crushing Lysara to her chest and reeling back into Marissa. Willow falls, grasps at the rope, keeps falling, until she lands in the snow three floors below, unmoving. Lysara has stopped crying, out of shock, no doubt. Barbrey tears her from Marianne’s shaky grasp and carefully examines her for injuries, breathless herself. To her relief, the babe is unharmed, only frightened. And Bethany’s braid of hair around her wrist is still intact. Sarra hands Barbrey a blanket to wrap her in, while the guards crowd forward to peer out the window. Beron is standing over Myrtle’s corpse.

“My lady,” he says, and those two words speak volumes. Of the men who came running into the nursery, there are just five Boltons, six Dustins, three Hornwoods, two Flints. For the first time in weeks, she holds Lysara Stark in her arms and could ostensibly refuse to let her go. Roose is not here. Ramsay is not here. There are not enough Bolton men to deny them. 

“To the godswood,” she says. “If the castle is under attack, that will be the safest place to keep the princess.”

But the castle is not under attack. The opposite, in fact. The alarm raised was not to keep anyone out, but to keep someone in. In the massive courtyard outside the godswood, in sight of the ruined stables and the packed guest house, bodies litter the ground, and a throng of Bolton men surround three kneeling figures, a man and two women. As she draws closer Barbrey realizes it is the ‘singer’ Abel and two of his women, the tall, skinny one with leathered skin and auburn hair and the small, mousy one with short brown hair. 

Both look badly beaten; Abel’s left eye is near swollen shut, and the taller woman is trying to stem the flow of blood from a broken nose. The smaller one looks dazed and barely conscious, a nasty wound to her shoulder dripping blood down her filthy sleeve. Beside them are two other corpses; a blonde girl riddled with crossbow bolts and a large woman with her belly and throat torn open by a sword. Barbrey is more confused than anything else; the women Willow and Myrtle must have been wildlings, but are the rest? Why would they come to Winterfell now? Was their sole purpose to abduct Lysara Stark and deliver her to… who? Stannis? Did he recruit some of the freefolk beyond the Wall? Is this a conspiracy with Jon Snow, hoping to wed his infant niece and take claim of Winterfell in exchange for allegiance to Stannis Baratheon?

“And now we see,” Roose Bolton is saying, loudly and clearly for once, instead of that infuriating just-above-a-mumble he usually likes to rely on, “one of the roots of treason in this keep. This wildling and his whores sought to steal Lady Arya and Lady Lysara from us. No doubt for some black scheme of Baratheon’s.”

‘Abel’ laughs hoarsely at that, prompting a vicious kick from Ramsay, which nearly topples him.

“Fine words from a kinslayer!” one of the women shouts at Roose, before being cuffed by a guard. “Tell them more about treason, Bolton!”

Roose carries on as if he had not heard her at all. “It troubles me greatly to admit,” he says, “that Lady Arya was stolen away- not by these wretched creatures, but by Theon Greyjoy. He threw himself off the walls, along with her.”

A shocked rumble goes up among the crowd. Barbrey does not believe it for an instant. Theon Greyjoy, mad Reek, managed to kidnap the false Arya Stark? Why? He must know it is not the real girl, unless he is so deranged he’s convinced himself he is heroically saving the ‘lost princess’. 

“Never fear,” Roose says grimly, “they cannot have gone far. My men will find them, if they survived the fall, and bring Greyjoy back here to await proper, Northern justice. I will take his head before the weirwood tree, as I should have from the start.”

“I’ll have his skin,” Ramsay is saying; Barbrey has never seen him this angry, and that is saying something, he looks near apoplectic- “I’ll have his skin for a cloak and whatever teeth he has left for a necklace for my wife-,” The way he spits ‘wife’ belies any show of husbandly concern. Doubtless he believes the girl ran willingly and means to make her suffer for it too. 

It doesn’t matter. Like as not both Theon and the false Arya are dead now. Even if they managed to survive the fall from that height, they must be injured, and in this weather they could not hope to get far on foot. They’ll be found frozen to death in a snowbank before sundown, food for the crows. That’s alright. It simplifies matters here. There is no longer any question of whether it is the real Arya or not or convincing the others that risking her life is worth the rebellion. Lysara lets out a hiccuping cry, and all eyes turn as one to Barbrey, clutching the babe in her arms.

‘Abel’ lets out a long sigh at the sight of her, and the smaller spearwife’s face crumples in dismay. 

“I see my granddaughter is in good hands,” Roose says, waving to a maidservant, who hurries forward to ‘retrieve’ the babe, followed by a waddling Walda, who looks terrified. “You have my deepest thanks, Lady Barbrey, for keeping our precious child safe.”

Barbrey steps back, jaw set. They are close enough to the godswood. Nearly all the men are gathered here, right now, although intermingled with Bolton men and some few Freys who remained. It is not ideal, but if they can just-

“It heartens me,” Roose says, stepping forward through the crowd, Steelshanks Walton at his back, as always, “to know that House Dustin and House Ryswell can always be counted upon for their loyal service to their rightful lords.” 

Father, Barbrey thinks suddenly, and then sees him and a few of his men, entirely hemmed in near the stables, thronged by Bolton spears. He has a hand on his sword, and looks unharmed, but the threat is clear. They may all be present, these angry northern lords and their men, but they are not organized, and they are not ready. She tightens her grip on Lysara and takes another step back. 

“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of all present.”

Ramsay is moving towards Lord Locke and the Slates; Locke looks as though he’d just come from the maester; he’s still covered in Wyman Manderly’s blood, and Robbie Slate seems on the verge of calling his men to arms, a hand on his wife’s arm. 

“It has come to my attention,” Roose continues, “that some here have plotted to put an end to House Bolton- to slaughter myself and my sweet wife and babe… and my son- and seize power for their own designs. I have been warned of a weapon’s cache hidden in the godswood… and plans to strike with knives in the dark, like common criminals. Between this and the violence earlier today… and it does pain me to tell you all that Lord Wyman passed on peacefully, despite our maesters’ best attempts to save him-,”

Another cry goes up, a wave of shock. Manderly was old and fat but well-liked by most, excluding Barbrey. With him dead and his men gone-

“Treason must be punished,” says Roose. “But I have no desire to do so zealously. At present, I can only confirm the guilt of Lord Ondrew Locke and Lord Robard Slate. The rest of you, I pray, had little to do with this.”

Ondrew Locke dies first, pushing himself in front of the younger Slates, while Locke and Slate men throw themselves against Bolton men. Barbrey turns for the godswood; if she can get Lysara to relative safety, perhaps the rest will be inspired to fight, but finds herself backed against a wall, Beron at her side. “Tell me when,” he keeps saying, but she cannot. She cannot. Once she gives the order she risks Lysara’s life, and she cannot do it like this. More Bolton men are pouring down from the walls, and even as the old Umber men scream and shout their rage, stomping their feet in outrage, Whoresbane will not let them intervene, and the Ryswell, Cerwyn, and Flint men are similarly holding back, conscious of their scattered positions and the walled in nature of the courtyard. 

Roose did not go into this blindly; he has men at all entrances and exits. Barbrey would have been better off barricading herself in the nursery with Lysara and sending Beron to stir them up to fight. “Hold!” she finds herself shouting. “Dustins, hold!” Just one hundred men scattered though this courtyard are hers; she sees ten of them already dead or dying on the ground, having jumped into the fray of Locke, Slate, and Bolton men. One of Ramsay’s boys, the one they call Skinner, is bodily dragging a screaming Jenny Slate away from her wounded husband; Ramsay has the point of his falchion at Robbie Slate’s throat.

This was Roose’s idea of a strong warning, she realizes. Have Locke and Slate scapegoated and reveal that he knows some of their plots right here, right now, to temporarily stave off further revolt. He’s hoped to intimidate them with a brutal show of force shortly after weakening his own host, and for the most part, it has succeeded. Oh, they hate him, but do they hate him enough to die right here and now? No. It is bitterly cold out, the wind is howling, snow is starting to swirl against and throw up mists, and if they’d planned to kill him, they’d planned to do it inside, where it is warm and dry, at nightfall, properly organized, not in a courtyard slaughter. 

“My lady,” Walda has managed to wriggle her way through the Bolton men, snapping at them to stand down. She reaches out hands trembling from the cold. “Give me the babe.”

“You bitch,” Barbrey says. “What have you been telling him?”

She blanches, but says only, “Give me the child. No one will lay a hand on me.” 

“Ramsay’s blood is up now. He could wrench her from your arms and dash her brains out on the stones.”

“He will not. Give me the babe before anyone else is harmed,” Walda snaps with sudden ferocity, but her eyes are cold and calm, for once, and now Barbrey sees the similarity between her and many other Freys. She is not entirely foolish or craven, this one. She is trying to tell Barbrey something, only she cannot be sure what. 

Beron glances at her. “Enough,” Barbrey says, although she’s not sure to who. She kisses Lysara and gives her to Walda, as the sounds of fighting and screaming finally begin to die down, and Roose orders ‘Abel’ and his women and the Slates taken to the cells. Lysara instantly stops crying once in Walda’s embrace, nuzzling into the woman’s pink, furlined neck as she croons and cuddles her. Barbrey doesn’t know whether she ought to take that for a sign of Walda’s true loyalties, or a sick jape on behalf of the gods. 

300 AC - THE WOLFSWOOD

Nell has almost convinced herself that this is madness and they need to turn back for Castle Cerwyn immediately when Stannis Baratheon’s encampment comes into view, shrouded as it is by the heart of the snowstorm swirling around them. Taking her godmother, Harry Karstark, Grey Wind, and fifty men and trying to seek out a rival army in the mere hope of carving out a very, very belated alliance was hardly her first choice. But as it stands, it seems equally ludicrous to have two separate armies besieging the same castle at the same time, particularly when Baratheon has the mountain clans behind him, men who by all rights should be sworn to House Stark. 

And she is certainly not going to risk losing out on Winterfell to Stannis on the off chance his men manage to break through a fucking gate or scale the walls first. She does not at all like the idea of finally reaching Winterfell only to see it flying Baratheon banners and to meet Stannis in Ned Stark’s seat with her father and the Bastard’s corpses at his feet. She is not going to get down on her knees and beg favor for Winterfell to be restored to Robb. Perhaps Harry said it best when he pointed out, “One longsword has better chances of cutting off a beast’s head than two falchions.” 

Aside from that, if Stannis were to take Winterfell first, and Lysara to come into his custody, well, it wouldn’t take much effort on his part to put an end to the line of Robb Stark right then and there. Perhaps if this were a kinder life Nell could say she was confident in the thought that no king would ever put an innocent babe to death for the sake of power, but this is not kinder and she is not confident. Catelyn still claims the man murdered his own brother through some sort of witchcraft. Nell is willing to set that aside for now because Robb was quite literally brought back from the dead through, what else could you call it but witchcraft, and they do not need accusations of ‘abomination’ and ‘monster’ flying around like arrows.

What they do need is for Stannis to not kill them as soon as they enter his encampment, but Nell is putting her wager on the fact that the mountain clans will not turn against them. If it were her alone, perhaps- she is sure they have little love for any Boltons- but their king’s mother rides with her and a Karstark of the Karhold and Robb’s very own direwolf, and surely that must count for something. She would have brought Robb, she wanted to bring Robb, only- having herself or Harry Karstark or Greatjon Umber or Maege Mormont speak ‘for’ him in delivering orders and arranging troops is one thing. Bringing him to parley and then attempting to somehow guide the conversation in a direction that won’t result in anyone drawing steel is another.

Robb as he is now- he was not made for parleys or treating. Before- before everything, she is certain he could have charmed even Stannis Baratheon, could have made them all see sense, would have led them quite neatly, but that is no longer the case. And if she pretends it is, it will doom them all. She will have to rely on herself and the counsel of Catelyn and Harry for this trial. She only hopes it is not too late. Their army has taken Castle Cerwyn (without much fuss, for that matter, Jonelle Cerwyn’s garrison was not about to spite them), and is waiting there. If Nell and the others do not return or send word within five days, they will attack Winterfell, their forces divided under Umber, Mormont, and Robb’s command. Men will still follow him quite willingly into battle, particularly when all they see is his helm, not his gaunt, hollow-eyed face.

Then she sees the first sentry and realizes that perhaps these men, who’ve been marching down from Deepwood for weeks now with a steadily decreasing supply of rations, would not notice anything wrong with Robb’s appearance at all. They look half-dead already. At first Nell is in shock; how can Stannis have so few men? Then she realizes she is simply seeing a very small portion of them, for the rest are squatting in shelters or ruined huts in this abandoned village, covered in furs and and snow until they might as well be part of the brutal landscape. She can smell horsemeat cooking on a fire nearby, and the charred remains of what must have been four men are on fully display outside a small, grim watchtower.

The area is so heavily blanketed with snow that Nell at first does not realize they are between two lakes until she notices men trying to ice fish on one. Grey Wind whines at the smell of the horsemeat, hungry, but then picks up the scent of the burned men and goes quiet. Harry Karstark is silent but alert, watching the gathering crowd coming out to gawk at them and their single Stark banner, flapping in the wind.

Nell pulls down her hood, although she knows many of the clansmen will not recognize her either way. “Men of the north!” she tries to shout, but her voice is drowned out by the oppressive silence of the heavy snows and the low moan of the wind. “I come to you with a message from Robb Stark, a man you called king! You see his wolf before you! I tell you now, he yet lives, and Winterfell is nearly in our grasp!”

“Start handing out the rations we have left,” Catelyn instructs one of their men, and then is the first to dismount. Nell does not know if Catelyn feels more confident because she is the only one of them to have ever met Stannis before, or if it is simply a false show of reassurance for the sake of the blank-faced men, both northern and southron, watching them. Still, as the crowd fans out and more men catch sight of Grey Wind shaking snowflakes from his thick coat, there are a few scattered cries of “Stark!” and “the Starks in Winterfell!” and “the Stark King!”

One grizzled face, eyepatch and all, stands out. Mors Umber looks more bear than man, despite his age, and would look so even without his snow bear cloak. “Karstark,” he growls, stepping forward. “You’ve made good time. Stannis Baratheon has a gift for you,” he smiles and it’s no reassuring thing, “only he don’t know it yet.”

He looks over Nell and Catelyn appraisingly. “Might be a gift for you two as well,” he says, “only I could have sworn they always said the girl had Stark’s look.”

Nell has no idea what he is talking about. “My lord Mors,” she says delicately, “I am Donella Stark, wife of Robb, mother of Lysara-,”

“Aye, and good-sister to Arya,” Mors says gruffly, and then turns on his heels and waves for them to follow him. 

“Arya?” Catelyn quickens her pace, even though they left Arya safe enough at Cerwyn with the others, Dana clutching her shoulders to keep her from trying to dash after them. “My lord, what do you mean by that-,”

Stannis Baratheon seems to be in a fine temper that he wasn’t informed of their arrival sooner; Nell has never seen the man before but she has to assume that this must be him- tall, nearly bald, verging on gaunt, face like a square block, and a voice, despite his obvious exhaustion, loud enough to wake the dead. That must be the Baratheon in him, she assumes. Voices like war horns and shoulders like oxen. He comes striding out his tower, squires hurrying after him, sees them, and comes to a halt as Grey Wind lopes forward.

To his credit, he does not flinch as the wolf nears, although several of his men draw steel. 

“Grey Wind,” Nell cautions, and the direwolf stops within four yards of the man.

Catelyn bows her head, brushing snow from her fur-lined hood. “Your Grace.”

They’d debated long and hard over how to address him, but Nell does not feel like provoking immediate offense, given the circumstances. It might irritate the mountain clans too, who, if they have sworn him as their king, thinking Robb dead and the rest of them lost, will not want to feel as though they are considered turncloaks for this decision. “Your Grace,” she says.

“I’m told you’ve a gift for me,” Harry says, a little bolder than them, before adding, “Your Grace.”

“Lady Stark,” Stannis’ voice cracks like a whip, even if he seems to have quickly composed himself from his initial shock and outrage. He looks directly at Nell. “Lady Donella. And I do not know you,” he states plainly, looking at Harry, “but I believe you a Karstark, judging by your words. Your uncle has been made known to me as of late.”

Harry stiffens. Nell braces herself for whatever is coming next. If Arnolf or Cregan Karstark have been here, spreading lies and rumors- 

“And as of late,” Stannis Baratheon continues coldly, “Arnolf Karstark has been my prisoner, his life forfeit, for treason against me.”

“It seems to be in his nature,” Harry replies after a moment’s hesitation. “He and his craven son wasted little time in trying to claim my birthright, particularly after my capture and my father’s death. I have reason to believe they mean to take it through my sister, herself betrothed to another lord. I ask of you to let me have his head, whether you or I swing the sword, my lord. I mean to present it to his son when I reclaim my home.”

Stannis stares at them for a moment, perhaps trying to work out if Harry’s final ‘my lord’ was a sly retort to his refusal to address Nell by her title. Still, he does not rise in insult, despite the tense look on Catelyn’s face and Grey Wind’s suspicious sniffing of the wind blowing his scent towards them. After a few terse questions about the organization of handing out the scant rations they brought with him, and if they witnessed any other troops in the wood, he leads them into the relative shelter of the stout watchtower, if it can even be called that. Nell thinks it makes Moat Cailin’s ruined towers look nearly majestic in comparison.

Inside is dark and musty and damp, despite the braziers blazing and the sputtering candles on the table, but they’re given seats and something warm to drink. Nell has heard rumors that Stannis does not drink and this mead is more or less water, but she is not complaining after hours of hard riding today. The floor is dirt quickly turning into a top layer of mud from wet shoes constantly trekking in and out. She’s taken not two sips of her mead when Catelyn exclaims in horror, and only then does Nell, her eyes fully adjusting to the dark, notice the man chained to the wall. If he can be called a man. The creature is hanging nearly six feet off the floor; his filthy, tattered boots level with Harry’s head. 

Grey Wind growls, spit flecking across his teeth.

“I had called him Turncloak,” Stannis says, seemingly unfazed by their collective shock and horror, “but he insists I use Theon instead.”

Had her father said those words, there would have been some dull, dreadful tinge of amusement behind them, some veiled pleasure at the desolate condition of this- this thing, but with Stannis Baratheon, there is nothing. Nell has known cruel and sadistic men, wrathful and vengeful men, derisive and mocking men, but Baratheon- she cannot read his tone at all, nor his tight face and curt looks. She can’t decide if he’s dismayed to see them alive or if he wants them dead by his own hand or if he’s relieved at the prospect of an ally in the coming fight.

And then there is- Nell had thought with sick pleasure many times, that for all the suffering and woe Theon had caused them, for all the crimes he had committed, at least he was in Bolton hands now, and Ramsay was like or not punishing him severely, even if it wasn’t with anything close to just intentions. But now she feels- she doesn’t feel satisfied, or pleased, or even angry. It might as well not even be the same man. She recognizes nothing from him. He looks closer to fifty than twenty. She’s not even sure he is alive, until he raises his head and she can make out his shadowed, scarred face, cracked lips and raw nose and cheeks.

Catelyn makes a faint sound, a gloved hand curled up on her chest like a claw. Bran and Rickon and all those other innocent people dead, and for what? For what? What does Theon have to show for it now but a broken body and a ruined mind? “How did you capture him?” she asks, when she can finally voice words. Harry may as well have turned to stone behind her.

“I did not,” Stannis says stiffly. “Master Umber did.”

“Hother went to Winterfell to set your traitor father’s mind at ease,” Mors says, “but I made for the wolfswood with some boys. Dig pit traps, blew horns and banged drums, tried to keep the keep unsettled. Three days past Roose sent out the Freys and the Manderlys. Around the same time, who do I find stumbling through the blizzard but the turncloak and some waif he claims is Arya.”

Suddenly it makes sense.

“That was not Arya,” Catelyn says coldly.

A low laugh that is more like a moan comes from the chained man who once was Theon.

“I put some questions to her, but she answered well,” Mors replies. “Was never convinced myself, but didn’t see what else to do but bring them to Baratheon here. The girl was in a bad state, and this bastard not much better off,” he spits in Theon’s direction.

Stannis is looking directly at them at Catelyn, Nell, and Harry. Grey Wind is still growling in Theon’s direction, albeit slightly softer now. “You will attest that this girl is an imposter? That Greyjoy and she conspired to deceive to myself and the other lords present? I had planned to send her to the Wall with an escort by midday.”

“Where is she now?” Nell asks suddenly.

“Don’t hurt her,” the corpse hanging from the wall rasps, before Stannis can respond. “She didn’t… I made her. Me. I took her and jumped. Jeyne’s a good girl… She’ll be good-,”

Grey Wind snarls, and Theon goes very quiet again, just watching the direwolf, an almost dazed look on his face, as if he believes he’s dreaming all this up.

The derelict village longhouse is tiny, but a makeshift nest of furs and blankets has been set up at one end, and without even turning around a burly woman with short dark brown hair and a green cloak snarls, “For the love of the gods- leave the poor girl be! I’ve just gotten her ribs wrapped, and you lot keep stomping in and out-,”

“Well met, my ladies,” a smoother voice calls out boldly, and Nell glances in confusion at another young woman sitting at one of the deserted tables, her hair shaggy black and greasy from weeks without a wash, hanging around a thin, sharp face. The face is so familiar that Nell feels the surge of hatred she’d expected to see when seeing Theon all at once. His sister and he have the exact same eyes and nose. Or had. 

The woman who must be Alysane Mormont, for she looks an older version of Lyra and a younger version of Maege, has clambered to her feet, standing almost protectively in front of the terrified girl huddled into the furs on the dirty floor behind her. The woman who must be Asha Greyjoy watches them all with an appraising sort of look, far too brazen for Nell’s liking. 

“So it’s true,” Harry says to Stannis. “You reclaimed Deepwood Motte from the Ironborn. And this one yet lives?” he indicates Asha with a jerk of his head, lip curling slightly.

“The king’s prize, I am, and no use to him dead,” she retorts without hesitation. She is not even bound or chained in any way, to Nell’s dismay. 

“She is my captive,” says Stannis, although his hard stare remains on Alysane Mormont and the girl she is guarding. “She bent the knee at Deepwood, although not without a fight.” His tone chills, if that is possible. “She’s begged me to execute her brother in the fashion of your people, rather than at the stake.”

“Then I will second that,” Nell replies, despite her growing unease. Gods be good, how many captives does he have? 

Catelyn has peered around Alysane at the girl, the look on her face softening some in spite of her obvious anger. “Jeyne,” she says, “Jeyne Poole, I know your face. You played with my Sansa from the time you were just a babe.”

Jeyne Poole is not the giggly, gossipy girl Nell remembers, Sansa’s little familiar, bullying Arya and teasing Beth and flitting about Winterfell, shadowing her steward father. This girl is two years older; some of the baby fat has melted from her face, and her long brown hair is dull and lank and matted, snarling around her shaking shoulders. Her face is red and wind-beaten, and the tip of her nose is blackened from frostbite. From the way she is holding herself she’s pulled or sprained something- her ribs, Alysane said. Did the fall do that, or Ramsay? 

Now she scrambles backwards in terror, babbling, “Please- no- I never- I didn’t mean to- my lady, they made me, please, they made me, I never wanted to be Arya, I didn’t, I just wanted to go home, but they killed my father and- and they sent me to a brothel, please-,” she catches sight of Stannis’ dark look and bursts into tears.

“I don’t give a damn,” Alysane Mormont says slowly and concisely, although she inclines her head to Catelyn and Nell, “whether she’s a Stark or a Poole or a Snow. I’ll not see this child harmed any further than she already has been.”

“This child,” Stannis says, “lied to me, participated in the Bolton’s schemes to claim Winterfell. She lied before your own gods, if she is not Arya Stark. She wed Roose Bolton’s bastard son and claimed a title and name that was not hers-,”

Nell can see where this is going. Baratheon may not be a monster, but he is not inclined to be merciful at the moment, not when he feels he’s been made into a fool by a deranged cripple and a hysterical little girl. He may not kill Jeyne Poole, but it’s blatant from his tone of voice that he considers her little more than a whore, regardless of her age. 

“Jeyne was a hostage,” she says sharply, stepping forward, “of the Lannister regime, forced unwillingly into my father’s schemes. She is not of age- and I will not see her judged as a grown woman might be. If she lied, it was under pain of death. She confesses now to the truth of it-,”

“She ought to have confessed when I questioned her,” Stannis barks, “rather than continuing the deception-,”

“Please,” Jeyne is whispering, “please, please-,”

Grey Wind brushes past Catelyn and approaches a startled Alysane, who leans back slightly, a hand on her sword, positioning himself in between the rest of them and her and Jeyne.

That could have been Arya. Or Sansa. 

“Your Grace,” Nell says through her teeth. “She is terrified. She is not in her right mind. She was surrounded by strange men from the instant she entered your camp. Any woman would do the same.”

“Then you claim your sex is inherently deceitful,” now the full force of that stare is turned on her. 

Nell lifts her chin. If he thinks to fluster her, he’s a fool. “I claim Jeyne as my subject,” she says, “She was one of my ladies before my marriage to Robb Stark, and she remains so. You may not pass judgement upon her.” Her tone hardens. “On this front, I claim all northwomen as my subjects. Their deceptions are mine. So if you would see her punished for her lies, you must punish me instead. Something I think you will find lacking much support for from the clans who marched here with you.”

“The clans,” Stannis Baratheon says, “have all in turn, bent their knee to me.”

Grey Wind growls softly again.

“Before that, my lord,” Catelyn all but hisses, “they bent their knee to the Starks in Winterfell.”

“At present, there appears to be only one Stark in Winterfell,” he snaps back, “a swaddling babe.”

“My lord,” Harry cuts in loudly. “We can debate who falls under whose authority at a later date. You said you are sending a party back to the Wall. I suggest we see those men off with a message for the Lord Commander.” He pauses. “Are the rumors true that he is Jon Snow?”

“Until now,” Stannis says tersely, “the only son of Ned Stark I have treated with has been Snow.”

Nell tenses, but holds her tongue. Best to let that truth come out slowly. Whatever plans Baratheon has made with Jon Snow, she will hear of them soon enough. He certainly does not seem the type to hold back much. 

In the time between seeing off some Stormlander knight called Massey and a Braavosi banker back to the Wall, Nell has ample opportunity to hear about how it was on Jon Snow’s advice that Stannis courted the mountain clans and took back Deepwood Motte, rather than marching straight for the Dreadfort or Winterfell with his scant number of men. It was Stannis who rid the mountains and the northeastern coast of the Ironborn. It was Stannis who these men have judged a fair and able ruler, who brought back some hope when they thought the North was lost.

To be sure, they wonder and marvel at Grey Wind, listen hungrily to the tales of Robb’s ‘miraculous’ recovery from his ‘grievous wounds’ at the Trident, who gorge themselves on the tales of the purging of House Frey and the Lannisters being abandoned by Tarly, but it is not enough, Nell realizes. Perhaps if Robb were truly his old self and they’d ridden here in full regalia with the sun shining upon them and the army in splendid array behind them. But as it stands, these men trust Stannis to lead them, for it was he who they judge to have saved them while Roose was claiming Winterfell and Nell and the rest were still mucking through the Neck.

And Jon Snow. Jon Snow was lost beyond the Wall and lived to tell the tale. Jon Snow held Castle Black against wildling raiders. Jon Snow held the Wall against Mance’s forces for days on end. Jon Snow was nearly hanged for desertion but wormed his way out of it. Jon Snow had a wilding lover. Jon Snow was offered legitimization by Stannis but refused it on behalf of his honor. Jon Snow was elected 999th commander in a landslide. Jon Snow successfully treated with Stannis and the wildlings at once. Jon Snow may have organized a secret mission to save ‘Arya’ and Lysara from the clutches of the vile Boltons. Jon Snow is taking out loans from the Iron Bank. Jon Snow means to let a few thousand wildlings cross the Wall to save them from the Others. Jon Snow warned Stannis that Arnolf Karstark meant to betray him to the Boltons.

Grey Wind’s ears prick whenever Jon’s name is uttered, to her dismay.

It has of course occurred to Nell that had things gone slightly differently, she could have ridden into this camp not treat just with a King Stannis, but with a King Stannis and a Lord Jon Stark. He could have had her daughter on his knee. Perhaps she is being irrational. Jealous, even. For the love of the gods, she has been a queen for over a year now, and seems to have still accomplished less than a bastard packed off to the bloody Wall. Ought she not to be grateful that he has not seized any more power? Ought she not to be relieved that Stannis is even here for them to treat with at all? 

“Tell me,” Harry says, careful to keep his voice low so Catelyn does not hear, “how would you describe the feelings between yourself and Lord Commander Snow, when last you spoke? You must have spent time with him before he went to the Wall.”

“Well,” Nell says, under her breath, “I believe I told him to control his wolf and that Robb was no longer his concern, to which he replied that I was a ‘frightened little girl hiding under her father’s flayed man’. And that I was no Bolton.”

“Mayhaps he meant it as a compliment.”

“And mayhaps I meant to have him whipped for it, only then Bran…” She closes her eyes to ward off the awful memory. “It doesn’t matter now. I was a spoilt, haughty child, and he not much better. I expect the past two years have changed us both a great deal.”

Harry exhales. “Let’s pray he doesn’t tend to his grudges half so well as you.”

As it turns out, Stannis Baratheon does tend his grudges just as well as Nell, and he has not forgotten that Catelyn came to Bitterbridge a year ago to treat with Renly, not him. Nor does he seem particularly pleased that now not only Robb’s mother but Robb’s wife have come to negotiate with him, but not Robb himself.

And negotiating with Stannis, Nell is quickly learning, seems an awful lot like throwing herself headlong into a wall, over and over again. It is not that the man is dull; far from it, he seems to be the brightest of the Baratheon brothers, from hearing Catelyn describe Renly and what she knows of Robert. It is that he clearly feels it a waste of his time to even entertain the thought of treating her as though she were anything but a belligerent rebel’s outspoken little wife, a foolish girl who offends him with her very insistence that he treat her as a potential ally.

“Your Grace,” Catelyn says, not for the first time, “As I have told you, we had no evidence of Cersei’s children being bastards when my son called a council of lords at Riverrun.”

“The Lannisters had just imprisoned and murdered your husband, and you would not call that evidence of their treachery?” Stannis flares in response. Grey Wind bares his teeth briefly at him; Baratheon stares back stoically at the wolf. Harry Karstark is beginning to look as though he’d rather they settle this with a duel.

“Evidence of their greed, corruption, and cravenness, aye,” Catelyn snaps, “but there was no proof of the children’s bastardry, nor did you hasten to provide any-,”

“I had pamphlets made-,”

“What’s done is done,” Nell cuts in sharply. “If you wish for us to beg your forgiveness for not immediately submitting to your kingship-,”

“I wish,” Stannis says, “to treat with the man himself, not his impudent wife-,”

“Robb is with his men, preparing for battle, just as you are,” Nell retorts. “He trusts me to speak on his behalf-,”

“No one should speak on behalf of a king, if that is what he still claims to be.” Stannis narrows his eyes at her. “Yet it would seem I have done more for his kingdom thus far than he.”

Harry appears to muffle a curse by slamming his fist down on the table, hard. “And where is your kingdom,” he snarls, “pray tell? For last I heard your forces held neither Storm’s End nor Dragonstone. Had you not been given refuge at the Wall- something that easily could have been refused by the Watch-,”

“The Watch was in no position to refuse anything,” Stannis snaps, “for as I have said before, Westeros itself is threatened by a great evil-,”

“No one is denying that,” Catelyn says firmly. “And we would gladly fight with you to repel these monstrosities you speak of- after Winterfell and my granddaughter have been saved.”

“You must see the sense in this,” Nell presses the issue, leaning forward slightly in her very uncomfortable seat. “Your Grace. My husband rebelled because he saw no other way forward. He had no desire to support Renly over you-,”

“Do not lie to me,” Stannis growls, “I saw Stark banners in Renly’s camp with mine own eyes-,”

“And you know just as well as I, my lord,” Catelyn says loud and clear, “that we left that camp without any alliance betwixt us, nor would we have, even had your brother lived. I was there,” she enunciates, “I saw him breathe his last.” Her tone stiffens. “I will never forget it.”

Stannis quiets. With guilt or fury or scorn, Nell is not sure. Does he mourn Renly, whether he ordered him killed or not? Does he regret that his brother was slain in his own tent, and not on the battlefield? 

“When you fled court for Dragonstone, in the wake of Arryn’s death, did you write to Winterfell, to warn Ned Stark of Lannister conspiracy?” Nell presses. “You must have known Robert would choose him for-,”

“Yes, choose him, choose Eddard Stark,” Stannis all but spits in disgust. “I was his brother. I served him ably and without complaint for years, I sought no reward nor recompense for it, and I was repaid with his scorn. His mistrust. His mockery.”

Are all men such boys at heart? What does he want? Robert’s shade to emerge from the grave, and congratulate him on a job well done? He could have had the throne. King’s Landing was nearly in his grasp. Had he only waited, had he starved them out-

Had you not push Tywin back to defend it from him, a voice snarls in her ear.

Her stomach twists. “Robert is dead,” Nell says. “Eddard is dead. You’ve fought your battle in the south and lost it, as did we. You have known betrayal and failure, as have we. But you survived it, and you are stronger for it, as are we. The clansmen are loyal to you. In you, they have found a king who would protect them and deliver justice on their behalf. I have seen them here today. They respect you. They chose you, just as those at Riverrun chose Robb because he was the one fighting for their homeland, for their people. You wear no crown at present, because we are on campaign, and you know well enough that men follow your sword, not what rests upon your head. Robb and I gave our crowns back to the river.”

She swallows. “I tell you now. If you work with us to take back Winterfell- together, as one army- and you acknowledge that there has been and always will be a Stark ruling from its seat, then we will give up our titles, and take you for our one and only King.”

He is looking at her now. Catelyn seems to be holding a perilous breath. Harry is staring at her out of the corner of his eye. “If you acknowledge us as Wardens of the North and pledge to defend our line, we will kneel to you as King,” Nell says. “We did not rebel for power nor glory. We rebelled for justice. I think you will give us justice, as you have House Glover and the mountain clans. If you promise to acknowledge my daughter Lysara, Robb’s seed, as the rightful heir to House Stark and Winterfell, we will call you King, and never forsake you. You have a daughter yourself, do you not?” She hesitates. “Shireen? Known to all as your rightful heir?”

“Do not make promises to me that your husband will not keep,” he warns. “I do not take such things lightly.”

What do you take lightly, Nell thinks. She looks almost warily at Grey Wind, who has been watching these proceedings in silence. His eyes seem to cut through her. She reaches out a hand to his snout, as if in apology, and is relieved when he nuzzles it. “Robb would not have sent me if he did not trust me in all things,” she says. 

Stannis stares at her, and for a moment she is certain he is about to sneer something about how he could never trust a Stark, and even less so a Bolton turned Stark, but instead he simply nods. Then he looks to Harry. “Jon Snow knew to warn me against your uncle because he has imprisoned your cousin Cregan at Castle Black. He came in pursuit of your sister.”

“My sister is at the Wall?” Harry asks hoarsely. Nell has never heard him genuinely shocked; for an instant he sounds a boy again. 

“Under the protection of the Lord Commander.”

Add that to the list of Jon Snow’s great feats, Nell thinks with a bitter edge. Harry will feel that House Karstark owes the Lord Commander a great debt now, and he is not wrong.

As the afternoon turns towards dusk, they make their way across the larger frozen lake to the narrow islet with its solitary weirwood, a bloody smug on a white canvas. The wind has begun to howl, but while many of the southern knights present are shaking from the cold, the mountain lords simply burrow into their furs. Nell makes careful eye contact with Black Donnel, who might have taken Dana to wife, and his brother Artos, with Hugo Wull, who looks half-giant, with Brandon Norrey the Younger, with Torren Liddle and his sons, with young Larence Snow, the bastard of Hornwood who was raised up by House Glover. 

Asha Greyjoy stands rigidly beside Alysane Mormont, although from the way she leans on one leg more than another Nell can tell there is something wrong with her ankle. Perhaps that’s why they don’t have her chained; she can’t run well. Arnolf Karstark offers nothing but stony silence from his position kneeling on the snowy ground alongside his plump son Arthor and three grandsons, two of whom were badly injured upon their arrest. One of the grandsons is weeping, to Arnolf’s evident disgust; he spits blood in the snow. Theon Greyjoy is silent; Nell isn’t sure if he’s even aware he’s about to be executed or not; his eyes are fixed upon the face of the weirwood as if in reverence.

Ever practical, Stannis divides the Karstark prisoners betwixt him and Harry. Harry’s anger seems sapped, either by the brutal cold, the exhaustion of the long day, or his shock over Alys’ narrow escape from marriage to Cregan. He watches Stannis cut off Arnolf’s head without so much as a word, and follows suit with Arthor, ignoring the man’s accusations of kinslaying. Nell supposes they are all kinslayers here. The mountain men do not seem all that troubled by it, despite the old warnings. War must be the exception, certainly. Wasn’t the Night King a Stark, killed by his own brother? That is what Nell was taught.

Killing five men is hard work; when it comes to Theon, both Stannis and Harry are panting and red-faced from the cold. The wind had died down while the Karstarks bled out, but now it picks up again. Nell can hear Catelyn’s teeth chattering, even as she warms her gloved hands in Grey Wind’s shaggy mane of fur. Stannis looks to her. “This man killed your sons,” he says to Catelyn. “Have you anything to say to him?”

Catelyn looks at Theon, who glances at her and says only, “I never.” Despite his protests otherwise, he seems unafraid of death. Perhaps he is looking forward to it. He must live in constant agony at present. Death would be kinder. 

Nell watches her goodmother, who looks for an instant as if trying to work up the fury to scream and spit in his face, but after a long moment Catelyn only says, “Brandon Stark. Rickon Stark. Those were my boys’ names. They will be the last names you ever hear, Greyjoy.” Her voice cracks slightly. “I pray I will forget your face in time, but never theirs.”

The branches of the weirwood tree rustle and moan, rustle and moan. Stannis adjusts his grip on his sword. Theon returns his broken gaze to the face there. Asha is whispering something under her breath, lost on the wind. Grey Wind is silent, but his ears are pricked, as if straining to hear something else. Stannis raises his sword, still covered in Arnolf’s blood. Nell forces her pounding heart to still. It ends here. It is a pity it could not be Robb to kill him, but it ends here and now-

“ _Theon_.”

Nell wonders for an instant if she is hallucinating, but everyone is looking around. It was a child’s voice, slightly muffled but audible all the same.

“ _Theon_ ,” the voice says again, insistently. Then, “ _Mother_!” It echoes through this small grove. “ _Mother! Theon! Don’t-_ ,” momentarily drowned out by the leaves and the murmurs of confusion and shock, “ _Don’t hurt him! Theon! His name is Theon! My name- my name_ ,” it echoes again, and Grey Wind lets out a low, whimpering moan, “ _is Brandon Stark_!”

“The tree,” Alysane Mormont utters. 

The voice is coming from the weirwood. Catelyn is standing as if frozen in time, before she lunges forward, past Theon and the stunned Stannis, throwing herself on her knees amidst the gnarled roots of the slender weirwood. She strips off her gloves, presses her bare hands to the white bark, as if to caress its face. “Brandon,” she says, “Bran, my- my boy, Bran, where are you? Where are you?”

“ _Where are you_?” the tree echoes back.

No. Nell knows this voice. Of all Robb’s siblings, before everything else, she’d spent the most time around Bran. Helping him learn to ride again. Reading to him. Feeding him. And while before Robb returned she would have thought she was going mad, now she knows better. “Bran?” she calls out. “Are you- are you near us?”

“ _No_ ,” the branches of the tree seems to sigh, “ _No, no- I’m- north-_ ,”

“Where?” Catelyn is sobbing. “Please, tell me- are you alive? Where is Rickon? Brandon!”

“ _Rickon- south_ ,” the leaves whisper again. “ _But I… am… north_.”

“South where? Where is North?” Harry demands. “Can you- can you tell us how you found us here?”

“ _Crow… Three eyes…_ ” Bran’s voice is fading in and out, but it sounds so close, so real, as if he were just in… another room. Or behind a curtain. “ _South is- stones- I think- north is- cave, I’m with- Meera and Jojen- Hodor, too…_ ” He trails off again. “- _Safe… for now, but_ -,”

“Come find us,” Catelyn is saying through her tears. “Bran, you must come find us, we’re in the wolfswood, you have to come down, or we’ll send men to you, just-”

“ _Theon… never… hurt us_ ,” Bran’s voice comes back. “ _He… lost us. Lies… He lied… They all… lied… The crypts… we never left… Osha took us- away- away- away…_ ”

“The crypts,” Theon says, and for that moment he sounds enough like his old self to startle Nell. “The crypts…” He almost smiles, and it is horrific. “They were in the _crypts_ ,” he seems to laugh a little, and then begins to cry. 

Some people are openly kneeling in prayer now. Grey Wind moves closer to the weirwood, nuzzling at the dried sap, rubbing his scent against the trunk.

“ _Grey Wind_ ,” Bran sighs, then, “ _Robb_ …”

“Do you know where your cave is?” Nell tries to ask, through her shock. “Do you… can you… guide us there? With- with this magic?”

“ _Can’t- I’m still… learning… learning… but… I can see- I can see- Winterfell_!”

“You can see into Winterfell?” Stannis finally seems to have found his voice, although it is much softer than usual. “What have you seen?”

“ _They’re- afraid- Lysara- Lysara- she’s_ -,”

Nell’s heart leaps into her throat. “Have you seen my daughter, Bran? Your niece? Have you seen Lysara? Is she alright?”

“ _She- heard me- so did- Theon- she’s- safe for now- they’re all… turning… the pink woman- swords…_ ” Bran’s voice is fading swiftly.

“No,” Catelyn cries out. “Bran, no, don’t leave!”

Grey Wind whimpers, pawing at the roots.

“ _Not- leaving- arriving- I will- see you again- Theon… it’s alright..._ ”

“It’s alright.” Theon echoes him in a whisper, weeping. 

The wind picks up once more, and the voice of the tree dies away, smothered by the sounds of nature all around them. The last of the light is quickly fading. There’s a distant shout from the shore; Nell can barely make out what looks like a scout returning.

“The gods are with us,” someone says.

“The gods are with Brandon Stark,” Alysane Mormont says clearly, helping a trembling Catelyn to her feet. “And he has spoken. Greyjoy never killed the boys.”

“Spare my brother’s life,” Asha is urging in a shaky voice, having kept dead silent throughout the entire encounter. “Your gods will it-,”

“Your brother is still a turncloak,” Larence Snow spits at her. “And a reaver, just like you-,”

Stannis sheathes his sword. “Get him up on his feet,” he says. “The day is done. And I needs speak with Lady Donella alone.”

It is pitch black inside the little watchtower until a squire gets the candles lit. Stannis seems unwilling to sit; he paces instead. Nell can relate to that much. “My scout brings word that the Freys are near. Arnold Karstark informed your father of my position,” he says. “We will have battle come the dawn. If you wish to flee for Cerwyn, it will have to be under cover of night.”

“I am not going anywhere,” Nell says, still reeling. Lysara is alive. For now. As are Bran and Rickon. For now. Theon betrayed them but did not murder them. Bran is in a cave, somewhere, learning… witchcraft from a crow with three eyes. And speaking through trees. If this is a dream, it had better end very quickly, for she has work to do.

Stannis is still speaking. “I do not intend to survive the battle on the morrow,” he says. “The men Arnolf brought with him and his sons will return to Winterfell with my sword and the word of my death. I will have defeated the Frey host, but lost mine own life in the battle. Do you have any possession that might convince your father likewise that you are dead as well?”

Nell just stares at him, not understanding, and then it sinks in. “You mean to let them think you are lost.”

“Yes,” he says. “Beneath the ice, with the rest.”

“The ice-,” Oh. “The lakes,” she says. “You… the Freys don’t know the land. You mean to lure them onto the ice. They don’t know about the lakes. They won’t see them. They will think…”

He seems pleased with how quickly she’s caught on. “The lakes will hold men on foot. But not on horses. I mean to drown them, and cut down the rest. But Winterfell must be taken by surprise. If Roose Bolton believes the only threat to him are your men at Cerwyn…”

“He doesn’t know that Robb lives,” Nell almost smiles. “And he could never admit it, even if he did. He will think them lost and easy pickings with House Stark finished.”

Stannis gives the barest hint of a grim smile. It is more than a little frightening. He looks at her closely. “Now, have you anything for me, my lady?”

Unbidden, her hand goes to the long braid of her hair, and the favor she once gave to Robb, returned to her by Roose, that pink, blood-stained silk, tying the end of her plait. Her father well knows she would die before parted with it. Nell’s gloved fingers tighten around it into a fist. “As it so happens, I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Wyman Manderly's line regarding the death of Little Walder is taken directly from A Dance With Dragons, and it is the only line of dialogue in this fic that I've quoted directly from the canon text. I felt that it was too good to pass up (too good in terms of reflecting the pure brutality of the moment, not 'too good' in terms of me celebrating the death of a child, just so we're clear). There's a prevalent fan theory that Little Walder was in fact murdered by Big Walder, his cousin, who simply takes the opportunity to pin it on the Manderlys, as Little Walder was ahead of Big Walder in line for the claim to the Twins. 
> 
> 2\. It's been brought up in multiple comments that some of you guys reading this fic have never read the books. In canon, Jon sends Mance Rayder and some spearwives down from the Wall to infiltrate Winterfell and rescue 'Arya', and in this case, of course, his niece Lysara too. This plan is somewhat of a disaster, but serves as part of the trigger that brings Theon back to life. With the spearwives quickly being killed off by Roose's men, Theon realizes he and Jeyne are about to be captured and handed back over to Ramsay, so he jumps with her.
> 
> 3\. I misspoke in the comments of the last chapter; while Hother 'Whoresbane' Umber is present inside Winterfell with some (old) Umber men, his brother Mors is secretly camped outside, trying to disorient the Bolton and Frey men. Mors being outside Winterfell is what allows Theon and Jeyne to fully escape, as he grabs them and takes them to Stannis' encampment. Theon warns Jeyne that she must continue to pretend to be Arya for her own safety. This is what leads to them being with Stannis and his men when Nell and company show up to talk treaties. 
> 
> 4\. "What the fuck is going on with the northern lords at Winterfell?" Well, Roose believes he may have just successfully cut off their plan to revolt at the knees. Someone tipped him off that they were plotting against him and had hidden weapons, and so he tries to seize back control by scapegoating old Lord Ondrew Locke and the openly contemptuous Slates for it, while making a show of force and trying to intimidate the other lords into temporarily backing down with the news that Wyman Manderly has died. In the chaos of Theon and Jeyne's escape, everyone is too confused and disoriented to properly assemble and work together to wrest control of the castle from Roose.
> 
> 5\. Nell doesn't bring Robb to meet with Stannis because... she thinks that's not going to end well, and Harry and Catelyn are inclined to agree. In general, it seems to Nell that it's ridiculous for two separate armies with similar intentions (destroy the Boltons and Freys) to be attacking the same castle at roughly the same time... when they could just attack it together. Stannis *would* have reached Winterfell well before Nell's group if not for the bad weather and the brutal march through the woods without any roads.
> 
> 6\. Writing Stannis makes me nervous not because I hate his character but because I think it's easy to mischaracterize him. I know there is a tendency to write him as an outright villain or some sort of stubborn moron in fics and I really want to avoid that. I think he has plenty of flaws but his leadership skills, especially after the Blackwater, are actually quite good. He manages to win over the northern clans despite everything and overall his men seem to take a lot of pride in following him. I also think he is more cunning than fanon gives him credit for. 
> 
> 7\. In the 'northern North' Jon's reputation is quickly approaching hero levels. Nell is not exactly thrilled by all the buzz surrounding him and the fact that Stannis offered to legitimize him scares the shit out of her. This is part of what motivates her to suggest to Stannis that if he helps them take back Winterfell, Robb and her would be willing to renounce the titles of King and Queen and accept lordship again, so long as House Stark is still the Great House in the North. Way back when, much earlier on this fic, Nell said something similar when she told Robb they could kneel to Stannis but never the Lannisters.
> 
> 8\. Bran and Rickon are alive! We probably knew that, but everyone else sure didn't! Magic is continuing to leak back into the story at a rapid rate. First Robb's resurrection, then the ghost of Arrana Karstark, now communication through weirwood trees. 
> 
> 9\. Stannis intends to use the Karstark soldiers who came with Arnolf and co. to trick the Boltons into thinking both he and Nell died in the wolfswood battle. He also intends to lure the Freys out onto the frozen lakes, banking on them not knowing the geography of the area. 
> 
> 10\. You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com).


	78. Barbrey V - Donella LII

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Barbrey notes that the blade is still covered in dried blood, with some dismay. There were rumors that Baratheon claimed his sword was the new Lightbringer, the Red Sword, the sword that took one hundred days and nights to forge before it was plunged into some simpering woman’s chest and triumphantly yanked back out again, bloodied and pulsing and always warm to the touch. Barbrey always considered it the sort of obscene tale that would appeal to men- a sword equated to a cock, a woman throwing herself at your feet and eagerly anticipating both, a sword of fire, gods know men love stories about burning- 

But Stannis Baratheon did not meet his end by fire, but by ice. Some five hundred Karstark men marched back with the tale from the wolfswood, grim-faced to the last of them. Arnolf and his sons and grandsons, dead, dim-witted Hosteen Frey, dead, Aenys Frey, well, those at Winterfell already knew what had happened to him, Roose’s men had found him dead in a pit trap outside the castle- Stannis Baratheon and most of his knights, dead in one brave final stand, having drowned the Freys and quite a few of the Manderlys on a frozen lake, or two frozen lakes, it’s not quite clear- only to be killed himself on the field, his infamous sword carried off, and-

“You should have brought back the bodies,” Roose sounds like a reproving father, addressing one of the Karstark captains, who stares back at him flatly. 

“He went into the water,” a serjeant sniggers, “isn’t that where Baratheons go when they’re dead?”

Roose is busy spreading something out across the long table, some scrap of cloth. Barbrey’s chest tightens slightly at the sight of it. “A pity,” he says, “she was such a stubborn child, to the last.” He is obviously no longer referring to Stannis. When he looks up, a gloved hand holding down the tattered, blood-stained pink silk, he looks at Barbrey, her father, Lyessa Flint, Jonelle Cerwyn, Whoresbane, and old Lyam Fingerflint. And Ramsay, who reeks of blood from spending the last few days in the dungeons, no doubt flaying a spearwife or two. The bastard leans forward hungrily at the sight of the cloth. “The bitch is dead, too?”

Barbrey physically moves to strike him, only to be intercepted by Whoresbane. Ramsay grins at her but there’s nothing to it; his eyes are dry kindling alight with hate, and he’s been in a state of nearly deranged fury since losing both his Reek and his little wife. But none of that- Barbrey doesn’t care, because none of that- it doesn’t matter if-

“I cannot see how else Stannis Baratheon might have Bolton silks in his camp,” Roose says. “Perhaps my daughter found a more enticing second husband than the one I provided for her. They say Marbrand was murdered by northmen, not stormlanders, but… Donella was always a resourceful creature.” He takes another sip of his mulled cider as if thoughtful.

He is met with silence from the Karstark men, his own guards, and the assembled lords, save Barbrey, who Hother Umber passes rather stiffly to her father. She is eight-and-thirty now and long past the age of crumpling into any man’s arms and wailing with grief. Still, she finds it difficult to stand all the same. This should not surprise her. Donella was always a stubborn child. She would rather have died in a desperate attempt to reclaim her rights than lived out a long and miserable life as some western lord’s pawn. But to think she was so close. So close to Winterfell. So close to her daughter. Lysara is locked away in the nursery at present, and Fat Walda is resting behind Roose on a low, cushioned bench, her face tight with pain and exhaustion, dark circles under her eyes. 

Barbrey fights back a howl building in her chest. That is what Roose wants. Some great explosion of grief, some wailing and shrieking and vows of vengeance, that is what has always pleased him, seeing others unwound and skinned alive before him, all their secret emotions and fears laid bare. She jerks away from her father’s muttered comforts and straightens back up, relieved her eyes are dry. She is a cold shrew, that’s right, and she has very little heart left at all, and what is left is dry and stringy and the horses they’ve been eating. She will mourn Donella properly once her father is dead. 

Roose has done away with the slickly honeyed words and the false pleasantries, the mild as milk voice and the bland smiles. He no longer needs pretend. The loss of most of the Freys has dealt him a hard blow, but it’s been slightly lessened by the arrival of the Karstarks. Their mounted spears are strong and they know the lands much better than the Freys. He’s lost the Manderlys too but just as well, he must think, better that than them coming back alive to find Lord Wyman three days dead. 

“What remains of the Stark forces,” he says, “broken men, stragglers, and free riders, little better than sellswords, have made their camp at Castle Cerwyn. It will be my son’s pleasure, Lady Jonelle, to rid your home of these interlopers.”

Lyam Fingerflint shifts, his cane scraping across the floor. 

Barbrey’s father scowls but says nothing.

Jonelle Cerwyn, to her credit, keeps a straight face, nodding her head silently. Ramsay looks far less pleased at this; what does he care for the remains of the northern army? He wants the Dreadfort. He wants his Reek. He wants his bride. Roose has forbidden him from killing ‘Abel’ outright. If he suspects the man to be some leader among the wildings, he has not shared this. Ramsay has had little to comfort him besides torturing his prisoners, and even that seems to have lost its usual flavor. Beron swears up and down he’s heard the Bastard hasn’t fed his dogs since Greyjoy and the imposter escaped. The kennels are growing louder by the day; old Ben Bones looks as though he hasn’t slept a wink.

Roose is addressing Ramsay now; “You’ll proceed before dawn with the Karstarks and your men. I will give you seven hundred of my garrison, and the forces of Dustin, Ryswell, Flint, Locke, Slate, Umber, and Cerwyn. Master Hother and Walton will join you.”

Ramsay may be a fool, but Barbrey knows he can add and subtract perfectly well. He reddens. “That’s barely three thousand. Give me more of the garrison. You only need a thousand to hold Winterfell.”

“No,” says Roose, simply, taking another sip of his drink.

“At least the remaining Freys then,” Ramsay snaps. “Another few hundred. It was folly to send so many to confront Baratheon, we should have waited him out instead-,”

“You’ll do as I command you,” Roose cuts him off brusquely, “and be grateful for it. This is the most men you have ever been granted the command of, is it not? How many did you take Winterfell with, again? Five hundred against a paltry few Ironborn?”

“If not for me,” Ramsay snarls, “you would not be seated in Winterfell today.” One of his hands is shaking slightly; Barbrey wonders for a moment if he is about to pull a knife and kill Roose for them. She might even thank him for it before she slit his bastard throat.

“You may be legitimized,” Roose replies evenly, although Barbrey can detect a faint trace of tense unease in his jaw, “but do not forget where you come from. What I saw fit to bring you up from. You could have marched south a miller’s son, and died with the rest in the Riverlands. Instead you lead an army, and your children will rule Winterfell.”

 _What children_ , everyone must be thinking. Roose’s men failed to find any sign of Theon Greyjoy or the girl. Not even their remains. They could simply be buried under the snow, or have fallen into a stream or ditch somewhere. Or perhaps they’ve fled to Cerwyn, and are cowering at Harrion Karstark or the Greatjon’s feet even now. 

“A reward will be in order if you defeat them,” Roose continues, his pale eyes not leaving Ramsay’s enraged face. “A new wife, perhaps, one you might find a good deal more biddable than the last. I am sure Lady Cerwyn would be honored.”

“Surely a period of mourning must be in order first, for Lady Arya,” Lyessa Flint says quietly.

Roose tilts his head almost mockingly. “We are in winter now. Grief is a luxury of kinder seasons.” 

Ramsay is evaluating Jonelle Cerwyn, who has gone stiff as a corpse. “She’s old,” he says after a long moment, tongue briefly darting out to lick his pink lips. “Give me the Slate woman. I’ve a mind to teach her how to guard her tongue. She spit at me today.”

“Jenny Slate is not yet a widow,” Roose replies evenly. “Although she may be if we have more trouble in this castle.” The threat is lost on none of them.

Still, Ramsay does not seem placated. “Let me search again for them today, before sunset,” he insists. “With my bitches, they’ll find a scent, Ben Bones will find a trail-,”

“In this weather?” Roose all but scoffs. “Don’t be a fool. Are you a lord’s son or a kennel boy? You cannot play at both forever.”

Ramsay does not redden any further; the color drains from his cheeks entirely, and he takes half a step towards his father, as if he means to bound across the length of the table. Roose leans back in his seat; it’s not clear if he’s noticed or not-

Walda gasps suddenly, and they all look over as she scrambles up from her seat, clawing at her skirts. “I- oh, it’s-,” Something is dripping across the floor beneath her feet as she backs away in horror, and it isn’t blood. “It’s too early,” she whimpers, “Maester Henly said not for another moon, he said-,” She cries out again, this time in pain, sagging against the wall.

The color seems to flare back into Ramsay’s face, and Barbrey watches his eyes as he looks at Walda. Roose collects himself; stands up, pushing back his chair as two maids hurry over to support Walda from crumpling to the floor in a puddle of damp skirts. “My lord,” Lyessa Flint says. “I’ve birthed seven babes, allow me to assist your wife.”

“Please!” Walda wails. “It hurts!”

“Certainly,” says Roose. “Take Lady Barbrey and Lady Jonelle with you. Doubtless they have valuable wisdom for my poor wife at a time like this.” His sneering is lost on no one; Barbrey and Jonelle have never birthed children themselves, but what does Roose care? He wants them well out of the way, and secluding them in Walda’s confinement with her is just the way to do it. Doubtless he means to hold back Whoresbane, her father, and Lyam Fingerflint so he might threaten them a little further- if your men don’t mind themselves and march under my son, I’ll have you three in cages like Abel-

Walda moans and whines all the way to her chambers, limping along like a lamed horse, until the door is shut behind them. 

“Fetch Maester Rhodry,” Jonelle orders the maidservant, who obediently rushes out. Winterfell has three grey rats at present; Rhodry, the Cerwyn maester, Henly, the Slate maester, and Medrick, the Hornwood master that Donella Hornwood sent along with a token force of her men. 

Lyessa, in turn, has rounded on Walda. “You can give it up now,” she says coldly. “You think I don’t know what a woman’s waters breaking looks like? That little trickle was not it. What, did you fill a skin and puncture it with a needle between your legs?”

Walda’s face is shiny with sweat from her performance, Barbrey is quickly realizing; she no longer seems half so bent over in agony, and she keeps a hand calmly at her belly. “I’ve had pains on and off for the past week,” Walda says. “False ones, though. My mother told me; I’ve seen my share of births. There’s always someone being born at the Twins.”

“Whatever you are planning,” Jonelle Cerwyn says sharply, “it had better be soon. You can delay a day, perhaps, with this farce, until Roose realizes. He’s not that blind to such things, surely.”

Walda settles on the edge of the bed, smoothing the covers and her expression all at once. “He’s blind to enough,” she says. “He is blind to me. He is blind to Ramsay. He is used to balancing on the head of a needle and keeping his footing. But not this time.”

“Serra? Sarra?” she calls, and a door leading into a small sitting room opens. Barbrey stares past the Frey twins, to where Marianne Vance and Marissa Frey appear to be sitting with a large wicker laundry basket betwixt them, adjusting the lump of sheets and bedlinens inside. Marianne seems to be almost rocking it. 

Lyessa inhales sharply. Barbrey glances at her. “What is it-,”

“The babe,” Lyessa says through her teeth. She glances at Walda. “This is madness. The babe is in the basket?”

“Of course the sheets will have to be stripped and changed when I’m in labor,” Walda says patiently. “The maesters all agree these things must be kept as cleanly as possible, and childbirth’s a messy thing, is it not?”

“How did you get her from the nursery?” Barbrey snaps.

“Her wet nurse is a Twins servant by birth, loyal to me before my lord husband.”

“What of it?” Jonelle asks, brow furrowed. “You mean to hide in here? For what? She will be discovered-,”

“She will be brought down with the linens,” says Walda, “by Serra and Marianne. Or Sarra and Marianne. It doesn’t matter who, I suppose. No one will question them bringing things to the laundry. They’ll take her to the crypts instead. She’ll be safe and dry-,”

“And should she cry?” Lyessa demands. “She’ll hunger eventually and start wailing fit to wake the dead.”

“She’s just been fed,” Walda replies. “And Maester Henly has been so kind as to prove some poppy wine to me as of late, for my pains. A few drops of that and the babe will be fast asleep again.”

“This is madness,” Lyessa Flint repeats herself. “You mean to hide the child in the crypts, for what? Roose will rouse the castle, he’ll tear it apart in search of her-,”

“He will not,” says Walda. “He cannot afford any further displays of weakness. He cannot publicly announce that the child is missing. He fears you are all a hair’s breadth from turning against him at any moment. He has confined your men to the guard’s hall, yes, but he knows if they were to truly riot, there is little he could do save hope his men are enough to put them down. He will never announce she is missing.”

“He will try to quietly have the castle searched for her, but by the time he realizes- why, he may not even realize tonight. He never visits her. The wet nurse is in there now, singing to a lump of blankets in the cradle. She will come and go as she always does, and the guards will suspect nothing. Before dawn, she will alert them that the babe has vanished- what reason has she to lie to them?”

“Before dawn, Roose means for his bastard to lead an army on Cerwyn,” Barbrey hisses, before pressing her lips together as the maester Rhodry hurries inside. 

“You may speak freely before him,” Jonelle says, but Barbrey scoffs. 

“Have you not learned by now? Do not mistake a servant of the Citadel for-,”

“Well, you are already speaking freely,” Walda observes.

“I trust Rhodry with my life,” Jonelle says. “He intercepted a raven from the Dreadfort five days past. Their maester claimed they were being marched upon by men of Widow’s Watch, White Harbor, and Hornwood. He told Roose none of this, and burned the letter immediately.”

Barbrey looks between the ruddy haired maester, who says, “I swore to serve House Cerwyn, not House Bolton. It did not compromise my vows in the least,” and Lyessa Flint, who only says, “I left son Cregan as lord in my stead, and commanded him to do as he saw fit with the bulk of our men in my absence. I was glad to hear I did not raise an indecisive fool.”

“I’ve sent maids to bring in hot water,” Rhodry says. “If we are to continue in this manner, Lady Walda had best undress, if she’ll excuse my forwardness.”

“Before dawn,” Barbrey says to Walda, as Jonelle helps loosen her stays. “And what? You mean for us to announce to the castle ourselves, as the army gathers to leave, that Roose no longer holds Lysara? It will be a slaughter.” She sounds like her father now, she knows. Now that she knows his grief. In her mind’s eye Donella is still that plump little girl of eight or nine, apple-cheeked and leaning against her in the saddle, her head lolling across Barbrey’s chest. 

“Yes,” says Walda. “It will. But we will be better able to take command of the main gates and the portcullis. Roose will arrange you and the other lords with him, to see them off. He will be within reach. And I have spoken with Hother about Ramsay,” her lips curls in disgust as her bodice comes down around her ample chest. “Once the two of them are dead or seized, we will have all we need. Men scatter like leaves once their leaders are downed. I saw it at the Twins. I will see it again here.”

“If we fail in this again,” Lyessa says, “Roose will execute Robard and Jenny Slate. He will imprison, torture, and kill the rest of us. He will absorb our surviving men into his forces permanently, and after he has put down the northmen at Cerwyn, he will sack our castles and slaughter our kin.”

“No,” says Jonelle. Her tone is hard; it does not match with her placid face and dull eyes, although they seem a little sharper at the moment. “I don’t mean to be taken alive. Nor do I mean to be sport for he and his bastard. His son murdered my brother. Cley was little more than a child.” She swallows, throat seizing. “I don’t care. My line is nearly finished. I will see it extinguished before I see it overtaken by Bolton blood.”

Barbrey thinks of her father, his pride worn down like flesh to the bone, his dead sons, who fell one after another. Her dead brothers. Her dead sister. Her dead niece. “He dies on the morrow,” she says. “I don’t care how, or by who. He dies.” 

Walda is helped into the bed clad in just her lace-encrusted shift, and pots of steaming water and fresh linens are brought in. Outside, the daylight is rapidly draining away. The women sit and speak in low, tense voices, but as time wears on and neither Roose nor his bastard burst into the room, shouting accusations of treachery, the mood almost seems to lighten, as if they were men sitting around drinking the night before a great battle. Barbrey retreats to the side room, where the Freys girls sit with Lysara. An orphan, now.

“No one will notice if any of us are missing,” Marissa Frey says confidently. “No one beyond Marianne and I can even keep Sarra and Serra straight in the first place.”

Barbrey sniffs, and indicates them in turn. “Sarra. Serra.”

“No, my lady,” Serra - or is it Sarra? - says gently. “We switched the way we wear our hair today.”

Marianne Vance is rocking the basket back and forth, dangling some velvet ribbon above a quietly burbling Lysara and letting her grab at it with chubby hands. Donella used to enjoy those sorts of things as babe too. Barbrey has raised a child who was in orphan in all but name before. Surely she can do it again. She’s not so old yet. She will teach Lysara that hers is the blood of kings, that her mother and father fought for her and her rights. 

She will spin whatever pretty tales she must, so long as the child might learn to smile and laugh through the sorrow. She will make her strong, and fierce, as fierce as Bethany, teach her to ride and hunt and hawk and look down her nose at the men who might dismiss her for her sex or age. She will teach her to speak clearly and coldly, to command a room, to demand respect and earn it in turn. 

Her eyes are stinging. Barbrey has not wept since her sister died, and she certainly will not now. The tears come anyways, but she refuses to let them to fall, instead hunching further over the basket turned cradle. Lysara smiles up at her, all gums, then seems to recognize her look of distress. Her own expression crumbles and she begins to whimper. Barbrey hushes her, massaging her belly with her hand. 

Marianne moves away to the small hearth across the room. Serra and Sarra are whispering together in the window seat, watching snowflakes tumble down from the dark sky. Bethany is in the corner of the room. Barbrey can all but see her. _You failed me. You promised to protect my daughter. You promised to bring my bones back to the Rills. Instead you let them bury me with my dead babes, and you let them take away my daughter._

She supposes she ought to at least try to get some rest for the time being, but she cannot. Barbrey’s sleep has never come easy, not since she was a little girl sharing a bed with her sister. After Bethany had married Roose, the bed had seemed especially big and cold without her sister’s warm presence beside her, although Barbrey would never admit such a thing aloud. Sisters were married off and separated, sometimes permanently. It was the way of things. But it had not stopped her, over the years, from wondering how different things might be had their father promised Bethany to another man. If things might have had a kinder ending there. 

Despite her rigid position and determination to stay awake, she does nod off a few times, punctuated by Walda’s occasional ‘cry’ of pain, in case servants are listening in the corridor. Time seems to blur together, and the sounds of the castle fade away into the deep black of night, until a much sharper scream jerks Barbrey awake with a start. She looks around wildly, leaning defensively in front of the basket, as the door flies open, revealing no shortage of alarm in the adjoining room. Walda sounds genuinely horrified, not merely a good actress, and Lyessa Flint is cursing under her breath. The other door slams behind Maester Rhodry as he leaves the room in a hurry.

Jonelle’s ovaline face is moon pale in the dim lighting. “Her water’s just broken,” she says. “Really, this time.”

Barbrey feels like cursing herself. Marissa gasps. 

“Are you certain? She could have wet herself-,”

“No,” says Jonelle. “It’s her waters. Rhodry’s gone to fetch Medrick; he has more experience with early labors.”

“We’ll move the princess now,” Barbrey says, fighting back a brief surge of panic. “Girls, quickly now-,”

Lysara, fortunately, is genuinely fast asleep, despite the unfolding chaos around her. Serra or Sarra- one of the twins heaves up the basket by one handle, Marianne Vance by the other.

“Don’t run,” Marissa Frey is saying shakily. “You mustn’t run, no matter what-,”

“Don’t you dare run,” Barbrey snaps, not wanting to think about might happen if they take a tumble down a flight of stairs in their hurry. “Go quickly but calmly, and keep your heads down. Bolton and Frey men should not stop you. Once you get to the crypts, go deep in- don’t just stop at the bottom of the steps. I don’t care if you see one rat or fifty. Keep going further in.”

Serra or Sarra looks vaguely queasy, but Marianne nods swiftly. 

Barbrey glances out the window as they leave the room; it’s later than she thought, possibly the hour of the nightingale already. There seems to be more movement than usual coming from the yard; it seems brighter than usual, more torches lit. Are the men assembling even earlier than planned for their march? They won’t have daylight for another hour or two, at least. Are the northmen on the march from Cerwyn, and that has spurred Roose to order them to assemble early? Her chest tightens, and she suddenly wishes she had not sent the girls out with Lysara soon. But no. Better her safely tucked away in the crypts, where there will be no fighting.

She nearly jumps as Rhodry bursts back into the room, panting. The maester looks terrified; he can barely get the words out. “They’re- dead, the ravens- I don’t know- it-,”

Walda moans again in pain and terror. 

“Don’t push,” Lyessa is telling her, having opened up her legs to take a look herself. “Don’t you dare push yet, Frey. You’re not nearly wide enough.”

“Out with it!” Barbrey snarls at Rhodry, who swallows and looks to an anxious Jonelle, then says, “Medrick’s dead, Henley’s badly injured. Ramsay and some men burst in, attacked them- they wanted the raven for the Wall-,”

“Why would Ramsay want to send a message to the Wall?” Jonelle demands.

“He thinks that’s where Greyjoy and the Stark girl fled,” Rhodry says miserably. 

“I see he’s finally gone completely mad,” Lyessa Flint snaps, in between trying to get Walda to take deeper breaths, “instead of just halfway there!”

“Roose will kill him for this,” Barbrey is forcing herself to breathe deeply as well. “Good. Good. This is just what we needed, then- the Bastard’s made some idiotic move for power, and Roose will-,”

“Lord Roose is locked in his chambers,” Rhodry says. “I went by to see, so I might warn you if he was coming- the guard would only say he’d taken ill suddenly. I would have thought it a lie, but I could hear vomiting-,”

“The wine,” Jonelle says under her breath, then a little louder. “The wine. Ramsay’s poisoned him.”

Barbrey feels a little as though the room were suddenly reeling around her. “Alright. No, it is not- it’s not too late. If the men are already assembling, all we needs do is make it clear that Ramsay has turned, Roose is incapacitated, their men will panic over who to side with-,”

She stops talking abruptly; Jonelle had thrown open the windows to let cold night air into the stuffy room, and from here she can hear the familiar grinding and groans of the gates opening.

“How long ago did Ramsay attack the maesters?” she whirls on Rhodry. “Did Henly know?”

“I- mayhaps an hour past, or more-,”

“The Bastard still means to lead them out to war, then. Doubtless with more than what his father promised him at the start.”

“Send a raven to Cerwyn,” Jonelle is saying, “warn them, if we can, tell them everything that’s happened here-,”

Barbrey is hot on the maester’s heels as he leaves the room again; Rhodry glances back at her in fear and confusion, but she merely hisses, “Go!” and takes off in an entirely different direction. Beron. She needs to find Beron. Stopping the army from departing at this point is a lost cause, but if Ramsay was truly stupid enough to leave them here with Roose incapacitated, then now is the time. Their men are gone, but they have Walda, and Lysara is no longer in Bolton hands. They can wrench back control from the garrison, or at least convince the Freys they’d best turn cloaks if they wish to live. They may even be able to accomplish it without bloodshed. These men are used to obeying orders from their betters, and with Roose is no state to give them, well-

She makes it into the east courtyard between the guard hall and the Great Keep without being stopped, although she notices a group of Frey soldiers making haste towards the keep, hands on their swords, no doubt concerned for their Lady Bolton. The guard hall is darkened, but she notices a familiar figure coming around the corner, heading towards the deserted First Keep.

“Beron!” 

He freezes upon hearing her voice and doubles back to her, almost running. Barbrey has not seen him look like this since he came to tell her that Sara Snow was missing. 

“The Bastard’s ridden out with the men,” she says, grabbing his armored arm, “quickly now, we can still-,”

“He hasn’t,” Beron says. “He ordered Steelshanks into his armor and stayed back.”

Barbrey stares at him. “Walton obeyed him?”

“Walton wanted to live to see the dawn. I don’t think it matters much to him which Bolton gives the orders. But the Bastard is still here. Headed for the lichyard, although I can’t say why.”

The realization is dreadful and sudden. “He’s not headed for the lichyard, he’s headed for the crypts. Someone must have seen the girls.”

“What girls?” Beron demands, then, “But it doesn’t matter, listen to me, my lady, the Karstarks are not what they seem, they’ve come from Stannis-,”

Barbrey barely hears any of it. “The girls, I sent them to hide with the babe, one of the twins and Marianne Vance-,”

Beron curses, jerks away from her, and takes off towards the First Keep. “Stay in the guard’s hall, my lady!”

Like hell, thinks Barbrey, and runs after him, lifting her skirts. Had they both been a decade younger, he would have easily outpaced her, but as it stands they’re both exhausted, and Beron is slowed by his lack of familiarity with this part of the castle. They come out of the circular First Keep and into the lonesome courtyard beneath that broken tower, the one the Stark boy fell from so long go. The sky is a little lighter, which just makes its shadow even longer. Crows caw as if warning from their perch atop the tower. Past the roof of the crypts she can just make out the outline of Abel’s cage hanging behind the armory.

Ramsay’s left two men outside the crypts, who waste no time in going straight for Beron.

“Stay back!” he shouts at her, as he races to meet the faster of the two- she prays he’s not fool enough to fight them both at once, he needs to determine the weaker of the two and kill him quick, then press the advantage- but Barbrey has little interest in staying back, and skirts around the clashing of swords, taking advantage of the guards’ surprise and focus on the seemingly more dangerous of the two. She all but flies down the steps to the crypts, tempted to call out for the girls but knowing better. 

Barbrey snatches a torch from a sconce, gripping it tightly in her gloved hand, and unsheathes the ornamental knife at her belt with the other. It’s not uncommon for a woman to wear a knife, although it’s usually understood that they’re for feasting or hunting or simply for the chance to wear something shiny at their hip. It is uncommon for them to wield them, but Beron’s shared more with her than a bed over the years, and she is no shieldmaiden, but nor she is some helpless old crone, either.

She continues down into the dark, keeping her eyes pricked for any faint sounds beyond the steady dripping of water or the scurrying of mice and rats. At first the only path forward in the crypts is in a straight line, but gradually it begins to branch off more and more. She stays where she is, unwilling to become disoriented and lose her direct passage back to the stairwell. She hears the faint sound of feet coming down them now-

“Barbrey!” Beron shouts, his voice echoing into the dark. She all but curses him. Alert the Bastard, why doesn’t he-

A girl screams, sharp and piercing, to her left. Barbrey forgets any thought of Beron and moves that way, darting down the long line of statues and tombs, past alcoves and statues, melted down stubs of candles and shattered lanterns on the floor. Glass and soil crunches underfoot; loose pebbles scatter nearby under moving feet. 

“ _Barbrey_!” Beron’s voice is much fainter, but she hears another sound closer to her.

Barbrey rounds the corner and barely has time to muffle a scream. The basket lays on the floor, a mess of bloody sheets and linens spilling out of it like intestines from a gutted animal. A body curls around it, still moving slightly. Barbrey runs to her; Sarra- Serra- not, it’s Sarra, stares blankly up at her, mouth moving but nothing coming out but a low whine, scrabbling at the blood stain creeping across the front of her homespun gown. She’s missing one of her shoes. 

Barbrey grips her limp hand but leans over her to check the basket, her heart in her throat. Besides the sheets, it’s empty. She turns back to Sarra. “Tell me,” she says, hunching close so the girl can hear her, “tell me, Sarra, you must tell me now, where did Marianne take the babe? Is she still here, hiding? Which way did she go?”

But Sarra Frey cannot speak much, besides a whimpered, “ _Behind_ -,”

Barbrey whirls just in time for a hand to meet the side of her face. Her torch falls to the floor. The blow is hard enough to nearly send her into the stone wall beside her; as it is, she is reduced to scrambling away on her hands and knees, momentarily blinded, before a gloved fist roots itself in her widow’s knot and pulls it loose to better grip it. Ramsay Snow drags her up onto her feet as she gasps in shock and pain, a blade prodding at her ribs. 

“And here I thought,” he says, “I might get some sleep before sunrise. It just goes to show-,” he drags the side of her head along the wall, ignoring her squirms and cries as she tries to wrench away, scraping her scalp and cheek and tearing at her earlobe, “we don’t always get what we want. Nor what we deserve. But mayhaps you’ll be of more help than this one, eh?” He aims a kick at Sarra, who is silent now. 

Barbrey takes advantage of his momentary distraction to drive her knife down towards the meat of his thigh; it skims along the side of his leg instead; he grunts in pain but is not wounded beyond a long cut. He momentarily lets go of her hair, only to grab her by the back of the neck, his grip like a vice, and throw her to the ground. Barbrey scrambles around, only to be kicked in the gut; she crumples backwards, moaning, her knife limp and useless in her right hand. His other foot presses down hard on her wrist until she hears something crack and her vision throbs with black spots.

“Tell me where you sent that little cunt with the babe,” he says. 

“I don’t know,” she gasps breathlessly, “I don’t know, I was looking for her-,”

He presses down harder with his boot. She screams in pain and tries to claw at his legs, uselessly. 

“Gods,” says Ramsay. “For all your talk you’re just a frightened old woman, aren’t you? I swear the bastard woman had more fight than you, you withered whore. Tell me where my sister’s whelp is, and I’ll make it quick for you.”

Barbrey grasps at the torch, fast fading but still hot, and presses it against his shin. He lets up on her wrist, swearing and gasping in pain, and she scrambles to her feet, but only makes it a few feet away, screaming for Beron, before he’s on her again. She doesn’t even feel the knife that enters her back, into the meat of her right shoulder, she only feels it when he pulls it back out. Barbrey collapses in silent agony. 

“BASTARD!” someone shrieks. They could be very close, they could be very far. It echoes off the walls, sinks into all the cracks and crevices. It does not sound like Beron. “BASTARD!”

Ramsay turns; Barbrey hears running feet nearby, and then he takes off, moving fast for a beast of his size, disappearing around the corner. Barbrey tries to sit up, but the pain is too great, and her chest is wet with blood from her stab wound. She begins to tremble where she lays, and can only gaze up at the nearest Stark lord staring grimly down at her from his post. Brandon, she thinks, trying to stem the flow of blood with her fingers, Brandon, help me. But he does not move, and where his sword should be, his stone hands are empty.

300 AC - CERWYN

Nell estimates she has perhaps six hours to sleep between battles, from the time it takes her party to ride southeast from the crofter’s village and its lakes full of drowned men, along the river to Cerwyn without treading close enough to Winterfell to be spotted by any outriders or scouts. She is dead on her feet by the time the gates close behind them. Cerwyn is a small but strong castle; they can leave a garrison of perhaps three hundred men during the next (and final, she hopes) battle and it would still be ably defended. 

She is praying it will not come to a siege of Winterfell, praying Ramsay will insist their father let him lead men out himself, and praying Stannis’ forces will act as instructed and not come down from the northwest of the wolfswood until the Bolton men are already engaged in battle. They need to think they only have one army to worry about, not two. She is praying the Karstarks successfully deceived her father, praying they were able to meddle with the hunter’s gate on the western side of Winterfell- all they need is one opening. Stannis’ men come pouring out, the clansmen ram the gate and get it open, the rest keep pushing south around the castle, flooding into the winter town, and they can end it there. 

She all but falls into a bed, and is asleep from the moment her head meets the pillow. Nell had been expecting to dream of the battle between the two lakes, and she does; she dreams of standing atop the small watchtower, watching the Freys come flooding across the landscape, the first wave of soldiers headed straight for Stannis’ carefully positioned men, and the tremendous cacophony of cracks and screams as the ice begins to buckle and shatter, entire chunks turning from white to black and men crashing through, horses and all. The Freys frantically try to divert their forces into coming from another direction, only to push them out onto the smaller of the two lakes, whose ice is even more fragile. And then the Manderlys turn on them, emerging from their hiding place in a large pine grove, paltry force of three hundred that they are.

A battle that nevertheless lasted hours in life is reduced to moments in her head. Nell has seen so many, both before her eyes and in her dreams, that she watches with a sort of dazed indifference as hundreds die, although at least she does not feel the cold or the howling wind in the dream. Harry Karstark and Catelyn seem to melt away, and when she turns round she is alone atop the watch tower, and the battle field is empty of anyone save corpses. There is no sign of Stannis nor his blazing sword, no sign of the mountain clans, nor even of Greyjoy and his sister. She can just make out Grey Wind, plunging into the woods in the direction of Winterfell, but he does not come back to her when she calls, and his faint outline vanishes into the dark.

Nell stands on the lakeshore in this dream, and picks out a neat path among some miraculous stretch of undisturbed ice. Drowned mens’ hands and faces claw at the ice underneath her feet. On the far side of the lake, a hunting horn echoes, over, and over again, and she can hear a gleeful chorus of shrieks and shouts. Bethany and her women are still out, chasing down their prey. The lonely islet is empty, save a familiar figure kneeling in prayer before the weirwood tree that Bran spoke through, although it is silent now. Nell kneels beside her; Sara Snow turns to regard her with a small, sad smile.

Nell had hoped there would be some peace here, that Sara would look different, whole again, as she was in life, but her braid is still hacked off and bleeding black blood down her back, and her nails are as broken and bruised as Robb’s. It no longer horrifies Nell; just to be beside Sara is enough, even if she is like this. She leans her head on her shoulder; Sara wraps a bare arm round her, and hums softly under her breath. She always had a fine voice, the once or twice she could be coaxed to sing at a feast. 

“Will I still see you, when I’ve had my revenge?” Nell wonders drowsily; usually she feels very alert and tense in these dreams, but tonight her exhaustion has crept into the furthest recesses of her mind, blanketing everything with a layer of weary acceptance.

“Your revenge,” Sara echoes her. “Is that what you call it?”

“They murdered you. They murdered Robb. I’ve sworn to see them dead for it, and I will,” Nell recounts tiredly; she’s said it so many times now, she can’t even summon up the necessary seething hatred. When she wakes, she will. 

“Revenge is like wishes. It’s for little children and dying men,” says Sara. “I taught you justice was your domain. That it was your duty to see it done, through yourself or your lord husband.”

“Whatever you call it,” Nell doesn’t feel like arguing with a dead woman tonight. “It doesn’t matter. They’ll die, and you’ll be avenged.”

“You think death repays death?” Sara snorts, and her fingers rub at Nell’s aching scalp. “Ah, you are a child still.”

“I’ll make them suffer.”

“And that will make my pain easier to bear?” Sara turns to look at her. She is feeling at the stump of her braid again, mouth pinched in distaste. “Tell me. You’ve put so many to death now. Does it soften your sorrows?”

Nell rubs at her eyes like a sullen child. “The Freys deserved far worse.”

“Perhaps. But you did not give it to them. I should like to think I had something to do with. Stoneheart would have slaughtered the lot of them, had you wished it.”

“I didn’t,” says Nell. “I didn’t wish it. And his name is Robb. You know this,” she swallows, painfully

“Aye, his name was Robb. I remember.” Sara touches her chin with bloody fingers. 

They lapse into comfortable silence. Nell studies the weirwood tree. Perhaps she should sacrifice something here, but the islet is silent; no birds fluttering in the trees, no squirrels or rabbits rooting underfoot. Again she hears the hunting horn. “My mother hasn’t come to see me tonight.”

“No,” says Sara, “she is tracking an old beast of hers through the undergrowth. He’s bloodied now, and she can smell his fear.”

“I am wed to a beast as well,” Nell confesses. “A kinder sort than hers, but a beast all the same. I know that now. I’m afraid.”

“Of him?” Sara sounds bemused.

“No. Of what will happen afterwards. After the fighting and the killing- when that’s through. I’m afraid he will never love our child again. I’m afraid he’s dying. I’m afraid he never stopped dying.” She pauses, then says, “I’m afraid, always. It never goes away.” It feels good to say it aloud. She hasn’t been able to say it to anyone. Not Robb or Catelyn or Harry or even Dana. 

Sara hums in assent. 

“No blunt advice for me?” Nell tries at a smile, although her eyes are welling with tears. The horn sounds again.

“You’re a woman grown,” says Sara. “You’ve suffered and bled and loved and hated. You are a queen.”

“Not for much longer.”

“It is not for me to tell you what to do or what may come,” says Sara. “You are going to face it anyways, as you always have. You were never one to shy away from fate. No. You would try to catch it by the reins instead, and leap onto its back.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Nell retorts, crossly. “I don’t- nothing is so ordained. I don’t believe that. Robb was never meant to- to suffer as he has. We were never meant to… Fate hasn’t made my life. I have,” it feels strange to say it aloud. 

“So you have,” says Sara, “and I am proud to have been your teacher, if only for a while.”

“You were never my teacher,” Nell kisses her bruised cheek, does not wince at the feeling of the mottled, swollen, cold skin underneath. “You were my sister. You are still my sister. I named my babe for you. Did you know?”

When she pulls back, Sara’s dark eyes are shining with tears. “I love you,” she says. “You have always been so brave.”

“I learned from you,” Nell takes her stiff hands in her own, trying to warm them, but the cold lingers. 

All around the lonesome islet, the ice continues to crack and splinter.

For a moment she thinks she is on an ice floe when she wakes, but it’s just the bed shifting. Robb is sitting on the edge, looking to the window, open a crack. Beyond it she can hear the gradual sounds of the castle coming alive, even if it is still two hours before dawn. Cerwyn is half a day’s ride from Winterfell. If they want to make decent time so long as the weather holds, they need to start moving soon. Attacking Winterfell by nightfall might grant them the element of surprise, but she’d rather they fight it out in the light of day. There’s less chance of injury to the horses and they’ll be able to move faster. 

“I’ll help you with your armor,” she says, rising from the bed. Oly Frey still looks more terrified than not when called upon to attend to Robb as his squire. It’s past time he was knighted, anyways. She supposes they’ll find someone to do it within the next few days. She didn’t even bother to undress before falling asleep; her hair is a tangled mess and her riding habit is wrinkled, but what of it? Robb is far beyond caring about such things; he’s sitting there naked. She stokes up the fire while he gathers his things, then begins to silently help him dress, ignoring the way the darkness turns his face strange and frightening. 

The wound on his chest is bleeding again; Nell wipes at it with a rag, and it soaks through with old blood until she finally manages to stop the flow. 

“Does it hurt?” she asks, genuinely curious.

He exhales as if he’s not sure himself. “Sometimes. Easier when I move… to forget about it.”

He’s developed a habit of shivering badly from time to time, even when fully dressed. He is shaking now, as though she’d just pulled him from a frozen pool. Nell puts her hand to his sunken cheek. “You should have gotten more rest,” she says. “You’re trembling.”

He brings one hand up to close around hers, and carefully- not gently, he’s not gentle anymore, but he is capable of restraining himself, she’s seen it- removes her hand from his face. “I’ve rested enough.”

“No, you haven’t,” she mutters, but at least his shivering seems to have abated by the time she’s helping him into his mailed shirt, which is a good deal more worn than she’d like. She’s glad she doesn’t have to come face to face with the wound anymore. It’s easier to pretend when he’s wearing his old armor. She even holds his boots for him to put his feet in, like a child. “I am marching with you.”

He stills. “No.”

“Yes,” she says. “I am. I’ll not stop your mother, either. We are not staying back here. Dana’s agreed to stay with Arya and the garrison and Galbart Glover.”

“You could be hurt,” she can hear his frustration despite his constrained words. He sometimes seems upset with himself for not being able to articulate things as he’d like. “Nell. Stay. Here.”

She gives him a hard look, then challenges. “Tell me what Jyanna Reed and you spoke of, at Greywater Watch, and I’ll stay here.”

Robb stares back at her, his jaw moves, and then nothing. He shakes his head. “No.”

“No, you’ve already forgotten, or no, you won’t tell me?”

“I remember,” he snaps. “I remember that. Don’t-,” he looks away. “Stop it.” 

Nell has asked him many times now. Still, he will not tell her. “Did you speak about Grey Wind, with her? About what… what was said of him, that you used to… to warg into him?”

Robb is silent. He reaches for his gloves of his own accord. 

“Just tell me this,” she says. “Did you go into him when you were dying?”

“Yes,” he allows. So he remembers that. 

She feels like her chest is being squeezed in a vice. “Did he… go into you?” She touches his arm, he jerks away as if stung.

“Yes. But it’s not the same.”

“How is it different?” she presses. “Are you- is part of you still in him, and part of him still in you?”

“I’m not an animal,” he sounds almost frightened, as if he’s not so sure himself.

Guilt crashes over her. Nell folds herself around him, tucking her chin over his shoulder, arranging his arms when he will not, as if she could somehow soothe him by being something soft and warm to hold, like a child’s blanket. “Of course not. Of course- I’m sorry. I know this is difficult for you. I don’t- you are still my husband. I still- I still love you, Robb, I will always love you,” she presses a kiss to his forehead, then his cheek, then his cold lips, settles into his lap and rests her head against his bruised throat. “After we’ve taken Winterfell,” she says, “we can call upon all the maesters of the North. We can- we can ask Bran. Your brother.” 

She’s told him about the weirwood, but she is grateful that she had the excuse of not being able to take Stannis’ Greyjoy hostages from him. If Robb were to lay eyes upon Theon and his sister, whether he recognized Theon or not, he’d want them dead. And she might want them dead too. Theon is still a murderer and a turncloak, a reaver, even if he did not harm Bran and Rickon, no matter what tortures he suffered at the Dreadfort. 

“Maybe he can help you,” she says, comfortingly. “Maybe there’s some… something we can do, some ritual, or… or a potion, or spell- Stannis has that witch, does he not? One of her brothers brought you back. Mayhaps she can set you right again.”

Robb is silent. His silence says more than his words, whether agreement or denial, would have. 

“We’ll fix this,” Nell wonders if she’s reassuring him or herself, now. “We will. You’re so young, Robb. You have so much to do.” When she told him of her promise to Stannis, that they would renounce their titles if he helped get them Winterfell and Lysara, he’d only looked at her blankly, as if he hadn’t even been thinking of his kingship at all. 

She doesn’t want to think about the reactions of people like the Great Jon and his sons, or Daryn Hornwood, when they hear that she all but sold their reign for Winterfell. Harry’s words keep haunting her, much as she tries to cast them aside. They will tolerate what he has become so they may wet their blades and glut themselves on revenge. After that…

It’s alright, she tells herself. Plenty of women rule for their husbands, rule through them. It will be enough to just have Robb and Lysara with her. She can handle everything else. She can-

“I love you,” he says, suddenly.

Nell nods against him. “I love you too. That’s why I’m coming with you this time.”

Arya is not supposed to be up to see them off, she is supposed to be asleep in a proper bed for the first time since Seagard, but of course that does not stop her. Her and Arden Greengood are left frantically sparring in the godswood, as Harry Karstark has ‘entrusted the princess’ safety’ to Arden, which Nell assumes must be his excuse for not taking the boy into battle with him. There had to be some semblance of a heart somewhere underneath all those heavy furs and leather, or perhaps he’s just feeling especially benevolent in the wake of the news about Alys. When they returned to Castle Cerwyn, he went straight to the godswood to pray, and may have slept beneath the heart tree. 

Nell doesn’t catch most of Arya’s breathless and resentful goodbyes to her mother, she is busy speaking with Dana, who tells her that Arya slept or dozed intermittently for the few days while they were gone, and each time woke rambling about Nymeria in the Hornwood Forest. 

“She says there’s an army marching on the Dreadfort,” Dana shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not. Might be another Donella is doing your work for you, eh?”

At least Daryn Hornwood’s mother isn’t at Winterfell, is all Nell can think. The poor man’s already in enough of a state, with the news that Alys was nearly forced into marriage to her uncle. At least that might be one sweet thing to look forward to, their wedding.

The first of their forces are just departing, and the sky changing from deep velvet to a lighter blue overhead, when Galbart Glover comes tearing out with the boy appointed to oversee the ravens in the absence of Cerwyn’s maester. Nell reads it first, then again, more frantically, then hands it to Robb, who absorbs the information silently, only saying after a long moment, “So they are not hiding anymore.”

The letter purports to be from Castle Cerwyn’s own maester, Rhodry, who claims that Winterfell is descending into chaos as Bolton turns against Bolton and Bolton against Frey, that Ramsay Snow has seized control of the army and is marching them out to meet them, that Lysara Stark has been secreted away to a ‘safe location’ within the castle itself, and that Walda Bolton is in labor while Roose is similarly bed-bound with what may be poison administered by his own bastard.

The entire note could have easily been written at sword-point, an obvious trap, but it won’t change the fact that they are marching on Winterfell, nor will it change the plans she has willed into motion with Stannis’ men. It confirms what she’s always suspected. Ramsay is the dog that, after one kick too many, has turned on his master. Her father was a fool to believe he could control a man like that forever without it leading to his own downfall or even death, and now it’s finally come true. Roose may already be dead. If anything, that almost angers her. He doesn’t get to go this easily. She doesn’t want him dying in a nice, warm bed, even if Winterfell has turned into a battlefield around him. 

Harry and Catelyn are reading the missive now, before Karstark just shakes his head and rides ahead to join with the center. The Umbers have the right, the Mormonts the left. Olyvar Frey is joining Robb in the vanguard, Grey Wind following his very uncomfortable gelding. Howland Reed and his crannogmen are at the rear, bristling with nets and spears for snaring and bringing down horses. Nell’s been repeatedly commanded, ordered, threatened that she is to go no further than the hills overlooking the winter town, if they make it that far before the inevitable clash with Ramsay’s men. She has a guard of thirty with her and Catelyn. Dana rides out with them through the gates, so she can make her own demands. 

“If you see Marianne,” she says, chewing on her lower lip, “no, the instant you see her, send a raven.”

“You want me to send you a raven from the battlefield?” Nell asks sardonically. “We’re gaining daylight. Go back inside, Dana.”

“Send me a bloody raven, messenger, light a watchtower on fire so I can see the smoke,” Dana snaps. “Else I’ll come after you, Nellie, and leave Arya with her Greengood.”

“Don’t even jape,” Catelyn murmurs under her breath, no doubt really considering the horrifying thought of Arya escaping Castle Cerwyn and going charging out across the wintry landscape, perhaps calling for Nymeria and her pack to come back west and join her. 

Dana falls back and lets them go, watching them from the drawbridge. Nell can feel her gaze burning into her back. This hasn’t been easy on her, either, she reminds herself, although it is easy to forget, to dismiss Dana’s own worries and fears because she is not a mother, how could she possibly understand-

But Nell does pray Marianne Vance is alright, because if she is not, it might truly crush Dana’s spirit. She has smiled and laughed through everything, but not this. How could she? If Marianne is gone, it will break her into pieces, Nell knows. 

She feels like she’s been marching for months, years, now, and more or less, she has, but somehow the march from Cerwyn towards Winterfell seems longer than other march combined. Longer than that first march down from Winterfell to the Neck, the Twins, Riverrun, longer than the march back up to the Twins for the wedding… She’s afraid, but more so this fear feels old and familiar, and the realization that she can do nothing about it is all the more chilling. She can’t lead their men into battle and she can not single-handedly decide their victory. All she can do is watch and wait, watch and wait. She thinks she was less nervous when she was a hostage at Riverrun, surrounded by enemies. As poor of a plan as she had then, at least it was hers, and it would depend on her to see it through. 

“It never seemed to end, when I first marched here with Robb from Riverrun,” Catelyn confides in her. Her voice is flat and distant, her thoughts obviously elsewhere, with her sons. Nell is happy for her goodmother, how could she not be, Bran and Rickon are alive, but in some sense it might be a little crueler for Catelyn to know her sons are alive but far from her, their safety uncertain, than when she thought they were dead and gone. At least she no longer had to worry for them then. “It was spring then, but the snows were still deep, and I thought we’d never arrive. It was so cold. I felt as though I’d stumbled into another realm entirely.”

“What did you think, when you first saw Winterfell?” Nell asks, ignoring the constant pounding her gut, the constant swivel scanning of her gaze, watching the landscape steadily lighten around them as morning reigns, waiting for some sort of trap or ambush or for outriders to spot them and raise up an alarm. 

“I thought you could fit ten Riverruns in it, and I was right,” Catelyn recounts. “It was- it is enormous. As you know. It took me weeks to walk the entirety of it with Robb in my arms. Ned- Ned tried to be welcoming, of course, but it was… very strange for me. I’d known I would marry into the Starks for years then, but I’d never seen any of the North before. Mayhaps it was easier for you, in that sense.”

“Mayhaps,” Nell agrees, keeping her gaze trained on Robb’s distant figure far, far ahead, which she can only see now because they are coming down a hill and the army is spread out before her, a dark, winding line of men and horses against the white and grey ground. “I was eased into it more so than you.”

Catelyn laughs with a bitter edge. “No. Eased into Winterfell, perhaps, but not into marriage. You and Robb had a fortnight between your wedding and when you came south to fight. Just as Ned and I had a fortnight before he returned to war. The difference is-,” she seems to catch herself, then says in a lower voice, “the difference is, he came back- I barely knew him before, but he did come back whole. He… he was not the same man, but he was still…”

Still what? Still a man, at all? Still had all his memories, still had command of his thoughts and actions, still ate and drank and slept normally, as men do? Robb hasn’t touched any food in days. He would not eat while they were gone, Olyvar reported back to her. He drank some water, but that was all. Nell sees years stretched out ahead of them, Robb sitting the lord’s seat at Winterfell, a feast untouched before him, himself unchanging, while others his age continue to grow, beards coming in, hair lengthening and shortening, new scars appearing, and him, just…

“I love him, no matter what he is now,” Nell says, firmly, even if it feels like it grinds against her teeth like stones in her mouth.

“I know,” Catelyn sounds terribly sad for her. “I know. You have no choice in the matter, nor do I.”

Winterfell comes into view all at once, a dark lump of grey on the horizon. Snow has begun to flurry around them. Nell stops breathing for an instant. Catelyn makes a small noise of grief or relief or shock. Nell stares at it for a moment, unable to reconcile this new image with the memory that was embedded in her mind’s eye. It seems larger than she recalls. It seems older, more battered, than she recalls, but the walls are still standing strong. The winter town is not. It could barely be called a town. The castle may still stand, but the settlement in the shadow of its walls- Nell had ridden through it half a hundred times during her time at Winterfell, and now all she sees are burned out cottages with caved in roofs, destroyed stone walls, collapsed wooden posts and rubble littering the snowy ground. The tavern seems to be the only building still standing, the roof new wood. 

Catelyn and her stop in the foothills with their guards. The army before them halts as well. Nell watches steadily, unsure if Harry or Robb might ride back to them. Grey Wind lopes ahead, a blurry shape against the snow. Then he stops, as if smelling something on the wind, and howls. It winds on and on, and then Catelyn presses a bronze far-eye from Castle Cerwyn into her hand. “Look,” she says, and Nell looks. 

She sees them then. Positioning the Bolton army amongst the ruins of the town makes it more difficult to spot them than it would were they simply arrayed against bare ground, but she sees them now nonetheless. More than a thousand, certainly. Possibly three thousand. But they still have more than that. Grey Wind continues to howl, as if offering some sort of last ditch warning- surrender now. Nell identifies their commander easily; it’s hard to miss a man with a red helm on a winter’s day. Ramsay, she thinks, and her chest tightens again with a sort of hateful longing. Her bow is slung across her back and she has a full quiver, but she is nowhere near close enough to strike anyone but her own men. Still, she sees him now, with that ornate pink cloak and the flayed man helm, and hates him all the more. 

_Let me watch him die from here_ , she thinks. _Please. Please._

No one rides out to parley with anyone. There is no great war cry or jeered threats from either side. The soldiers arrayed among the winter town do not suddenly scatter and run back towards the safety (if there is any) of the castle. Robb’s vanguard charges all at once, in silence. It is the exact opposite of the Whispering Wood. Nell chokes through her breathing in the time in between, before both sides collide, and then spits out a “Fuck!” when she spots too late the hail of arrows descending from men atop the tavern roof and the one small remaining watch tower. 

She is heartened, though, by the sight that the rear of the Bolton men seem to be primarily Karstarks, just waiting, waiting-

She passes the far-eye back to Catelyn because trying to watch a battle play out through its lens is just making her feel sick. 

“Gods damn it all,” Catelyn curses when she watches some Flints felled by what seem to be hastily dug pit traps along the main path through the ruined town. Nell is distracted by the sight of Grey Wind cutting around the edges- he refuses to go between ruined buildings where he might be cornered by men on horseback, and instead prowls the outskirts- and dragging a screaming man from the saddle with a powerful jerk of his great head. He is much larger now than he was at the Whispering Wood. She understands it better watching him from a distance. He doesn’t look real anymore, like a real, living creature, he doesn’t just seem like a wolf, he seems like a monster, something out of a very old story about things that prefer the taste of men to sheep or pigs. He savages the horse after he’s through with the men, and his scent mingled with all the blood is sending Bolton and Stark horses screaming alike.

Nell forcibly moves them down a little further from the foothills, ignoring the litany of protests directed her way by the guard, who do not dare disobey her but who will certainly make an effort to advise her against this. The snow is flurrying more and it’s becoming more and more difficult to make out what’s going on. She hears a great roar of confusion and takes the far-eye back from Catelyn. The Karstarks are stabbing the Boltons in the back in a very literal sense, fanning out from the rear. Ramsay is still fighting in the thick of it- she can identify Harry Karstark from the white sun emblazoned across his back armor, fighting to reach him. 

Daryn Hornwood is easily identifiable by his height; he’s got his axe deep in someone’s back and has all but dragged them from the saddle with the force of the blow even as his horses sallies on past. Lyra Mormont and her mother are fighting among the foot, back to back, and Howland Reed seems to be scaling the watch tower, spear in hand, with the express purpose of killing the remaining archers.

Grey Wind is circling back around along the Kingsroad, leaving a bloody trail behind him. Nell prays that’s not his own blood. Robb is- she can’t find Robb at all, scanning the mass of men, before she gives up, and hands the far-eye back to Catelyn, who must have better luck than her, for no sooner has she taken it up then she grabs Nell’s hand with an iron grip and gasps out, “There!”, handing her back the glass.

Nell pushes her mount forward, past the guards, swearing at anyone who tries to stop her, and then spots him, just for an instant, his bucking mount. How many times has she noted how horses cannot stand to bear Robb now? “Keep control,” she hisses under her breath, “keep control, keep his head up, come on-,” A horse has to lower his head to properly buck. He needs to keep a tight rein and sit deeper in the saddle, or it’s going to throw him. A bucking warhorse can send a man flying like a gnat. 

For an instant he seems to have calmed his mount, and then there is a tremendous crack as the side of a nearby cottage completely collapses, pummeled repeatedly by the weight of the Umber men fighting up against it, and the horse rears again, and throws him.

“No,” Catelyn snarls, and it’s her who cuts ahead, streaming down from the foothills, Nell just behind her.

Where is he, where is he- if he’s not trampled by his own horse, he could easily be trampled by his own men. Nell cries out in sheer frustration and anguish, only to gasp a breath again when she spots a giant of a man on horseback hauling Robb up on his feet again, like plucking a doll from the ground. They kept the Hound in the vanguard because it does men good to see a man that intimidating leading the charge. Now she thanks every god there may be that he was close enough to get to Robb first. Robb seems to waver badly on his feet, only held up by Sandor Clegane’s sheer strength- don’t let him be injured, she prays, although that was a brutal fall, and it’d be a miracle for him to have broken nothing, he’s been unhorsed before, he lost his mount during the Whispering Wood, he was fine, he’s young, he’ll be fine-

“Your Grace!” 

Denys is somehow directly in her ear. 

“What?” Nell all but growls, tearing her gaze away from the battle, closer now than ever before. “I am not retreating back into the hills, and I will not hear another word about it, am I understood? We’re winning!” They are, they must be, the Boltons have lost their own rear and even now she hears the deep bellow of Maege’s horn- once, twice, thrice.

“Your Grace, that’s not what I-,”

An echoing horn from the wolfswood, once, twice, thrice. Nell smiles in relief to see them come, although it just looks like a large shadow from here, streaming out of the woodlands and coming pouring around the rounded keep, like water running-

She’s waiting for the answering thrum of tree trunks meeting the hunter’s gate- surely she should be able to hear that from here, they’re close enough now-

“Nell, look,” Catelyn says, and she’s not directing her gaze to the fighting in the winter town or Stannis’ reinforcements coming down from the woods, but towards the Kingsroad. Two riders. Is Winterfell offering a hasty surrender already? Then why not call off the fighting first? Why not command them to stop. Nell watches the riders grow slightly larger, steadily, cutting dark lines through the snow, and then realizes it’s not two outriders or scouts. It’s one rider pursuing another.

“That’s a woman,” Denys says, “she’s too small- that’s a boy or a woman-,”

Nell takes up the far-eye again. It is a woman. Barbrey, she thinks for a thrilled instant, but it’s not. It’s a girl, she can’t make out the face, but- “I think that’s one of the Freys,” she says hollowly, until she catches the awkward way the girl is riding, hunched forward, only one hand holding the reins, the other tucked up against herself as if injured-

“What is she holding- oh.” Catelyn’s voice crumples into something. “Oh.”

Nell cannot think at all. The battle before her seems to vanish. Obliterated. Gone. There’s nothing there, because there is only thing that matters. She turns her attention to the pursuing rider. That is clearly a man, a big one, pushing his massive red stallion hard, nearly rising up in the stirrups, gaining quickly on the girl. She only knows of one man who rides that horse, and she knows that horse well enough, for it was ever the talk of the Dreadfort’s stables, and always put back in its stall bloodied by its brutal rider.

“That cannot be him,” Catelyn says, “he’s leading the fighting. He’s still- I can see him, he’s-,”

“No,” says Nell. Her voice sounds so strange and calm to her own ears. “No. He’s not. He’s always preferred a good hunt to a losing battle.”

She spurs Wisp into action. “TO ME!” The scream comes so easily to her, it all but flows out of her throat. There’s something hard and gleeful coating her heart. Gleeful and terrified, but horribly glad all the same. Oh, yes. She’d rather it this way as well. She’d prefer this, too.

She pushes Wisp west towards the road, clears a low stone wall with a jump like she hasn’t jumped a horse in months- she hasn’t, and it feels good, the feeling vibrating up her entire skeleton, and she lets go of the reins with one hand, grabs her bow, then lets go with the other, to pluck up an arrow, guiding with her stirrups alone-

She sees the fleeing rider now. Marianne Vance is all but stretched over the saddle, pressed down low, head nearly buried in her horse’s mane. “RIGHT!” Nell roars at her, but it’s lost on the wind. “RIGHT!” she bellows again, nocks her arrow, leans over slightly in the saddle, and lets fly. It soars past Marianne and misses Ramsay and his stallion by a mile. “KEEP RIGHT!” she screams at Marianne, and Catelyn and the men around her take up the cry. “KEEP RIGHT!”

Nell moves Wisp left; he’s not tired, he’s not tired at all, because he hasn’t galloped yet today, only plodded along at the steady pace of a march, she can push him harder, she knows she can. Nell adjusts the reins again, nocks another arrow, and this one lands in the filthy slush before Ramsay’s mount. He’s not firing back at her; he’s got his falchion in one hand, and she sees now the game he is playing. He doesn’t intend to slow Blood- he’ll keep up the charge, and wait for her to panic and balk, flee out of his path. He doesn’t think she can hit him before he reaches her.

Nell nocks another arrow, pushes Wisp harder, and for the briefest moment passes alongside Marianne Vance, who straightens up a little, a wrapped bundle in her arms, and stares at her in wonder for an instant before she’s gone, towards the relative safety of the guards behind Nell. Nell turns back- Blood is much closer now, and she can hear Ramsay screaming, determined to scare her off the chase- and releases her third arrow. 

It skims along Blood’s left flank. He balks and whinnies in protest, head jerking at the bridle and bit, and Ramsay tightens his reins and presses forward. He is very close now. Nell thinks she can almost smell him. He always smell of cloves and spice. She begins to slow slightly, sees him grin, believing she is about to either veer away- he’s coming in swinging with that bloodied falchion, and she firmly believes he means to bury it deep in her chest or simply slice her throat-

She’s nocking her fourth arrow. He laughs- she doesn’t even hear it, her ears are ringing so, but she can see him laughing, he’s not wearing a helm- Nell twists slightly in the saddle as Wisp fully comes down into a canter, remembers to breathe deeply, and releases. It punches through with left shoulder; he slumps back in shock, and Blood goes charging past Wisp, then keeps going into the mist and snow flurries, his rider nearly dangling from the saddle, until his pace slows from a gallop to a canter to a trot, and he is caught up by Denys, who snatches the reins while two other men pull Ramsay bodily from the saddle. He’s still moving. Nell’s glad. She’s hardly finished with him.

She manages to turn Wisp, slowly but surely, round. Winterfell may have fallen behind her. She doesn’t care. Stannis may be even now fighting side by side with Harry Karstark and the Greatjon, with a borrowed sword. She doesn’t care. Robb may be- Robb might be- If Robb is- “Here she is,” Marianne Vance is saying, although her voice comes out a croak more than anything, her head is coated with blood from a laceration there, her fingers are stiff and frozen even in her gloves, and she seems barely able to move her stiff legs from the saddle, “here she is, look, I promised you, didn’t I, on my honor as a Vance, I said I would-,”

Nell takes her daughter in her arms, and the world closes itself around her, shuttering down to one very narrow frame of thought, that being the child in her arms, screaming and wailing fit to wake the dead in the cold confines of her blankets. Nell kisses her head, over and over again, and doesn’t realize she is sobbing aloud until she tastes her own tears on her lips. Catelyn’s hand is massaging the back of her neck, the other stroking Lysara’s downy auburn scalp. 

“Sara,” she says. “I came for you. See? I came for you, I promised I would,” Nell roots until she feels the braid of Bethany’s hair around that pale wrist, and kisses that too, even as Lysara flails in protest at this strange woman grabbing and kissing her all over- “I came back, Sara, I found you. It’s alright. I found you again. I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. So this was a lot! Next chapter will also be... a lot, which is really all I can say without spoiling things. If I am cagey in my comment replies for this chapter, it's because, again, I don't want to spoil things. I did want to give us some small amount of resolution in this chapter, though, so.... Nell and her daughter have finally reunited! Hopefully that was a bit of a relief to everyone, after all this time.
> 
> 2\. Roose, in classic Roose form, is all too eager to believe the claims that Stannis and his men were wiped out along with the Freys in some mutual destruction, and all too eager to believe that he's finally rid of his pesky, annoying daughter and her insistence on 'getting back her daughter' and 'bringing him to justice'. He's also pointedly in denial about Ramsay's... shall we say... increasingly unstable mental state. 
> 
> 3\. Give Walda her Oscar! In this case, it actually works in the women's favor that most of these men have no idea what going into labor really looks like.
> 
> 4\. In terms of deranged plans in this fic, this probably takes the cake, but at least we're keeping with the overall spirit of the plot, huh? I maintain that some of these plans are in fact no less contrived than the multiple escapes, murders, and schemes in canon! I will have my vindication when The Winds of Winter is released and full of even more contrived scenarios! (I'm joking. Mostly).
> 
> 5\. Speaking of plot contrivances, it seems a little sketch to me in canon that Roose just... assumes the maesters brought to Winterfell, none of whom actually serve House Bolton, would never, ever, ever betray or in any way work against him. For someone who has no qualms about breaking oaths left right and center, he seems pretty confident that none of these maesters would *ever* feed him false information or hide/destroy letters.
> 
> 6\. Ramsay is not what I would call a 'skilled tactician'. In fact I would describe him in this chapter more along the lines of 'If I'm going out, fine, but I'm taking you fucks with me.' If Lysara is dead, as far as he knows, House Stark is done. I don't think he honestly believes he's really gonna come out on top in this scenario, but I think he figures if he's on his way out the door, then he at least wants to be remembered for leading to the utter ruin of the North's greatest dynasty.
> 
> 7\. By now we all know my many complaints and concerns whenever I have to write a battle scenario. Ultimately my primary concern is keeping it interesting over writing great military fiction, because right now I can only do one of those things. So I hope no one was bored, even if my descriptions were iffy or inaccurate or just not detailed enough. (I also just felt like the ruined winter town was a cool setting for a battle).
> 
> 8\. The repeated references to Risen!Robb's struggles on horseback and issues with keeping control of multiple terrified mounts that smell 'wolf' when he's in the saddle had to come back around at some point. 
> 
> 9\. Ramsay just loves switching outfits with people when the going gets tough, huh? It was also important to me that Nell get to actually do something this chapter, and surprise surprise, that something involved horses and arrows, two of her favorite things. She actually leaps at the chance to confront Ramsay like this, and he massively underestimates her ability. This is sort of the opposite of the scenario when the Freys first betrayed them, where we see Nell repeatedly firing arrows but ultimately losing her daughter. 
> 
> 10\. Marianne came in clutch! Way back in Chapter 43, she point blank told Nell that given the chance, she would grab Lysara and run. Foreshadowing! 
> 
> 11\. We'll hear way more about the events in between Barbrey getting stabbed and Marianne fleeing from Ramsay with Lysara and what exactly is going down in Winterfell next chapter. We will also be seeing way more of some other characters who haven't gotten much attention as of late like Dana, Arya, and Jory and company in the future.
> 
> 12\. You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com). See you guys next Friday!


	79. Donella LIII

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell marvels over every inch of her. The infant torn from her was two moons old and seemed barely more than a newborn at the time; she weighed less than a stone and although her limbs were long, seemed barely substantial at all when swaddled and tucked into the crook of Nell’s arm. She could smile and gurgle and roll over from her belly to her back, but no more than that. She slept and fed constantly. She still seemed utterly foreign and strange. This child, too, seems strange, but not at all foreign. Her eyes have stayed the same; her hair has not darkened past its coppery sheen, she has the same nose, ears, and mouth, even as it is crumpled in dismay. 

But she’s so much bigger. She seems so much more a real child, with a character, and a voice, substantial, able to sit up in your lap and grasp things like hair and fur and clothing firmly with her small fists. Her face is so much more defined; she seems like- like a person, really, not an object or an idea, a living, breathing person, not a toy or doll, and Nell feels almost aghast at how much she’s missed, how much she will never remember, because she wasn’t there, because she was taken away- the world folds in to just and enclose the two of them, and Nell doesn’t hear the wind or the hoof beats or the screams and shouts of men or the ringing of a bell or pounding of drums, all she hears is Lysara’s disgruntled whines and babbling and her own heavy breathing, in and out, in and out.

She offers her daughter her finger; Lysara grabs it with both hands and squeezes, hard, but there is no flicker of familiarity or recognition in those pale grey eyes. She’s not staring up at Nell because she knows her; just the opposite. Her mother is yet another stranger who’s picked her up, something Lysara must be all too familiar with by now. Nell doesn’t know whether she wants to laugh or cry or scream; her daughter doesn’t look very sure either. Over five moons, nearly six, she’s been parted from her child. What does that mean? Is Lysara any less hers now, raised up by wetnurses and serving girls and Walda Frey, passed around from embrace to embrace, a miniature soil of war, a promise, a threat.

Will she remember this at all, when she is older? Will she recall the time when her mother was not with her, could not be with her, when they were ripped in two? Because Nell felt as though she’d been ripped in two when Lysara was taken from her. She did not know how she loved her daughter until she was wrenched away. Now she knows. She knows her love for her child as existing in the absence, the hollow hole where Lysara used to be. Now that hole has been filled up, however messily, but Nell can still feel the bumps and lumps of it, the uneven pattern, like a square torn from a a quilt and then belatedly repaired months later. This feeling, now, will wholly disappear. She will never forget the experience of missing a child, not just in the sense of longing to see her, but the physical loss of her. The thought that she might never see her again. 

Lysara could have died at any point during the travel north. She could have caught a cold, a chill, ran a high fever and passed in the night. She could have been smothered in her cradle. She could have been bitten by a snake seeking the warmth of a small body. She could have been dropped on her head or drowned in the muck. She could have choked while nursing and forgotten how to breathe. She could have been struck by a stray arrow, savaged by a wild dog, left out in the cold and wet- even behind Winterfell’s walls there was no guarantee of safety for her. Roose could have had her killed at any moment. Ramsay could have gotten his hands on and torn her limb from limb, slit open her belly, or caved her skull in the way the Mountain was said to have murdered Elia Martell’s babe. 

That she is here, safe, healthy, in Nell’s arms, however upset and disturbed she may be, that seems like a miracle. That seems a blessing. Nell no longer knows how to accept such boons, although she has been so lucky. It never felt like luck until now. The escape from the Lannisters, the retaking of Riverrun, Robb’s return, the reformation of the army, that all felt good, she supposes, in the moment, she felt triumph, but not like. This makes her want to fall to her knees. She is almost convulsed with tremulous relief and joy.

Lysara. Lysara is here, Lysara is alive, Lysara will never be taken from her again. Nell could stay like this forever, blind to the harsh wind and increasing snowfall, deaf to the distant clamor of battle. She doesn’t feel the cold, doesn’t feel exhausted despite her lack of sleep, doesn’t feel much of anything but the pounding of her heart and Lysara’s comforting heavy weight in her arms. Gradually the rest comes back to her piece by piece. The sounds from the winter town come rushing back in; they’re very close but the snowfall makes it hard to see much beyond the outlines of men and horses, now moving slower, the frenzy of battle slowing. 

The sound from Winterfell is that of a bell tolling weakly, straining to be heard against the burgeoning storm. Nell realizes she has no idea whether Stannis’ forces successfully breached the castle through the hunter’s gate until she sees different colors of armor on the ramparts, and the first Stark banner comes haphazardly cascading down, followed shortly thereafter by the Baratheon of Dragonstone standard. Everyone is looking to her for some sort of sign; a cheer, a gasp of relief, a shouted command, but Nell, for once, has no words beyond those for Lysara; a sort of continuous droning murmur, crooned remarks, pleas for her daughter to look at her with something other than a babe’s befuddled suspicion. 

“Send six men back to Cerwyn, tell them that Winterfell is ours, and bring back the majority of the garrison,” Catelyn tells Denys, when it becomes clear Nell is in no state to be instructing anyone on what to do next. “And bring my daughter and Lady Danelle as well. I would have us all together again.” Marianne Vance says something, but Nell doesn’t hear her; she watches with some sort of detached confusion as Catelyn’s gaze turns cold and sharp as jagged blue glass, falling upon the still struggling man forced to the snowy, muddy ground.

Oh, him, she thinks suddenly, and realizes for a moment that she had not even recognized Ramsay. He’d seemed so insignificant, so utterly beneath her concern once Lysara was back in her arms. Nell stares at him as if she’d never seen him before; it is not even a haughty act but the truth of it. What is he? Who is he, when she has her daughter back? He’s just a man. He’s just another man who thought he would be her undoing. She has seen him before. She sees him now, and he is nothing. He is nothing. 

He is soaking wet, his shoulder dark with blood, his hair falling into his eyes, and he is cursing and jeering and goading someone, anyone, to finish it, yes, they’re all fucking cowards, there’s no pretending at innate lordship now, he’s screaming and spitting like any other miller’s son might be, and to hear him they’re all too craven to end it now, she’s a cunt, a fucking cunt, she opened her legs for Baratheon and any man who’d have her, she’s serviced Karstark and Umber and Hornwood and all the rest, she will never rule, never, her and her little whelp will be carved up by wildlings by the year’s end, she’ll rot in the ground, just another dead whore-

“Someone bind him,” Catelyn says, quite concisely, “and if he cannot hold his tongue, still it.” 

Nell doesn’t look at him again after that, or hear him. She adjusts her heavy cloak so it encloses both her and Lysara, who has quieted, begrudgingly accepting this stranger clutching her to her chest, and braces against the cold with her, rubbing down Wisp and walking him so he can cool off from his gallop, letting her daughter pat at his mane and hold the reins between two pink fingers. She is suddenly patient, now that she has her daughter back. She is suddenly cautious, unwilling to go charging off into the snow to find Robb and the others, content to sit here and wait until they have confirmation that the battlefield had been secured. 

How could she do otherwise? She will never risk losing Lysara again. Never. The idea of ever letting her out of her sight now seems ludicrous. She doesn’t care. She will never leave her child again, not even for a night. Even the idea of depositing her in a nursery, laughable. Never. How could she? How could she ever tempt fate like that again? Lysara is the most precious thing. That is all, the entire statement. In this world, Nell is convinced, there is no arguing it, Lysara Stark, an ordinary babe of seven going on eight moons old, is the most precious thing to ever exist. 

She would be the most precious thing to ever exist were she the child of poor smallcrofters or seafaring merchants or a sellsword and a camp whore. She is, undoubtedly, the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most blameless. She could have horns, a tail, greyscale coating her soft skin and Nell would believe it. Were she a dwarf or missing a limb or born blind and deaf, Nell would believe it. There is no debating this point. It is simply a fact Nell has suddenly reminded herself of. So spring follows winter, so Lysara is the most precious there ever has been and ever will be. 

Olyvar Frey and Lyra Mormont are the ones sent to fetch them, the better part of an hour later. Both seem unharmed, aside from a small gash along Oly Frey’s neck and a Lyra Mormont’s bruised jaw. Their victory could not be more clear, but neither are openly rejoicing. Olyvar looks relieved but saddened, and Lyra simply seems tired. “The surviving soldiers have thrown down their arms and surrendered,” Olyvar says stiffly. “Lord Daryn is organizing the prisoners, and Lord Howland is assisting with accounting for the dead and wounded on both sides. But our losses were minimal, Your Grace.”

“My mother is well,” Lyra says when Olyvar falls silent, “although she took a beating from Steelshanks. Still, what’s a few loose teeth to a woman of her years?” She smiles with the black humor of a battle’s immediate aftermath, where anything may be said, no matter how insolent or depraved. Then she quiets as well, before adding, “Harry Karstark survives unharmed, although he’s short a shield. He’s with the Karstark men now.” Again, a pause.

“Where is Robb?” Catelyn finally asks.

“His Grace is resting under the guard of Sandor Clegane,” Olyvar says after a moment’s hesitation. “We’ve called for a maester from the castle, but the messenger hasn’t returned yet, and he is refusing to allow anyone to examine his wounds-,”

“Bring me to him,” Nell says, unwilling to hear the rest of this. No. It does not matter. He’s alive. He was thrown from his horse and he is wounded, aye, but he is alive, she saw the Hound get him back on his feet, his legs still work, that is something, that is more than some can say, he is still alive and that’s what matters, he’s close by and she is bringing their daughter to him and when he sees her he will submit to any maester, any treatment, because she is their future and he helped make her. And they’ve won. This was what they’d been waiting for, their chance to take back what was stolen from them, and they have, they’ve won. She doesn’t have to be afraid anymore. He doesn’t have to hate anymore. It’s over.

In the shadows of the burned out shell of the tavern, The Smoking Log, it was once called, where people sat and drank and ate and rolled their dice and sang their songs, where Nell once sought to appease Tyrion Lannister after Robb nearly accused him of conspiring against them, three figures sit in almost companionable silence. Perhaps it says something that Sandor Clegane really looks no different after a battle than he did before it. Some fresh blood across his armor, perhaps. Like any dog might, he sits without compunction on the dirt floor, his back against the long-dead, crumbling hearth in what was once the inn’s common room, cleaning his sword silently and meticulously, another tired routine. 

She wonders if he feels better after fighting for them than he ever did for the Lannisters. But it is not as if it matters. He was granted mercy because he kept Arya safe, because he defected from the Lannisters and fought for them without demands beyond a place to sleep and food to eat and ale to drown his sorrows, she supposes. Perhaps it is enough for him to merely be somewhere that he is not hated. He’s found some begrudging respect among the northmen. Umbers and Mormonts can look at his face without recoiling in fear or disgust. No one speaks of the Mountain around him. No one speaks much around him, and he seems to prefer it that way.

Grey Wind, although covered in blood that Nell prays is not all his, prowls the room as if impatient, at least until he smells them and comes streaking over, licking and nosing at Nell and Catelyn’s skirts, their hands, sniffing in Lysara’s general direction, whining deep in his throat, tail wagging every few moments, pawing at the cold dirt underfoot. Nell pats his head briefly with her free hand, searches his eyes for something human, and finds strange warmth instead, like an unfamiliar light spotted on the horizon, an unknown blaze. 

Robb, however… Nell had convinced herself she’d vanquished fear, Lysara in her arms again, but now it returns with a vengeance. Robb does not look as he did before the battle. He’s removed his helm, or someone has for him, because she can’t see how he would with his- he must have landed on his right arm, his sword arm, because from the way it hangs it is clearly broken in more than one place, possibly dislocated, certainly mangled. 

From the way he leans as he sits on a rotted slab of wood there is a wound to his left side, likely caught on a spear point, and gods know how far up inside his ribs and into his chest it may have slid before being pulled back out. There is dried blood around his mouth, and she can hear the rattling of his breath from here. Catelyn reaches him quicker than Nell could, already calling for something, anything, a scrap of clean linen or anything that could be used to bind his arm, for someone to fetch Howland Reed, but Robb jerks away from her despite the obvious pain it causes him, growls, “No.”, and looks to Nell.

He looks to her almost… hopeful is not the word. Hopeful implies optimism, a belief that this, while terrible, will soon pass. Expectant seems too neutral. Nell approaches anyways, and crouches down beside him. Lysara looks at him with wide grey eyes and for a moment Nell is horrified that she might cry out in fear, but she is silent, drinking in the sight of this man she does not know is her father, this man who may not know she is his daughter. Robb looks at her with something like surprise, and raises his left hand to touch her head, really just to drag his bloody fingers along her scalp. Lysara shivers at his touch but still does not cry. 

“She’s not afraid of you,” Nell says, just as Grey Wind comes back around, lays his head flat on her lap, and just looks at Lysara, studying her. Lysara does not seem to notice the wolf at first, despite his enormous size, but then glances curiously at him, and gives a burbling little smile as if presented with a puppy, reaching for his wet snout. He noses at her hands instead, licks them, and she makes a noise like a hiccuping giggle. “She’s not afraid, Robb,” Nell says again, insistently. “She must know. At least a little. You- look at her, she’s not afraid, she can- she’ll love you once she comes to know you again, as she comes to know me.”

Her tone has turned from reassuring to stern, somehow, as if he were a sullen child in need of a lecture. “No more of this,” she can barely bring herself to look at his right arm. It doesn’t matter. He can learn to fight with his left it it can’t be fully healed. Every wound on his body can be stitched back up, even if the stitches won’t hold long. It’s alright. He was brought back to endure such things. Why should she feel such keen fear? Hasn’t he conquered death once already? He doesn’t seem afraid. No. That’s what really frightens her. If he seemed desperate to survive this, if he seemed disturbed by his harsh breathing and the blood on his teeth when he licks his lips, that would console her. 

He doesn’t seem afraid at all.

“If you will not wait for a maester here,” she says, “then you must ride into the castle with me and seek one there. Stannis’ men have taken it. Winterfell is ours.”

Robb looks as her for a long moment, then says only, “Roose.”

Nell blinks; her father had become, however shockingly, a mere afterthought the instant Lysara was in her arms. But now she remembers, now she realizes. It is not over yet. “We have Ramsay,” she says, and Robb simply nods, and only repeats himself-

“It’s Roose I want.”

That she does believe. She can hear the hunger behind the words, however weak and hoarse his voice is now. “Then you will have him,” she says, and brings her hand to his face once more. He leans into it for a moment, and his eyelids flicker, then open up almost in alarm, as if he were afraid to let himself close them at all. She is afraid too. He has always been pale like this, but now he is white as snow, aside from the blood and bruise. His pulse is jumping in his throat. 

“He may already be dead,” Catelyn sounds as though she were resigning herself to something- Robb’s desire for vengeance, Nell’s denial that anything is amiss, that he is not horrifically wounded once again, or Grey Wind’s patient presence, still nosing at Lysara every so often, rubbing his massive head along her like a cat might.

“I pray he isn’t,” Nell says. “I want him to see me. To see Robb.” 

Robb makes a motion like he is going to try to stand; the Hound rises, sheathing his sword, his shadow falling across them all. Nell watches in confusion as he tears the already patchwork cloak from his back, and hands it to her, although she senses he nearly tosses it. “For the babe,” he says, so matter of factly that to hear it from this man dumbfounds her- what is a babe but a gnat to someone like Clegane?- and then sets off to find horses. 

The look on that ruined face was the worst of all. It was one of pity. For who, she is not sure. It could be any of them. 

Robb can sit a saddle, even injured as he is, although he has to be helped up into it by her and his mother, and she can tell how much it is exerting on him to not immediately slump forward. Thank the gods the ride to the gates is short. Nell watches Winterfell grow larger in front of them, until it is suddenly massive, so big and so real all at once, looming out of thin air, buffeted by wind and snow. She pretends Lysara was never taken from her, pretends this was their triumphant return home after routing the Ironborn from the Neck and leaving behind a victorious Riverlands. Pretends none of the worst of it ever happened. This is how it should have been. They should have come home. They should have been together. The gates are opened for them without question. Grey Wind lopes ahead, howling and howling, as if expecting to hear a response, although he is the only wolf of Winterfell now. 

‘It won’t be long,’ Robb had promised her, that dawn on the river outside the Twins, before they murdered him and his men. But it has been long. It has been far too long. Lysara may be sleeping at her chest now in a makeshift sling, but it has been far, far too long for all of them. So relieved as Nell is to have her daughter back, relieved as she is to be behind Winterfell’s walls once more, she still fears it is all too little, too late. 

The castle seems strange and foreign to her now. Perhaps it is all the bodies, for they are bringing them up from seemingly anywhere. Some of them are still moving. There are over a hundred Frey men simply milling about under bristling guard in the great courtyard, seemingly having surrendered all together. She recognizes her aunt’s Beron speaking to one of Stannis’ knights, and calls out to him; he looks around, then makes his way over to them, somewhat haltingly; he’s clearly wounded as well, although not gravely. 

One thing Nell has always appreciated about the man is his ability to make his points quickly. “The Freys surrendered when promised that Lady Walda and her babe would not be killed,” he says. “The rest gave it up soon after the gate was breached and Ramsay went charging out after your babe.” Beron gives Lysara a slight sort of nod, as if a babe could somehow understand when she was being spoken of. “I’m glad to see you reached her first, Your Grace.” 

Nell had not even known Walda was in labor already. 

His dark eyes slide over Robb, Catelyn, and the Hound and back again to Grey Wind, who is now circling the alarmed looking Frey prisoners with the occasional snarl or bark to set them on edge. “Your lady aunt is being tended to by Maester Rhodry of Hornwood,” he says, “her wounds are bad, I’ll not lie. He says if she can make it through tonight, mayhaps-,” Beron stops, collects himself. “It’s not for me to say. Roose Bolton is…” he trails off, stops, staring at someone past them.

Nell looks around sharply, but there are so many men in clashing colors and different armor moving about the yard and up and down the walls, it’s impossible to tell who he was looking at.

Beron shakes his head slightly. “I thought I saw the bard.”

Nell doesn’t give a damn what bard; she’ll have her songs after her father’s dead. “My father is where?” she demands. “Has he been captured? Killed?”

Beron smiles slightly; it’s strange to see that sort of expression on his grizzled face. Nell mostly remembers him as a stoic, unbendable force of flesh and bone during her childhood at Barrow Hall. “Killed, no. Captured… well, he did try to run. Baratheon ordered him left under guard when he could run no more. Poisoned, you see. They’re saying the Bastard did it, but it’s a slow one, it is. Been hours now and he’s not done dying yet.”

“Where?” Robb grinds out, as the gates open behind them once more and more riders pour in from the winter town, shouting and cheering, shaking off the snow, and Nell prays they don’t see him like this, it will destroy the feelings of triumph and rejoicing if they see their king like this, barely holding himself up in the saddle, clutching the reins with one good arm. 

Beron tells them. Catelyn leaves Clegane with him, and calls sharply for Grey Wind, who follows them. They ride through the castle in silence; the further they get from the Great Keep, the armory, and the stables, the quieter it grows, aside from the men moving along the ramparts. By the time they reach their destination one could almost pretend Winterfell had never passed out of Stark hands at all, at least until one sees the glass garden. The great greenhouse, located to the north of the godswood, was always what one had to marvel at the most when coming to Winterfell. Rows and rows of plants, trees and shrubs, all flowering in the coldest of weather, warmed from the soil up by the hot springs underground, gleaming in the lantern light.

It was destroyed, not by Theon Greyjoy’s men, but by her brother’s, when he ravaged Winterfell. What once brimmed with light and life is now just a desolate half acre of shattered glass, buried under the snow, and blackened stumps and broken pots and trampled branches. Perhaps all her father’s years of leeching did him some good after all, for he made it this far on foot, wracked with pain as he must have been. He is so close to the north gate, after all, yet never more far. Beron was right; Roose cannot run any more, but he can still crawl, and he does. Nell watches the dark figure make it a few more feet across the frozen ground before he is forced to stop again, retching and coughing. Then he starts to move once more.

“Can you reach him from here?” Catelyn asks, nodding to Nell’s bow. A mostly prone figure, dark against the snow, far larger than any squirrel, rabbit, or deer, is hardly a difficult target. 

Lysara mumbles something to herself. Grey Wind’s howls, momentarily abated, begin once more, sharper and more drawn out than before.

“Yes,” says Nell, more calmly than she feels, “but I don’t want to.”

Robb slides out of the saddle with a low, agonized grunt; she can see him shaking, leaning heavily against his horse, who shies away with a fearful whinny. Nell dismounts as well. Catelyn stays where she is, and leans down. “Let me take Lysara. She should not see this.”

Nell wants to spit no, to refuse, but this is Catelyn, this is Robb’s mother, a woman who’s become something akin to a mother or aunt for her as well, their time at the Twins binding them together in hate and sorrow and determination, and she looks down at Lysara’s innocent face and cannot subject her to this. Silently, she hands her daughter up to her goodmother. Lysara seems more mesmerized by the sight of Catelyn’s auburn hair, so similar to her own, than anything else. 

She takes Robb’s good arm, loops it around her shoulders, and is grateful she is not a smaller, skinny woman to be crushed by his weight. Together, they walk forward. Ice and glass and snow and broken branches crunch underfoot. It must be moving into late afternoon now, but she can’t see the sun anyways, and so it does not look like any time of day in particular. In truth, it looks like a dream, although of course it feels so very real, because it is. She keeps expecting Roose’s limp form to vanish from her line of sight, the prize yanked away at the last moment, for Robb to crumple in a heap beside her, like a puppet who’s lost his strings, for Winterfell to collapse like a stack of cards unfolding. 

They move closer, and she can see more of her father now, see the purple-blue of his bare hands, see the angry, exhausted red of his face, see the snow crusting in his dark hair, and the rage that rises up in her astonishes her. She starts to move faster, almost leading Robb along, only slowing again when she feels him go rigid in pain. His breathing is so heavy now, so coarse against her neck. She wants to scream something at her father, some triumphant threat, some bold words, but nothing comes to mind, absolutely nothing except the overwhelming desire to keep moving, keep moving, don’t stop now-

He sees them then; she watches him lift his head, and stay like that for a moment, before he lowers it back down again. Nell watches her father struggle to turn over in the snow, to at least push himself up onto his knees. He tries, and fails, like the downed beast that he is. She remembers that last deer with her mother, how it bayed and trembled. But her mother isn’t here right now. Robb is. They are so close now. Suddenly the rage seems to fade; not out of compassion, but- she doesn’t know what. She feels almost as though she were outside her own body, watching this all play out, like it were someone else’s life.

Surely this can’t be her. Surely this can’t be it. She almost wishes he would get up and fight them, at least make some attempt, wishes he were running so she could chase him down. Now they are close enough that she can make out his muddled footprints in the snow. Robb is gasping for breath; they stop for a moment until he regains it. “You’re alright,” she tells him, softly, as if afraid she will shatter him with a harder tone. “You’re alright. We’re nearly there.”

One of the gates leading into the godswood looms nearby. But Roose is so much closer.

Grey Wind reaches him first, but does not immediately go for the kill. He simply sits and watches, instead.

Finally they come to a halt. It is just the four of them now. Roose watches them with pale, glossy eyes, like melting slush across stone. There is bile on his lips and his face is damp with sweat and burning with fever, despite the cold and the obvious frostbite settling into his ears and nose. Nell crouches down a few feet from him, consumed with morbid curiosity. She has never seen him so exposed, so vulnerable, never seen him so betrayed by his own body, that which he always sought to refine and control, purging and fasting and leeching. 

“Look at me,” she breathes.

He will not; he is looking past her, searching for some rescue or reprieve that is never coming. She hears the halting rasp of Robb drawing his sword with his left arm. 

“Look at me,” Nell growls.

Her father looks at her. An old, dying man, she sees before her. A man utterly spent, and for what? This glass garden could have fed thousands. Now it’s become his grave. 

“Do you know who he is?” she jerks her head at Robb, standing just behind her. Grey Wind growls.

Slowly Roose’s eyes travel up, then back down again. He gives no indication. 

“I know you do,” she spits. “I know it, and you know it. You killed him, you- you are a traitor, a kinslayer, and a liar, you have always been such, but you’re finished now. Aren’t you?” She wants to grab him, shake him, claw at his face, kick his teeth in, shatter his skull. But she cannot bring herself to touch him. 

“You failed,” she says, shakily. “You failed. And now we’re here. And you’re dying. Is your stomach full, Father? Are your furs warm around you?” She stands up, her knees weak. 

Roose is looking at Grey Wind now. His mouth twists but nothing comes out except a low moan of sorts. It sounds and smells of dread.

Nell glances at Robb. He does not look as he did when he killed Marbrand, or the Freys. His expression is flat and almost crumpled in dismay. Did he foresee a more victorious moment as well? Did he hope to strike Roose down in single combat, so all might see him felled? But that has never been her father’s way. 

“I’m afraid you’re no blood of mine,” he recites, dully. He raises his sword. Nell puts her hand on his, gripping the pommel with him. 

“Donella,” Roose gasps out suddenly, and the point of the blade passes between his trembling shoulders, straight down into his back, and then rises back out with ease. He wore no armor. He sighs into the bloody snow, and then there is silence, aside from the wind rustling shattered glass.

They stay like that for a few moments, her and Robb, his sword a conjoined limb betwixt them, a bloody link in a rusted chain. Then they turn away.

“Come inside now,” Nell brings his uninjured arm back around her shoulders; he is starting to cough again. “Let’s have a maester take a look at you.”

Robb’s knees buckle, and he nearly falls. She makes a sharp sound of alarm; he manages to brace himself on her and rise back up. Grey Wind presses up against his legs, as if to keep him standing.

“No,” he says.

“Robb,” her eyes prickle. “Please. You need to heal.”

“You know,” he says, slowly, “and I know. There is no more healing this.”

Nell looks at him, searches his gaunt face, his grey eyes. “Please,” she whispers.

“The godswood,” he murmurs. “I want to see the heart tree again.”

“It’s too cold. You can’t stay out here, Robb,” the tears are falling- what of it? She’s not ashamed to weep anymore. She feels she has a right to weep every day for the rest of her life, if she so chooses. It does not make her weak, or less of a woman, or poorer of a lady. 

“I don’t feel it,” he turns towards the godswood gate, then adds, wearily, “please, Donella. I want to see the tree.”

Catelyn’s mare is picking her way towards them; Nell can hear Lysara’s faltering cry on the wind.

She takes him to the tree. It’s a long, slow, march, but they are both used to that by now, and they are used to pain, and the cold, and having to keep moving anyways. She wants to stop by the hot springs, to force some warmth back into his bones, but he refuses, and Nell knows once he sits down now, he will not get back up again. Grey Wind stops to drink from the black pool, lapping eagerly.

He coughs and hacks every so often, and more blood comes up each time. His lungs are filling up. His eyelids flutter. But he does not collapse. 

“What did Jyanna tell you,” she grinds out, as the weirwood at last comes into view. Part of her is shocked it is still standing, but the fires never touched this deep into the wood. It looks just as it did when she last saw it, before they marched south, when all the northern lords assembled, her father and Theon included, swore their allegiance to Robb unto the death. The death is here now, and all those lords are absent. “Robb. Tell me now. Before-,”

Before it’s too late, she means. Her blood rebels at the thought. Her tears are still coming. But there is no stopping this now, anymore than she could have stopped it in the godswood of Riverrun, when she first saw him again, when he took off his helm. When Grey Wind reaches the gnarled roots, he lies down with a low whine, his head nestled against them as though they were his bed.

“I asked her,” Robb says, “if she… believed I could be… what I once was again. If I could be a man, for you. If she’d ever dreamed of me.”

“You are a man,” Nell hisses. “You have always- you are a man, Robb-,”

“Not like this,” he closes his eyes for a moment as he replies. “You think I am… blind to it. But I’m-,” he coughs again, “I’m not. I don’t want what… I should. Food, and drink, and… warmth.”

“You don’t want me anymore,” she sounds almost as though she were chuckling, but she is not.

“Always… wanted you,” he corrects. “But I can’t… what would it be. The two of us. Like this forever. You… changing. Me- always the same. Dying.”

“I listen to your heartbeat every night. You aren’t dead-,” she chokes on it a little, “you aren’t dead yet, so please, please, don’t go-,”

“I asked her,” he says. “If there was any way… to go back. To fix this. She said… when the tree is dying… nothing new can grow. But once it’s dead…” He sighs. “I’ve had a long… long time, Nell.”

“You are not even seven-and-ten,” she is helping him sit down now, as much as she wants to keep him standing. He is in such pain. She just wants it to stop. She wants it all to stop. She can hear Catelyn calling for them. “You could have much more time.”

“Like this?” he looks up at her. “No.” He leans back, against the white trunk, those red eyes and mouth carved just above his head. “Not like this. I don’t want that. Nor you.”

“I do,” Nell argues, kneeling down beside him, wrapping her fingers around his shaking hand. “I do. I will always want you. Robb. You have to stay. You have to stay and fight. For me. For Lysara. Your daughter. Please.”

“I stayed... “ He swallows, hard. “I fought. And now I’m here.” He looks around the snow-covered godswood with something like vague wonder. “I never forgot this. So much… but never this.” He looks at her, and smiles a little. “And never you.”

Grey Wind has raised his head to look at her. Nell reaches for him; his breath is warm on her fingers. “Is he… you?”

“Part,” Robb has closed his eyes now. “A little bit. More than he was before. But it’s not… it doesn’t hurt. What’s in him. It’s not… a cage. Just another… window. I can see you through it. I can see her. I think I will- leave that open. Afterwards. So I can see you.”

Nell kisses him. He smiles against her mouth, as he once did so often, and it brings fresh tears to her eyes.

“Robb! Donella!” Catelyn is on the far side of the pool. She must know. She must sense what is going on. 

“Stay for your mother,” Nell orders him, and he inclines his head briefly, sadly. “She never got to… to be there the first time.”

There’s the sharp, distant cry of some bird of prey. Nell watches for a moment as a hawk lands on one of the uppermost branches of the weirwood above them, jockeying for a position amongst the many, many silent ravens and crows. “Mors,” she whispers.

“Arya,” Robb says. 

It is the first time she’s heard him say his sister’s name, since he came back.

The weirwood’s branches whisper in the wind. A solitary red leaf comes floating down to rest in Robb’s lap. Bran, Nell thinks, although perhaps that is yet another vain hope. Robb’s other hand closes around the leaf, squeezing tight. He smiles again, faintly. His sword lays half-buried in the snow beside him, but he chooses to hold her hand and that small leaf instead.

Catelyn reaches them. She hands Lysara to Nell silently, then cups Robb’s face between her hands, as if studying him, before pressing her forehead to his. Nell watches them for a few moments as she shushes Lysara, then moves closer to Robb, curling up against him and Grey Wind. Catelyn moves away, but keeps her grip tight on Robb’s shoulder, blinking back her own tears. 

“Your father brought you here, when we first came to Winterfell,” she whispers. “You smiled at him, and I knew he loved you then. I never doubted that. Never. I pray you have never doubted that I loved you, either, Robb. I am so proud of you. I am so glad to have been your mother.”

Nell squeezes his hand a little harder, and moves Lysara, still bundled in Clegane’s cloak, so she is resting against his chest. Lysara looks up at him, no longer crying, and lays her head under his chin. His breath is coming very slowly now. 

“I kissed her hand before I left,” he says slowly. “Didn’t I?”

“You did,” Nell whispers. “You kissed her hair, her forehead, her hand. You didn’t care if your men saw it. You loved her. You wanted everyone to know how you loved her. We put her to bed together the night before that, in her cradle. Sometimes I would catch you singing to her. Even when you could not carry a tune.”

He exhales. “What would I sing to her?”

“Her name, mostly. How beautiful she was. How you loved her. How I loved her. You didn’t want her in a nursery, but our bedchamber. We would walk around Riverrun… and you would hold her in your arms… and show her all the places you liked best.”

Robb gives a jerky little nod, and briefly takes his hand from hers to rest upon Lysara’s back. “The water wheel,” he says. “We used to… I remember the sound of the water and the wood. Gushing and creaking.”

“We would speak there,” Nell whispers, “where no one could eavesdrop on us. In the leaky tower. Drops of water would fall on our heads.”

He is rubbing small circles on their daughter’s back now, as if trying to stir up more memories. “Maps,” he murmurs. “There were maps, and then you… you told me. Didn’t you? I remember the maps. And hearing you come in. Grey Wind smelled it on you. I didn’t know what it meant.”

“Thank you,” she says tearfully, echoing what he told her so long ago, when she informed him he was to be a father. “Thank you, thank you. For everything. Stay with me, Robb. I love you.”

“I love you,” he takes her hand again. “I do. I did. And I do. I will.” He’s stopped coughing, at least, but his voice has died down until it is barely audible at all. He opens his eyes all the way, looks at her. “I will love you,” he says. “Even after. Do you know?”

That doesn’t end, he is trying to say. Him loving her, that never ends, even once he is gone, even when his body is gone, even when she can no longer hear his voice. Nell could believe it. She will believe it. She’s always been willing to believe in anything, with him. “I know,” she says. “I will, too. Always.”

“I love you,” Catelyn is telling him, fiercely. “Robb, I love you, Arya loves you, your brothers love you, and your father- he would have been so proud of the man you have become. You honored him. You fought to defend what he helped build.”

Robb looks between his mother and his wife, then briefly glances down at his daughter. “I love you.” His lips barely move, but Nell hears it all the same. Grey Wind rests his head in his lap. Robb’s hard grip on her hand slackens a little, then more. Nell guides it down onto his wolf’s head. Robb looks almost as he had before that first battle, in that moment. Not eager but accepting. Frightened but set on his course. The leaves whisper overhead, and the ravens begin to chip and squawk and shriek, and Mors takes off, winging into the darkening sky. Robb closes his eyes again. Nell wraps herself around him. Lysara makes a curious sound and reaches up to touch his face. Catelyn sobs once, as if that is the most she will permit. 

The ravens quiet, gradually, until they are a silent mass, watching faithfully above them once more. Nell does not feel his heartbeat anymore, nor the steady rise and fall of his breath. No one says anything. They say nothing at all. Nell thinks if it were not for her daughter, if it were not for Lysara, she would stay here with him forever, let the snow blanket them both, and go to sleep, so that if they ever awoke, it would be to find that the roots of the heart tree had consumed them both, until their skin was hard and brittle as bark, their eyes amber sap, their mouths red lichen, and leaves sprouted from their fingertips and flamed crimson in their hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. Before I get into anything else, I want to be clear that is not the end of the fic. We will be covering the war against the Others, the continuing political drama in the North, the arrival of Sansa and the Valemen, and the inevitable reunion with Jon Snow. We will also be seeing some of Dany and her dragons. I am going to try to cover as much ground as possible in future chapters so as not to drag things out or frustrate readers. There may be some minor time skips, I will try to be as clear as possible as to what is going on in my notes for every chapter. 
> 
> 2\. This fic will conclude after the War against the Others/War for the Dawn/Long Night is over. To be very specific in terms of timeline, we are currently in the middle of 300 AC. This fic will end in the year 301 AC. We have a good deal of plot to cover but chronologically, less than a year to go. I've tried really hard to reassure people while not spoiling things- this fic is dark but it is not nihilistic. Ultimately I feel that the ending will be a bittersweet one. There is an overarching theme of tragedy in this story but I think there is also an overarching theme of hope and love. Characters will die but I will try to be as respectful as possible in regards to their deaths. I don't want to just kill anyone off for shock value or to prove how edgy and gritty of a writer I am. 
> 
> 3\. In total, Nell was separated from her daughter for 5+, nearly 6 months. That's a very long time for any parent and child to be apart, especially an infant, and as happy as Nell is to have her back, she feels an acute sense of loss for what she missed out on as a mother. Lysara doesn't necessarily recognize Nell as her mother right away; she's grown used to other caretakers in her day to day life. Obviously it's wonderful they're together now, but losing her really traumatized Nell and I don't want to minimize that pain.
> 
> 4\. In my opinion the worst thing for Ramsay is the feeling of being insignificant or ignored. Nell does just that; she's much more invested in being with her daughter and rejoicing in that fact than she is in dealing with him at the moment. But he will be dealt with, period, in the next chapter. I don't want to just sweep his crimes and atrocities under the rug, but this chapter wasn't about him, or Roose, even, but about Robb, and Nell, and Lysara, and their family. Not to get too Disney in here, but to quote Stitch: "This is my family. I found it all on my own. It's little, and broken, but still good." 
> 
> 5\. Although Robb's 'second' death was the second-ever scene I ever developed in concept for this fic, this chapter was not easy for me to write. I have tried to be as clear as possible since Robb's 'return' in this fic that his current state was simply not tenable in the long run. These magical resurrections, both in this fic and in canon, are not a miraculous cure-all. They were never intended to do anything but 'buy more time'. In theory, yes, perhaps his life could be prolonged even longer by someone like Melisandre. But ultimately he can never go back to the person he was before. The first time he died he was murdered by Roose, and he died terrified and enraged, believing his wife and daughter were in mortal danger and his men being slaughtered around him. The second time he dies, he is home, surrounded by people who love him, reunited with his child, having defeated his enemies. 
> 
> 6\. Roose went out more or less as he lived. He risked it all, he paid the price. After a lifetime of hurting others, he dies miserable, delirious, in the freezing cold, crawling on broken glass. There is nothing he could have said to justify or excuse what he's done, and ultimately neither Nell nor Robb were interested in hearing it. Him knowing that he's failed was enough for them. 
> 
> 7\. Robb confirms that part of his consciousness is permanently in Grey Wind. It's not to the degree of 'he's a human being trapped in the body of an animal', Grey Wind is just a good deal more 'aware' and intelligent than the typical direwolf at this point. Robb views it as 'leaving a window open' that he could perhaps glimpse Nell and Lysara through, even after his death. 
> 
> 8\. I initially wanted to cover way more 'practical' matters in this chapter but I didn't want to cheapen or in any way breeze over Robb's death. Next chapter we will plunge back into the more grounded side of things. We will be seeing some long-awaited reunions in particular. Thank you all very much for your support and feedback for this fic. I discuss it in greater detail on my blog at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/) if you want to ask me questions or discuss characters in general.


	80. Dana XI

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Dana’s gaze is drawn to the statues first. Winterfell’s sept, while small, was well outfitted, she recalls, from the brief glimpses she’d get inside its carved oaken doors every so often. There were statues, albeit small ones, perhaps four feet tall each, with precious gemstones for eyes and a good stock of candles constantly burning at their stone feet. The windows were stained glass all the way from White Harbor, and while the pews could hold no more than fifty all together, they were neatly arranged and well-maintained. But Winterfell has not had a septon since Theon Greyjoy and his men came; the story goes they drowned poor Septon Chayle in a well. 

Dana remembers him from the library. He was not much older than she and Nell, and he was always very pleasant, smiling over some such book or humming to himself while he swept out the sept. She cannot see why anyone would think it just or fitting to bind that man’s hands and feet and toss him into a well to drown as a sacrifice to a god. Chayle was innocent; he’d never held sword or shield in his life. What kind of god accepts the sacrifice of an innocent? The old gods used to feast upon blood, but they sated themselves on sinners, or so Dana was taught. Murderers, rapers, traitors- the most heinous sort, people who’d committed depravities, who were deemed fit for a death not just in the name of justice but in the name of godliness. 

She wonders if they will sacrifice Ramsay Snow in the godswood, either by sword or by fire. Dana doesn’t like the smell of burning men, no more than she likes to watch their blood spatter across the snow. But he almost took Marianne from her. He almost killed her. And she thinks for the first time she might understand what drives people to do horrific things in the name of vengeance, when she thinks about losing Marianne, of never seeing her again, of never being able to speak with her or touch her or wake up next to her every morn, their legs tangled together under the furs.

When she and Arya finally reached Winterfell, it was nightfall of that day, and the battle had long since ended, and Roose was long since dead, and Nell was still holding onto Robb in the godswood, but Dana doesn’t remember any of that, doesn’t remember any sight or sound but dismounting from Thumb and looking around frantically, heart pounding in her chest, for any sign that Marianne might be near, that she might be safe and well- and then, in the lamp light of the stables, a figure was emerging, wrapped in a heavy cloak, hair tangled, eyes wild, and Dana had stared at her in shock, as if she could not quite be real, and then Marianne had said her name-

“Dana,” Marianne says now, gesturing with her lantern, “oh, Dana, look what they’ve done to the Maiden.” 

She is distressed; the Maiden is Marianne’s favorite. The Maiden is Marianne’s solace, Marianne’s hope and Marianne’s pride- “Where else,” she will demand, “where else do they go to their knees before a mere girl? Where else do they honor and revere her so?” That is what the Maiden is, after all. One of the many faces of one god, the septons preach, but also a girl in spirit, the embodiment of youthful femininity, of innocence and modesty and renewal. She guards girls’ virtues, they say, but also their hopes and dreams, their promises for the future. 

The sword she forged for Galladon of Morne was called the Just Maid, not the Pretty Maid or the Chaste Maid. The Just Maid, because there could still be justice in innocence, because just because something was young and pretty did not mean it had no steel to its spine. The Just Maid was the sword no shield could stop. It pierced a dragon’s heart with nary a stain to its blade. It was never used against a mortal man, because a mere man, Marianne would say, and has told Dana, for Marianne loves her stories, her myths and legends, a mere man could never stand against its power. 

The old gods have no sex. There is no Maid, no Mother. No sisters or daughters or wives are reflected back at them. There is no one to appeal specifically to. The old gods reject most appeals, anyways, or that is what they are taught. If there were ever certain prayers to them, they were prayed in the Old Tongue, and most are lost to time and memory. Dana still believes in her gods, but she wonders sometimes if it would be easier to have such confidence in them if they seemed more… well, hers. 

True, there are no septons to scold her or septas to rebuke her, but there was also no one to comfort her. No one to tell her where to find her peace. Her mother would say that is folly itself. What is she, some meek little lamb who must be led to the water to drink? The old gods encourage men and women to seek their own peace, their own comfort, to find the answers within themselves. Theirs is an independent, proud sort of faith. All stiff backs and aching knees, cold fingers and wind-lashed hair. 

But sometimes, and Dana does not think it makes her weak or foolish, sometimes everyone must want to pray to something they feel could reach down and embrace them, do they not? Whenever Nell prayed, half the time it wasn’t to the gods at all, it was to her own mother. Bethany Ryswell was her Maiden and her Mother and her Crone and her Stranger all at once. Dana could never say such a thing aloud, though. It would be considered offensive and profane. But does that make it any less true?

The Maiden here has been defiled along with the rest; the statues have been stood back up by some follower of the Seven, perhaps a Manderly, but they have not been repaired. Their eyes are gouged out; a few are missing their heads. The Maiden is little more than a disembodied torso, propped against the wall. The ground is still covered in slush and mud; the sept’s roof caved in when the Boltons sacked Winterfell, and now, despite the torches she and Marianne have lit, and the lantern they brought with them and placed before the filthy altar, snowflakes still wisp down through the half-ceiling above them, where pale stone meets dark sky. A true intermingling of the old and the new. This place no longer belongs entirely to the Seven. The old gods have crept in like stray beasts drawn to a campfire. The wind whistles through the shattered windows. 

Marianne kneels before the Maiden in sober prayer; she is ever devout, perhaps even more so after her narrow brush with death. Dana has always found that so amusing; Marianne is fiery and independent-minded, willful and decisive, the sort of girl many might expect to be less than interested in the idea of quiet prayer or the reading of holy texts. But nonetheless, she brings all that same vigor to her faith. 

She is so lucky. They have Winterfell, and she has Marianne, and this week has seemed like something out of a dream. She loved Winterfell, once. It felt like it could be a home. It doesn’t feel quite that way anymore, but it is still a comfort. She isn’t on the road. She isn’t sleeping in a tent. She isn’t alone. Of course she did not begrudge any of her time spent with Arya or Catelyn, but that is not the same. She loves Arya like a sister, but Marianne-

Marianne looks up from her murmured prayer, brown eyes gleaming in the lantern light, and Dana tugs her close and kisses her yet again, as if to ward off the cold. They are fortunate, truly. While teams of men are organized to rebuild and the wounded are tended to and prisoners are noted and more and people begin to flock to the winter town, now that there are Starks in the seat once more, it feels like they are in the center of a great beast slowly awakening from a long slumber. And no one cares a whit what they do with one another. She knows it cannot last forever. This is a temporary reprieve. She still has her duties. She is still a Flint. Marianne is still a Frey, in the eyes of many.

But she saved Lysara. She saved the future of House Stark. “They’ll call you the Just Maid,” she told Marianne the other night, as she combed out her hair from a gloriously hot bath. “They’ll sing songs about you, you’ll see. A whole ballad for Maid Marianne.”

“Me?” Marianne had scoffed. “I raced a horse down a road. You joined up with outlaws and took back castles! Brave Danny Flint rides again!” She’d toasted Dana with an imaginary horn of ale, and they’d fallen over themselves with laughter, giddy, shocked at their fortune, still not quite convinced any of this was real.

Dana does feel guilty. Of course she does. Robb is dead. Whatever he was at the end, he is gone. Nell is suffering greatly. She did not leave her rooms for the first three days, and even now seems to go about in a numb haze, with eyes only for her daughter or overseeing the many crucial repairs being hurriedly made in between snowstorms. Stannis has been content to see first to the castle itself, the practical matters, this past week- who is quartered where, what to feed who, how to acquire more servants to staff the keep itself, where to stable which horses, and so on. But people are restless, angry. They want Ramsay’s head. They want Roose’s bones thrown in some ditch. They want the Dreadfort’s lands divided. It is not enough that word has arrived that it was successfully taken by forces led by none other than Donella Hornwood and Cregan Widowsflint. They want revenge. 

They would want Abel the Bard dead too, or Mance Rayder, as he is better known, only he is the one who got Marianne to the stables and on a horse and out the gate in one piece. Dana has heard it half a dozen times by now, like it was already a legend. Marianne, fleeing the Bastard and his men, desperate, darting through the snowy keep, a babe in her arms. Spotting the cage and the dangerous man inside, who convinced her to set him loose. Now Abel sits in a cell beneath Winterfell, perhaps across from the Greyjoy siblings. They must have interesting conversations, those three. 

Dana is not sure if she would have done the same. She is northern. She is a Flint of the Finger. Rare to see any wildings that far south, to be sure, but her kin to the mountains, they all had tales of raids and rapes and slaughters- missing daughters and sisters, dead children, burned villages. “Wilding and Ironborn are more alike than they are different,” her Norrey mother had once told her. “Only the wildlings haven’t the ships to reave properly with. Believe me, Danelle, if they did, they’d set us alight from the Frozen Shore to the Saltspear.” The usual threats- don’t wander off, you’ll be carried off by some wildling beyond the Wall to be his wife! What would you rather, do your chores or be rutted on by some brute wrapped in mammoth furs and sealskins? 

Nell and Catelyn claim Bran told them- through the weirwood tree on that lake- that it was Osha the spearwife who helped save him and Rickon. Mayhaps there is something funny in people finding it easier to believe in magical talking trees than a wildling woman willingly helping two little Starks. But Dana can believe it. Nell did not like to acknowledge Osha’s existence, she was so upset Robb had taken the woman on a prisoner turned servant, but Dana spoke with her a few times. Osha was not the sort to bother pretending at fondness for Bran and Rickon. She genuinely seemed to care for them simply because they were children, and Robb had spared her life. His mercy may have saved their lives in turn.

But Robb is gone now. Dana feels tremendously guilty, because she is relieved. Better him dead and buried and Nell able to finally grieve properly than… than what he was before. Dana will not deny that he could still fight, could still rally men to him, that the movement to reclaim the Riverlands might have faltered and stalled without Robb to flock to, their perfect symbol of vengeance and retribution. Would all those men have gathered for Nell or Harry Karstark or the Greatjon alone? She’s doubtful. But as much she loves the North, loves House Stark, believes fervently it should be their Great House, their caretakers… she loves Nell more. And seeing Robb like that, day after day, week after week- it was killing Nell. Slowly but surely, it was. How could it have gone on much longer? What sort of life would that be? Nell going mad trying to keep their faith in Robb, a stone heart rotting Robb from the inside out, Catelyn mourning her son every day all over again… 

She regrets that they could not reach Winterfell quickly enough for Arya to be with her brother when he passed. Yet Arya may have been there all the same; for a time she seemed to faint in the saddle, or not- well, she did not fall from her horse- Dana grabbed one arm, and Arden Greengood the other- but she was not there, not presently, not really. Her eyes seemed to roll back in her skull and although she still breathed, she was not truly unconscious or conscious, just… somewhere else. Dana had watched Mors the hawk wing off towards Winterfell far faster than any of them could have ridden through the snow and mud, and understood. She would do the same, had she the power, were it her sister. And it has been her sister. Jenny and her husband have been confined to their beds all week, despite their mutual complaints that they’re no worse for the wear. 

That’s Flint pride and Slate stubbornness for you. Robard is missing two fingers, one on each hand, and Dana’s temperamental older sister seemed reduced, somehow, diminished, her hair lank and thin, her eyes hollow in her skull, her hands shaking when she tried to lift a cup to drink. Dana has not asked her what happened in those dungeons. She may never work up the courage to. Jenny does not want her pity. But Dana has written to Alysane, asked her to come down from Eagle’s Nest before the roads are impassable. Jenny and Aly were always inseparable. They need one another more than they ever needed or wanted her. It’s a bitter truth, but there it is, and she’s accepted it by now. 

Marianne must have asked after her brothers a hundred times, and Dana knows, for all the reassurances that they were released to the (relative) safety of the Twins under the new lordship of Perwyn and Fair Walda, that Marianne will not rest easy until she’s heard from Walder and Patrek directly. Dana hopes they reply. Marianne has suffered much more than her, these past months- Dana may have been on the run, but once they found the Brotherhood- or the Brotherhood found them- she felt more or less safe. When has Marianne felt safe? Never. She had to sleep with her door barricaded at night and a knife under her pillow, could never walk alone, never linger anywhere for long, always careful, always paranoid that at any moment she could be raped and murdered and no one would lift a finger to stop it. 

Still, Marianne insists Dana had it worse, that at least Marianne had her family, had Marissa and the twins and Fat Walda. 

“I had Arya,” Dana has told her, but to Marianne the idea of Dana feeling she is kin to a Stark is an impressive, but ludicrous claim. 

“Yes, but Arya is not your sister,” Marianne has said, a dozen times, and Dana is not sure how to explain it. No, Arya is not her sister. No, perhaps she is no fit companion for a Stark princess- lady- whatever Arya is now. But the same could be said of her relationship with Nell. What are the Fingerflints to the Boltons? Dana’s ancestors were never kings; they flooded down from the mountains when men still roamed in tribes. Does she presume too much? 

Marianne is used to being ignored, dismissed, rejected on account for her kin- her father, a minor Vance with no lands and only a knighthood, her mother yet another Frey, and how the women of that house are maligned and mocked. Dana is comfortable in the presence of power- well, if not ‘comfortable’ than at least not afraid or ashamed- but perhaps that is just exposure. Nell took her along on this wild romp, and somehow Dana fell into the same stories as kings and queens and great battles and forgotten magic and dark rituals and brave feats. No, she does not quite belong, and perhaps she never will. She’s known nothing but stories all her life, and there were never any girls like her in the stories. And if there were girls like her in the songs, well, they were singing them because those girls were dead. Brave Danny Flint and all.

But Dana’s not dead yet, and for the first time in a long time there is no clear path ahead of her. For months it was the knowledge that they would either return to Winterfell victorious or die in the attempt; what now? Stannis Baratheon and Howland Reed claim there are Others beyond the Wall, gathering wights for some dark purpose. Dana doesn’t know if that means the world is ending and another Long Night is coming or if there is some spell that must be broken or how any of this might end. For now they are safe, but once she said the same at Riverrun, once she thought the same at the Freys. Safety has not been guaranteed for her or anyone she loves for some time now.

So it seems fitting that, if the future is so uncertain, she at least be certain of this one thing. 

She and Marianne stand now, hold hands before the desecrated statues, the carved stone altar covered in dead leaves and melting snow. The candles sputter erratically, casting new shadows across Marianne’s familiar face. It just makes Dana want to kiss her again. Instead she waits patiently as Marianne begins her prayers. They will not exchange cloaks, but Dana has brought strings of beads instead; amber and glass and clay. They can wear them around their wrists or braided into their hair, and no one will think anything of it. Neither of them are in white; Dana wears an old gown of Catelyn’s, a dark grey trimmed with black ermine fur- her house colors, and Marianne wears one of pine green slashed through with white at the sleeves and bodice. 

“Father,” Marianne says, “grant me the strength to defend her. Mother, let my love for her be kind and merciful. Warrior, give me the courage to comfort her. Smith, show me how to mend whatever may break betwixt us. Maiden, let me always see her beauty, in her words and in her deeds. Crone, guide me through the dark nights to come, and lead me to wisdom at her side. Stranger-,” and here even Dana looks askance at her boldness, “take my hand before hers, and let death never truly divide us.”

Dana has no prayers to offer in return, at least not any spoken. Instead she takes Marianne’s hands in her own and guides her back down to the cold floor. They kneel there together, foreheads nearly brushing. Dana can feel Marianne’s warm breath on her neck and feel her hair tickling at her cheek. This is not as it would be before a heart tree. No one is here to give either of them, for all that they are claiming one another. They do not need to speak. She can feel the wind snarling at her back, and the snow still spirals down through the broken rafters and dances through the dusty air. The old gods are here, too. 

They rise back up together as one, and Marianne uncorks a tiny vial of oil- the same oil used to anoint Walda Bolton’s daughter, born while her father bled out, if the rumors are true- Mariya, they are calling her, although many of the northern lords will only refer to the child as a Frey. Even so, they cannot claim the marriage between Roose and Walda was illegitimate, as the marriage between Jeyne Poole and Ramsay was. Little Mariya Bolton. Dana thinks it rather fitting that both his daughters ushered in his death. She was not raised to believe in heavens or hells, but surely the gods have made an exception for him. She hopes his is full of burning leeches. 

Marianne dabs oil on Dana’s forehead, than her own, smiling softly, and then draws back. “With this kiss I pledge my love,” she says. “Do you take me, Danelle Flint?”

“With this kiss I pledge my love,” Dana grins back at her, “Do you take me, Marianne Vance?”

Their lips have met so many times- soft and shy, passionate and fierce- that this kiss should be no different, but it feels special, all the same. Dana leans into it, and it transforms into an embrace; they wrap their arms around one another and hold each other close for as long as they can. They do not hear the footsteps, but even Arya Underfoot cannot always prevent the creaking of a door, and Dana and Marianne break apart in time to see her slip into the sept, or at least the doorway of it. Arya has no love left for the new gods; she blames them for the death of her father. The old gods did not save Dana’s father, but she understands that sometimes one just need someone- something to blame. 

“Arya,” she says; it’s strange to see Arya roaming around Winterfell again, usually with Grey Wind at her side, although he is not with her now. Arden Greengood doesn’t seem to be either. “Did your mother send you?” It’s late; they stopped serving dinner half an hour past, and by all rights Arya should be abed by now. Then again, if the Red Keep and Harrenhal could not contain her, the keep of Winterfell must seem like child’s play. Dana wonders if Catelyn has simply given up on trying to restrain Arya, at least in this sense.

Arya looks a little older in the dark; her face seems longer, and her hair as well- it reaches her shoulders once again now, although she’s tied it back with a strip of leather. She’s not dressed as a boy- well, she is, sort of- her wardrobe still tends towards the motley and mismatched. She appears to be wearing a boy’s jerkin over an old doublet with a girl’s riding skirt underneath; it has a slit up the side to reveal her woolen leggings and boots. Dana thinks she looks comfortable, for once. Not forced into the role of a perfect little lady or anyone’s brother, squire, or bastard. 

“No,” she says, chewing on her lip, before remembering to chew on her nails instead and giving Dana an almost sly sort of look. “Just taking a walk.”

“By yourself?” Marianne questions. “The castle may be secure but there are still men wandering about after dark, my lady.”

Arya gives a little shrug- so? She is the Stark in Winterfell- well, she and Lysara- and even if anyone wanted to catch her, Dana knows they’d have to try very hard to even lay hands upon her. Arya knows every nook and cranny of this place. “I like to walk the ramparts at night,” she says. “You can see far, with the moon on the snow.”

Looking to see if Nymeria is coming home, no doubt. With the news of the Dreadfort’s surrender, Arya must expect that her wolf will return soon, but Dana is not so sure. Nymeria has spent far longer around other animals than around men, at this point. She and Arya will always be linked, but would she be willing to leave her pack behind for castle walls? Still, she knows Arya must miss her- warging is not the same as being with in the flesh. Or perhaps she is waiting for her brothers. Ravens have been dispatched all over the North, seeking any news or sightings of the Stark boys. Catelyn seems confident someone will know something, and they will be found sooner or later, if Bran does not directly contact them again. 

“You look cold,” Dana observes; Arya will not come any further into the set, but she can see the red of her cheeks in the lantern light. “Mayhaps you’d best leave the rampart walking for morning, eh?” She and Marianne are still holding hands; not that she cares to let go now. “If I were you, I’d find my way back to my bed before I gave my mother any more cause to worry.”

Arya scowls at that, then adds, defensively, “I was going to. I just wanted to visit Father and Robb first.”

Marianne exhales quickly; Dana can see her breath misting out of the corner of her eye.

Dana nods. There is nothing preventing Arya from going down into the crypts; she could have easily just went herself. That she sought them out first means… something. Maybe some small, childish part of her is still afraid of the dark. Dana would not blame her. Maybe she just wants the company. Maybe she thinks Dana might understand what it is like to have lost a father and not had the luxury of being able to grieve him right then and there. Artos Flint’s bones still lie in the woods somewhere, along the river. There are worse places to be buried by the elements, and that stretch of forest is a prettier resting place than anywhere on Flint’s Finger. Dana thinks- hopes- he could find some peace there. Home never brought him any.

“Alright. Let’s go visit them.”

The crypts, despite their emptiness, are awash with light as of late. They blaze from the bottom up like chambers of light underneath a dark, cold world overhead, and Dana can understand why. They are understood to have saved the lives of three Starks now- Brandon, Rickon, and Lysara. For the time being she has seen people come to pray in them more often than in the godswood itself, although perhaps it is just there they are slightly warmer while still being ‘outside’, so to speak. Still, there is no need to carry a torch or lantern; most of them are lit. Once they’ve made it down the slippery steps, always coated in a mud and dust, Arya darts ahead as if forging into a maze. 

Marianne is much more hesitant; here is where Sarra died, here is where Marianne almost died. She won’t speak of it yet- it’s only been a week, Dana reminds herself, yet again- but she has nightmares of it, most nights. She kicks and fidgets, whimpering in her sleep, letting herself feel the fear she could not show then. Dana doesn’t know what to do but hold her and try to soothe her, wonders if this is how Nell felt with Robb after his father’s death. She wonders if Marianne ever thinks it should have been her who died instead, and prays fervently she does not. She can’t imagine how she would have felt, had she come here and discovered that Marianne had died alone, in the cold and dark, murdered by the Bastard just before he himself was captured. She hopes they haven’t fed him once this week. See how he likes catching water on his tongue and surviving on breadcrumbs. He’s eaten well this past autumn. He deserves to die hungry.

Dana squeezes Marianne’s hand; it’s trembling a little. Marianne forces a brave smile, and squeezes back as they follow Arya further into the crypts. 

There are no statues yet or even plaques, but Robb was laid to rest, after his pyre in in the godswood had burned so brightly, embers drifting up towards the stars- they had clear skies that night, as if in honor of him- and while Northern funerals were usually conducted in as much silence as the weddings, his mother had asked for singing. So there had been singing. Even the likes of Harry Karstark and Lyessa Widowsflint had sung. The Umbers had all but roared. Jonelle Cerwyn’s voice had sounded surprisingly sweet. 

Stannis Baratheon had seemed to sense the mood, and had the sense to keep his men well away from it. Must have realized this was part of the price to be paid for a North united under him. Candles, and singing, and embers on the wind. Nell had not sang, but no one had expected her to. She had stood there, Dana watching her stare into the fire crackling across the pyre, Lysara bound to her chest, a gloved hand resting on her daughter’s scalp. Then she had closed her eyes so they would not see her cry, but the tears had left shiny tracks down her face all the same. 

Robb’s bones are interred besides his father’s now. Father and son share a tomb. It seems terribly sad to Dana- husbands and wives should share a tomb, not parents and children, that shouldn’t be the way of things, but perhaps it is not so uncommon now. The tomb itself is ablaze; a den of melted wax and stubs of candles, bravely flickering against the draft. There are trinkets and tokens left too- colored glass and pieces of cloth and shells and stones and dried flowers and fruit. 

Robb’s helm is resting on top of the slab of his tomb; someone has filled the eyesockets with winter roses, withered and browned though they might be. His sword is bound up in a Stark cloak, knotted with the favor Nell once gave him, that Bolton pink. They don’t have Ned Stark’s helm and they will never have his sword, but there are pine wreaths laid on his tomb all the same, and Catelyn has cut off several long locks of her auburn hair and left them there for him. Arya scrounges in her pockets, then comes up with several acorns and a gleaming silver sewing needle, leaves them for her father. She crouches down before them and puts her bare hand to the cold stone. Dana, after a moment’s hesitation, crouches down beside her, and loops a long arm around Arya’s slight shoulder. Marianne kneels on the other side of her, her head bowed. 

Arya doesn’t say anything, nor does Dana expect her to. By now they are both used to each other’s silences. After a few minutes, Arya whispers, “Goodbye,” and stands back up. She will back here tomorrow night, no doubt, and the one after that. Dana briefly trails her fingers along Robb’s tomb; dust is already collecting, and it has only been a week. Marianne tucks her arm into Dana’s; they walk with Arya back out of the crypts, past the small shrine erected for Sarra Frey by Marissa and Jonelle. Marianne swallows hard, and then lets it go. Dana briefly tilts her head so it brushes against Marianne’s, and then they’ve reached the steep steps up and back into the night.

Arya promises she is really going to bed now, and Marianne admits she should check on Walda and the babe, who’ve been confined to Walda’s rooms for the past week. Dana suspects it is partly out of genuine concern of what might befall a child of a Bolton and Frey once past that doorway. She doesn’t think any of the lords present are stupid enough to try anything, but many of their bannermen might be, or any passing person who feels the Freys present should not have been spared at all. Still, who is going to turn down more men at this point, regardless of their origins? Even with the surviving forces combined, they levy perhaps ten thousand men at most, likely less. There is hope the news that Winterfell is secure once more will attract free riders and sellswords looking for a sanctuary for the winter. Dana’s not sure how many men the Night’s Watch have at present. Likely not enough to properly defend the Wall, at any rate, unless they’ve started letting wildlings join up. 

Then again, with Jon Snow as Lord Commander, they just might.

Once Arya has vanished into her old bedchamber, hopefully to sleep and not stay up until dawn practicing with Needle, Dana looks to Marianne. “You see to Walda, I’ll see to Nell.”

“You might offer to take the babe for the night,” Marianne suggests, although her look makes it clear what she thinks the chances of that are. “She might sleep better for it.”

“She wouldn’t,” Dana shakes her head. “She doesn’t mind the crying- I think she prefers it. That way she has an excuse to check on her every hour or so.”

Marianne purses her lips, but allows, “At least Lysara will let her hold her, now.”

Dana isn’t sure how babes think, but she suspects that Lysara is finally coming around to the idea that the dark-haired woman with the pale eyes so similar to her own might be something of a friend, and not an enemy. It will likely take some months before she understands that Nell is her mother. Dana knows it must be heart wrenching for Nell, for any mother. But what matters is that Lysara is here, and safe, and that her claim has been acknowledged. Stannis could have easily chosen to supplant the Starks entirely with another family of his choosing. The fact that he came so close to legitimizing Jon Snow speaks volumes. Dana does not want to think about that, not out of any hatred for Jon but out of a general desire for peace. The Starks fighting the Lannisters, then the Freys, then the Boltons, was one thing. The Starks fighting each other is not something that bears thinking about, in her mind. When those sort of power struggles occur, the women always lose, no matter whose side they are on. 

She finds Nell, unsurprisingly, paying another last minute visit to Barbrey, who has been forbidden by the maester to do much more than take a turn or two around the room every day, and who can barely feed herself, with a broken wrist and that stab wound to her shoulder. Dana has to believe she survived out of sheer spite, fond as she is of the old shrew. She pokes her head into the room while Nell is arguing in hushed tones- of course she is- with her aunt, only for it to break off as Lysara crawls steadily across the bed towards Barbrey, giggling. Dana leans back against the door and smiles widely; Barbrey drops the severe mask and coos back at the babe as she reaches her. 

“Isn’t it past her bedtime?” Dana asks in a tone of mock reproach.

Nell turns round and smiles faintly, then scoops up her kicking and protesting daughter. “It is, but she’s been spoilt as of late.”

“There’s no spoiling a babe,” Barbrey says, which surprises Dana, given the woman’s general view of children. She distinctly remembers her referring to little Mark Ryswell as “the snark that clawed its way out of my goodsister so it could spatter mud across my floors”. Then again, Lysara is a very charming babe; it must be the coppery hair and the general, palpable relief that she is alive. Had Robb died without issue, things might be very different. Had he died and left behind a son, not a daughter, perhaps the outcry over the North once again submitting to a Baratheon king would have been far greater. 

House Stark has never had a ruling queen or ruling lady in her own right. On the few occasions when it seemed imminent, the women or girls in question were quickly married back into the family. Not every northern family are the Mormonts, and the Starks did not keep ahold of power for thousands of years by being overly inclined to change. Still, small steps, Dana thinks, small steps. Lysara will be their first Lady Stark, the first female Warden of the North, someday. Wardeness? It doesn’t matter. Besides, she will have plenty of strong women to look up to; House Mormont, House Cerwyn, House Manderly, House Widowsflint, House Dustin, are all currently led by ladies, not lords. 

Nell leans down and kisses her wan aunt on the cheek; Barbrey smiles briefly, then winces in pain and reaches for the concoction left on her bedside table. For nearly twenty years now the woman has avoided maesters at all costs, turned to woods witches and hedge healers instead. Now she is only alive because of one. Dana doubts this will provoke much of a change in opinion; “That grey rat was only doing his duty,” she can hear Barbrey already, but-

She hands Barbrey the potion, likely some mixture of wine with poppy to dull the pain. Lady Dustin nods gratefully to her, then downs it with her good hand, holding the bottle close to her bandaged chest to avoid dropping it. “Thank you, Danelle.” That, too, is something of a first. For the first time in her life Dana senses that Barbrey is looking at her not with thinly veiled exasperation or begrudging tolerance but legitimate appreciation. Well, perhaps they are truly entering a new age of wonders and miracles at every turn. 

“It’s my honor to serve a wounded warrior of House Dustin,” she says instead, and gets a hoarse chuckle out of Barbrey at that, for her trouble.

Dana follows Nell out of the bedchamber, quietly closing the door behind her. “Do you want me to take her while you bathe?” she murmurs, nodding to Lysara, who is chewing on her fingers again.

Nell shakes her head. “I need to leave her with Catelyn. Stannis wants words with me.”

“At this time of night?” Dana is incredulous. “Can it not wait until the morrow?”

“Does he strike you as a patient man?” Nell retorts. “No. He wants to meet me tonight, and believe me, I have put him off long enough.”

Dana feels a sudden sense of foreboding. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it has been a week, and it was generous of him to allow me this much time to collect myself, and to care for Lysara, and to… to bury Robb,” Nell exhales. “But we still have much to discuss, and he has expressly asked-,”

“Commanded,” Dana mutters.

“-That I come to this meeting without Harry or Catelyn.” Nell smiles grimly. “So I’m bringing you instead.”

Dana is still arguing against this on their way to Stannis’ chambers; he’s been given free reign- well, all of the reign, if he is to be their king now, of the First Keep, ostensibly because it is fact slightly larger than the Great Keep, and because it was not ruined to the degree that other parts of the castle were, having been in disrepair and locked up to begin with. 

“You’re determined to provoke him, then,” Dana says as they begin to ascend the stairs, Lysara long since safely deposited with her grandmother, and Nell looking slightly at a lost as to what to do with her hands without a child to hold or soothe. Now they are in tight fists at her sides. 

“I am not provoking him,” Nell says. “Some would consider it improper for a woman to attend a meeting with a male sovereign without some sort of chaperone.”

“Yes, Stannis Baratheon, a threat to virtues everywhere,” Dana mutters under her breath. “Nellie, this is ridiculous. You know I’m useless with politics.”

“You are far more observant, sensible, and experienced than you give yourself credit for,” Nell says sharply. “Just because you have never ruled in name or title does not mean you have never led others. Everyone likes you, Dana.”

Dana doesn’t think that is strictly true; she just looks approachable, which usually means people feel they can speak more freely before her than they would in front of most young noblewomen. Poor, plain Danelle Flint, on her way to becoming a spinster but good for a laugh or a consolatory pat on the back. She doesn’t mind most of the time. It must be exhausting to be on one’s guard at all times. She’d rather believe the best of people, even when it hurts her. 

“You cannot think he will be pleased you’ve decided to bring me along to a negotiation. He’ll order me out.” Part of this is that Dana really, truly, can think of a thousand better ways to end this night than by sitting across from Stannis Baratheon, squirming under that steely blue glare and feeling the discomfort and irritation rolling off his broad shoulders in waves. She’s been around plenty of men who loved women a little too much, and around plenty of men who loathed them all, from old crones to swaddling babes. Stannis is the first man she’s ever met who genuinely seems to consider women a dangerous and foreign location that he doesn’t dare tarry long on, lest he be surrounded by the wilderness and consumed by savage beasts. 

It can’t simply be the result of having no sisters. The man has a wife and a daughter. What does he do with them, shut them up in a cupboard and let them out at mealtimes? She does not even think it is a sneering dismissal on account of their sex- it is more of a… willful misunderstanding? As if they speak another language entirely, one he is both unwilling to learn and rendered vaguely uneasy by the sound of. Mayhaps this is Nell’s attempt to crack him; set him on edge by including one of her ladies in waiting and daring him to raise a fuss over it.

She doesn’t have time to pry further; they’re at his door, and one of his knights, a Penny, is admitting them, although he looks baffled at Dana’s presence. Dana wants to commiserate with him over this, but she’s propelled into the solar, which is nearly entirely barren aside from a bear-skin rug on the floor, a practically empty bookshelf that looks like someone recently righted it, and a single long table with rather spindly legs, which looks on the verge of collapse. Stannis is sitting on one end of it, a neatly arrayed stack of papers and letters in front of him. 

Grey Wind is sitting calmly near the other end, tail slapping against the floor every so often. Evidently he beat them up here, but he’s always preferred to roam the northern half of the keep, where there’s more open spaces and less noise and people. Dana has a brief hysterical thought of Stannis treating with Robb’s wolf, sitting in a chair like a man, then pushes it away.

Dana will give the man this; he rises to his feet immediately, and greets Nell as befits her station- “Lady Stark” not “Lady Bolton”. He looks at Dana, and to her surprise, seems to know her name. “Lady Danelle Flint,” he says.

“Your Grace,” Nell curtsies, and so does Dana; the movement feels stiff and unfamiliar. 

Stannis looks back from Dana to Nell, clearly awaiting some explanation for the former’s presence. 

“Danelle is my escort,” Nell says simply. “I thought it best to avoid provoking some of your more… passionate knights with the presence of a northman serving as my guard. I was informed there was another fight in the guest house yesterday. Something about how the demon trees in our godswood ought to be burned.”

Stannis’ look darkens, but it’s not clear if he’s upset by the reminder or the fact that there is discord between the northerners and southerners in general. 

“I find women can oft be relied upon to hold their tongues- and judgment- more so than men, in such matters,” Nell continues, taking a seat, and indicating for Dana to do likewise. “Surely you do not object to my lady’s presence here, Your Grace? She is such a comfort to me in my grief.”

Her voice is flat and hard but not angry. Dana recognizes it from whenever she would receive bad news at Riverrun. Either she knows something she hasn’t told Dana, or she suspects she is about hear something that will not please her. 

Stannis doesn’t push the issue, or maybe that is just Grey Wind coming over to lay his head on Nell’s lap. She strokes behind his ears, shifting in her seat. Dana briefly makes eye contact with Stannis, the lets her gaze drift down to the table. She’s not sure how much more chilly silence she can take.

“There has been word from the Wall,” Stannis begins, after what seems like a brief deliberation. “A letter arrived from Winterfell a week past, written by your bastard brother. He claimed to have seized control of Winterfell and that he was about to go to war against a,” he clears his throat, “...horde of broken men, outlaws, and traitors. He expressed to Lord Commander Snow that you and myself were both dead, cut down by the Freys, and made clear his belief that Theon Greyjoy and the girl purporting to be Arya Stark had escaped to the Wall. He demanded that the Lord Commander surrender them, along with the priestess Melisandre, my wife and daughter, the wildling princess Val, and Mance Rayder’s son. If he was disobeyed in this matter, Ramsay threatened to deliver to Jon Snow your daughter… beginning with her ears.”

“And how did Jon Snow reply?” Nell’s tone is verging on droll for a moment, although her face is tight with pain- the letter was based upon lies, but they could have so easily become true. 

“Ignorant of the truth of the matter, he elected to raise an army and march on Winterfell himself,” Stannis says without hesitation. “The free folk joined him. Shortly thereafter there was an attempt on his life. Mutiny,” his neutral expression breaks into a scowl there, and Dana, to her surprise, senses genuine fury in his tone. 

Does just the idea of mutiny enrage him so, or does Stannis have some affection for Jon Snow? She tries to compare the two in her mind. Perhaps they’re more alike than she and Nell know. Dana remembers Robb’s bastard brother as a polite, guarded boy who was near as silent as his wolf, most of the time. But he was proud. He did not have to speak for that to be evident. He carried himself as every inch a lord’s son, not his natural offspring. Many might have taken that for arrogance. 

“Did this mutiny succeed?” Nell’s voice betrays nothing, nor does her face; it’s a mask of ice. 

“No,” says Stannis. “The perpetrators were quickly killed or captured. My wife writes that Snow’s wounds were grievous… but Melisandre preserved his life.” Something about his tone is odd. He’s not lying, but he’s not being as transparent as he could be, either.

Grey Wind snuffles on Nell’s lap, yellow eyes blinking. Dana resists the urge to lean over and root her hands in his warm fur, to comfort herself. 

Preserved his life. Not ‘saved his life’ or ‘healed his wounds’ or ‘kept him from death’. Dana feels a cold drop of sweat snake its way down her back, underneath her warm woolen gown. Gods be good, she thinks, just when we thought we were done with this- If Thoros of Myr, a self-admitted ‘poor’ priest of R’hllor, in his own words, could successfully revive Beric Dondarrion, who would then go on to pass his life force to Robb… 

Dana knows nothing about the woman they call Stannis’ Red Witch- and behind his back, in the shadows, his ‘queen in truth’, but he does not seem the man to keep a priestess or witch or whatever she is around out of mere flattery. She must have some power to her, or have proven herself useful in some way. Stannis is not the sort to keep a broken blade with him just because the hilt glitters with gems. 

“So Jon Snow survives,” Nell says. “Has he written to you himself, Your Grace, affirming this?”

“He plans to ride for Hardhome with Tormund Giantsbane,” Stannis says, “to save the wildlings stranded there. The woods are overrun with wights, and the seas impassable.”

Nell leans forward slightly in her seat; “It is winter now. There are no roads north of the Wall. How long will it take him to ride to through the Haunted Forest to Hardhome, relieve its people, and bring them back to the Wall?”

Stannis seems to hearken to her meaning; this is going to take time. Valuable time, during which the Wall will remain weakened and vulnerable. 

“By his own estimate, at least twenty days of riding to reach Hardhome, and then perhaps twice as long to return with the surviving wildlings. They have few horses.”

Dana does the math quickly in her head. Assuming Jon Snow can hold off the wights and round up the people to retreat in a week or less once he reaches Hardhome- he will still be gone for seventy days or more. That is over two months that the Wall will be without its Lord Commander. Assuming he even returns. Dana doesn’t know much about Hardhome, only that it was written about by a maester, once, when it was still a bustling settlement of wildlings, and not a blackened ruin. They say it’s been uninhabited for generations now, populated by ghosts, demons, and devils. 

“This is absurd,” Nell says. “Order him to send someone else with this... Giantsbane on this quest. It is foolhardy. Who brought those people to Hardhome?”

“A woods witch loyal to Mance Rayder,” Stannis says, “called Mother Mole. She purports to have the gift of prophecy.” His tone seems to call that into question.

“You hold Mance Rayder now,” Nell retorts. “Send him back to the Wall as a black brother, and let Snow appoint him the leader of this ranging.”

“Jon Snow did not wait for my approval,” Stannis gives her the letter. 

Nell reads it, and her nostrils flare when she reaches the end. Dana leans over her shoulder to look. It is not signed ‘Lord Commander Snow’. There is no black seal of the Watch. It is simply signed ‘Jon Snow’. 

“Is he still commander?” Dana dares to ask. “Or… have they appointed someone else?”

“He has left a steward in command of the Wall in his absence. Eddison Tollett.” 

Well, that wasn’t much of an answer. 

“Yes, we will all rest easy in the knowledge that a single steward stands between us and the Others,” Nell snaps.

Stannis glowers. “I can think of worse men,” he replies coldly. “My wife, Princess Shireen, Melisandre, and her men are descending from Castle Black to Winterfell, along with Lady Val.”

Nell seems about to say something- likely “We’ve not the space, and I’ve not the inclination to play the gracious host,”, judging by the way her lips twitch, but restrains herself. “I await their arrival eagerly,” she replies instead. “I’ve heard so much of your lady wife and this… wildling beauty, Your Grace.”

“I intend to wed her to one of the northern lords, to further cement the peace between your peoples,” Stannis says, and then looks at Nell as if waiting for a suggestion. 

“I’ll consult them in the interest of finding a man prepared to bear arms to his marriage bed, lest she try to open his throat,” Nell replies flatly. 

Stannis does not look amused, but then again, does he ever? “As we are discussing marriages,” he says, “you should be informed of two more. Jon Snow, before the mutiny attempt, wed Alys Karstark to the current Magnar of Thenn, a man called Sigorn. He has created House Thenn through the match.”

“He has no authority to do such a thing,” Nell riles immediately, spots of color in her cheeks. “Lady Alys was promised to another, and the Lord Commander has no ability to grant men titles or lands in the North, or anywhere in Westeros, for that matter-,”

“Her Hornwood betrothed was presumed dead, killed by the Freys and Boltons,” Stannis says. “Lady Alys sought the protection left to her at the time. An unwed woman could not remain at the Wall.”

“When they hear of this, there will be fury,” Nell says, “He wed a Karstark to a wildling chieftain and made her husband a lord.”

Dana is not offended by the mere mention of the match- better a wildling than Cregan Karstark, she’s seen the man before, and he is foul- but she understands the point all the same. Multiple lords will take this as an outrage and a massive overreach on Jon Snow’s part. He is meddling in the affairs of the nobility, something seldom tolerated. They will not care if it was well-meant or not. Many will see it as a blatant grasp for power. And Daryn… gods, poor Daryn. Dana recalls how he’d speak of Alys from time to time on the march north. It was rare to hear him sound so hopeful and boyish once more. That was what he held in his heart, to keep going. The hope of being reunited with his mother and his future wife. 

“The Thenns consider themselves a lawful people… although they have yet to recognize any laws but their own,” Stannis replies. “If this will bring them into the North peaceably, I see no reason to stand against the match. The marriage has already taken place. He sent them east to march on the Karhold, to reclaim it from its traitors.”

“Does Harrion know?” Nell demands. 

Stannis inclines his head. “I informed him earlier today. He was not pleased… but he was relieved to hear that his sister is returning home, with men and a husband to defend her.”

Nell is silent and furious; Stannis seems almost pleased for a moment with it, as if a little relieved the tables have turned and he is not the one struggling to control his temper. But he mentioned another marriage. The shieldmaiden Val is still unwed- has Stannis betrothed his daughter to someone already? Some northern lordling? Dana glances at Grey Wind, who has removed his head from Nell’s lap in order to better watch Stannis. If Stannis notices the intense scrutiny of the wolf’s stare, he seems determined to ignore it. 

“The second marriage,” Stannis says, “will be your own, my lady.”

Dana sucks in a breath quickly, but Nell does not explode or curse him, as she’d thought she might- well, perhaps not curse him, Nell is bold but not that bold, but at least turn some venom upon him. Instead she is still and stiff as a statue, and Dana reaches over and puts a hand on the cold arm of Nell’s high-backed chair, watching her tentatively. This is… perhaps not a complete shock, but it has still only been a week. Just seven days since Robb was laid to rest. Seven days since they claimed Winterfell. Seven days since they finally stopped running. 

“As part of your allegiance to my rule, I will uphold my promise to recognize your daughter and no other as your husband’s heir,” Stannis says. “In return for your loyalty, I will name you her lady regent. But you must wed, and your husband must serve as her lord regent.” He pauses, as if forcing himself to outline this with more… patience perhaps than he’d usually display. “I do not expect you to wed immediately. In another turn of the moon, once my wife and daughter have reached us. But you will wed.”

“I am prepared to marry again for the sake of Lysara’s future,” Nell says in a tight, dark little voice. It is a survivor’s voice, Dana thinks. It is a voice that has not the space to do much else but confront cold truths and accept them. She knows it well; she’s heard herself speak with it, heard Arya speak with it, heard Catelyn speak with it. She’s heard men speak with that sort of voice too, but they are usually the ones making the choices they claim are so very hard and difficult to bear. They rarely seem to be the ones bearing any of the weight of those choices, aside from the guilt, of course. Guilt weighs heavy on a man, she’s heard it a hundred times. Dana thinks it is almost better that Stannis does not sound guilty or troubled by this. It seems almost more respectful of Nell than if he were pretending at reluctance or sorrow. 

“But I will not wed one of your knights,” Nell says. “My daughter will be raised in her own culture, with our customs. I will not be forced to convert at the altar. And if you think to burn godswoods-,” she does not finish the sentence for a moment, then says, “Remember Brandon Stark. He gave you valuable information through a heart tree. It would be a disservice to your cause, Your Grace. And it would mean rebellion for many lords here, as much as it did for many when you burned statues of the Seven.”

“I do not mean to burn the godswood here,” Stannis allows. “But a temple to R’hllor will be constructed in White Harbor, and the Lord of Light will be recognized as the god of my reign, as much as the Seven were my brother’s,” his tone sours, as if to imply his thoughts on any question of Robert’s faith. What was his faith? Whores, most likely, and drink, Dana supposes. Her father worshipped similar gods; one did not need to be a king to adhere to their sacred tenets.

“And I do not mean to wed you to a southerner,” he says. “It would be met with scorn by your bannermen. I am very familiar with it. They would simply seek to replace your daughter with one of her uncles or perhaps her aunt. You will wed a northman, and you will accept the match without complaint,” his tone turns warning and sharper now. “I will not have whispers sprouting up at every turn that you are being forced into it at swordpoint. This is the price that must be paid. I will have confidence in this, and in you, my lady.”

Nell raises her chin slightly, although her lip does not curl in derision as Dana worried it might. 

“I will not object,” she says, simply. “Publicly or privately, Your Grace. You have my word.”

“Many northmen have already approached me over the question of your hand,” Stannis steeples his fingers together, studies Nell and Dana both from under his furrowed brow. “You are not only the mother to Robb Stark’s daughter, but the Lady of the Dreadfort now as well, should I choose to leave it standing. Your family’s lands will be greatly reduced. I will allow for the title of Lord and Lady to be kept, however, based upon your own loyalty to my cause.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Nell says. “Might I ask who I am to wed?”

Dana takes her hand. All at once, she thinks she realizes why Nell really brought her here. Not for Dana’s powers of observation or political persuasion. But because she knew or suspected this was coming, and did not want to be alone. Grey Wind is here, aye, still staring at Stannis, but he cannot hold Nell’s hand or comfort her afterwards. 

“I have decided Harrion Karstark would be the wisest choice,” Stannis says. “You evidently have some faith in him already, having appointed him one of the generals of your husband’s army. His house were among the first to declare for me, although it was a ruse. Still, I think him a suitable match. He is distant kin to House Stark, is he not? And he is young enough, as are you.” 

He seems to pause for a moment, looking vaguely uncomfortable at what he must say next. “You have my word that any son of his borne by yourself would be in line for the Karhold and the Dreadfort, not Winterfell. I gave my word I would not countenance threats to your daughter’s claim, and so I shall. In turn, he has sworn to me that he will treat your daughter and your daughter alone as the future Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North.”

Any son of his. Dana feels slightly ill, not out of revulsion towards Harry Karstark, but- It is just another transaction. Roose sold Nell to Robb. Tywin and Old Walder meant to sell Nell to Addam Marbrand. Now Stannis is giving her to Harry, in return for his loyalty and as a way of keeping House Stark firmly in line and to all but supplant the Boltons with more Karstarks. Dana squeezes her hand, gently. Nell does not respond, not taking her eyes off of Stannis. 

“I understand,” she says. “Lord Karstark has already been informed?”

“Yes.” Stannis looks a little… surprised by her complete lack of reaction beyond blank acceptance. Perhaps that is why he let Dana stay. He expected Nell to burst into tears or fly into a rage, to have to be restrained and made to see sense, to throw herself at his feet and plead with him, womanly hysterics and the like. “He had asked my leave to inform you of the match, but it is fitting that it should come from myself, as your king.”

“I am yours to command, Your Grace,” Nell says. One of her hands is braced against the table before her, a pale vise grip. “I thank you for your consideration in this. I know you do not take such matters lightly.”

For an instant, Dana wonders if the steel shifts slightly, exposing something a little more… mortal underneath. Stannis does not look chastened or overcome with compassion, not really, but he does seem… well, ‘sympathetic’ is not the word, nor is ‘softened’. Understanding, perhaps? He wed at his king’s command, did he not? Dana wonders how that match turned out, in truth. 

“I do not,” he concedes. “I have not known Karstark long, but I judged him a better match than several of the clansmen who put their own offers forward to me. And you know him better than myself, I presume. Your husband must have put his trust in him.”

“He did,” Nell says quietly. “Harrion saved his life more than once.”

Stannis lays his hands flat on the table, and stands; the wood groans under his weight. He is not quite as gaunt as he was when Dana first laid eyes upon him; some of his muscle seems to be returning to him. “I never knew your husband,” he says, “nor was he ever an ally of mine. I cannot credit his loyalty. But he seems to have been a just man, and one who felt some duty to his people. He died with valor, I am told. Grieve him now, and honor him in your memory after that. All of us have other trials to endure.”

Nell stands suddenly as well; Dana does not let go of her hand, almost worried she might suddenly crumple, but Nell stands straight and tall. 

“Other trials,” she says. “Like my brother’s. The maester claims the weather should be clear enough to proceed by the end of this week. I will not delay it any further. With your leave, I will administer his sentence myself, Your Grace.”

Stannis stares at her for a moment, until Grey Wind barks. Then he nods. “You have my leave to do so. He is your prisoner, and yours to do with as you see fit. So long as it is done in an orderly fashion, I see no reason to object.”

Nell bows her head briefly, then curtsies again. Dana follows suit, and finds herself in a flood of anger when she rises from it. Who is he, to push Nell out of widowhood so soon? She feels terribly guilty, as if she herself were somehow responsible for this, with all her relief that Robb had finally found peace, that he was gone and buried, that Stoneheart was no more. This is the natural consequence of that. Stannis would never tolerate Nell ruling alone for long, and he has wasted no time with this. 

Better Harry Karstark than many others- he could have ordered Nell to wed a man old enough to be her father, like the Greatjon. But she is still angry. If Nell cannot let herself be angry, than Dana will be angry for her. Stannis knows nothing of how Nell has suffered, how they have suffered. He might not have been cruel and spiteful in it, but he was not kind in it either.

Kings are not supposed to be kind, a voice that sounds like her mother’s snaps at her. Is your head full of songs and stories still, from that bloody sept and your flowery Frey?

She wants to be with Marianne now. She wants to forget this. But Nell doesn’t have that luxury. Grey Wind follows them out; they walk in silence down the tower steps, into the base of the First keep, and then outside, under the armory bridge and into the mostly deserted great courtyard. Nell stops walking suddenly, and leans against a locked doorway, Grey Wind pressed up against her side as if to comfort her. Dana hesitates, floundering, then lays a hand on her shoulder. To her relief, Nell does not throw it off as she used to. 

“I am so sorry,” she says. “Nell. Truly. I- that was poorly done, he should give you more time. You must ask him for more time. You are a new widow. You are entitled to a longer mourning period.”

“No,” Nell says. “I have been a widow for longer than a week in truth, and you and I both know it.” She seems to struggle to swallow. “Why bother delaying the inevitable? Better to go through with this before he changes his mind, and decides some other man of his choosing would better serve me. Serve him. At least if it is Harrion, I…” she trails off, and then says, “I trust him not to harm Lysara or myself. He’s had ample opportunity to leave us all to our deaths, and he gave us Arya.”

Dana wants to say that is a rather low bar for a marriage, but she’s not a fool. It’s the way of things. She should be thanking every god in existence that tonight she was able to pledge herself to Marianne without worrying about a lonely husband coming to look for her. She should be thankful she can share a bed with the one she loves, and not have to attend to a man and his rights to her body before she can share it with Marianne. She should be thankful she has no children to account for or put before herself, over and over again.

“Still,” Dana says. “I-” She doesn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” she says, again. “I… I will be with you every step of the way. Always. At least we will all still be together, here.”

Nell steps away from the door. The snow is coming down harder, once more. “Yes,” she says, and then sniffs, and wipes at her nose. “We’ll be together. That’s all that matters. I have given my daughter Winterfell and the North. I would pay near any price for that, Dana. Truly. And there are still wars to fight, I think. As much as I want it to be over.” 

Dana wants it to be over too. She doesn’t want to worry about wights climbing over the Wall or Others slaughtering wildlings at Hardhome. She doesn’t want to fear another resurrection in the dark of the night. She doesn’t want to watch Nell wed for the sake of power and safety, instead of love and affection. But she can’t change any of this, and she can’t turn back time. Grey Wind’s warm breath is making dragons flow from his snout; wavering shapes in the cold night air.

“Let’s go to bed now,” she tells Nell, and takes her arm in her own again. “Perhaps Lysara hasn’t fallen asleep yet.”

Nell’s daughter has not, still kicking her little feet in her cradle, but Marianne has. Dana watches her slumbering form from the end of the bed, and almost wants to cry. It seems like a dream; Marianne smiles briefly in her sleep, then turns, murmuring into the pillow. Dana sits on the edge of the bed, feeling the comforting weight of Marianne’s legs against her back, and slowly removes her boots. Distantly, a wolf is howling. It could be Grey Wind, roaming the keep once more, reminding them all of who it belongs to, or it might be Nymeria’s pack on the horizon, coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. We haven't heard from Dana since Chapter 65, so I thought it'd be good to get her two cents on some current events. Dana introduces the major themes of this chapter pretty quickly as being both marriage and death/mourning. Finally reunited with Marianne, she is so relieved that they are both alive and well that the two quickly decide to pledge their love to each other in the castle's ruined sept, which has literally caved in on itself, letting in nature, aka the old gods, in Dana's view. I just think the setting of 'post apocalyptic churches or temples' is really cool and I think the imagery surrounding Winterfell's sept versus the godswood is interesting. 
> 
> 2\. While Dana is grieving with Nell over the loss of Robb, she admits to herself that she is relieved that Stoneheart no longer exists, and that she felt it was unhealthy for Nell to be forced to continuously grieve the man she loved while still living with a shell of him. While Winterfell is in a celebratory mood and trying to quickly rebuild the necessary parts of the keep for the winter, there is obvious a massive loss in Robb being gone, even if that is lessened some by the growing rumors that Bran and Rickon may still be alive. I also don't want to forget about Arya- now that all our POVs are sort of closing in on the same location, we'll be seeing a lot more of Arya and her burgeoning warg abilities. I felt like it was important to show her finally getting the chance to grieve in private for her father and brother, who are buried together in the crypts at last. 
> 
> 3\. While I don't want to come across as dismissive of Robb's death, I also don't want the plot of this fic to stall out. As Nell notes in this chapter, Stannis is not a very patient person, and while he is capable of being somewhat respectful of the Northerners' grief, he is also determined to unite the North under his leadership against the Others, regardless of the personal animosity between different houses or the northmen and the wildlings. As Dana notes, while he may have some measure of respect for Nell's leadership, ultimately she is just as much a Woman, capital W, in his eyes as Asha or any other female character would be. He doesn't treat her the way he would Jon Snow or any male characters in her position. 
> 
> 4\. Speaking of Jon Snow- he gets spoken about a lot in this chapter, much to Nell's annoyance. Stannis seems reluctant (for obvious reasons) to disclose exactly how Melisandre, ah.... 'saved' Jon. It's also unclear whether Jon at this point still considers himself the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, given his letter and rescue mission to Hardhome with Tormund. Nell is pissed both because she feels it is irresponsible to leave the Wall at a time like this, and because of the news of the Alys-Sigorn match. Not just because Sigorn is considered a wildling, but because Alys was already betrothed to another man and because this is considered very much out of bounds for the Lord Commander to be interfering in marriages and creating new houses, something usually only done by the Warden of the North or the King. 
> 
> 5\. In other news- Jon has sent Selyse, Shireen, and Val down from the Wall, judging it unsafe after the assassination. Stannis plans to marry Val into one of the prominent northern houses to create a link between the Free Folk and the northmen. He also plans, to Dana's alarm, to have Nell remarry pretty quickly. As Walda gave birth to a daughter, Nell remains the heir to the Dreadfort. I think it would also be pretty out of character for Stannis to just be 'cool' with the idea of Nell raising Lysara alone as the sole regent of the North for the next 16 years. In his view, she needs to remarry to someone unlikely to move against the Starks, but also to someone who he does not think will encourage rebellion against him.
> 
> 6\. Nell claims to just be relieved that she is A. not marrying one of Stannis' knights or being forced to convert and B. that she is marrying Harrion, who she at least trusts not to harm her or Lysara. Through Dana's eyes we can see that this is still not easy for her. Robb may have not been 'himself' for months before his second death, but he was still living and breathing as of a week ago. A month is not a very long time before being expected to enter into a new marriage. Unfortunately, that's the reality of the situation, but the love between Robb/Nell will continue to play a large role in this story up until the very end.
> 
> 7\. Ramsay, the Greyjoy siblings, and Mance Rayder are all imprisoned at present. Ramsay is going to get what's coming to him next chapter. The other three... we'll see in future chapters what's to become of them. Next chapter will likely be a split POV between Nell and Jory. You can find me on my blog at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/) where I often discuss this fic. See you guys next week!


	81. Donella LIV - Jorelle IX

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell hasn’t seen so clear and fine a day in weeks. There is near four feet of snow on the ground; the icy rains come at night, it melts, hardens down to slick ice, and then it snows again, and so on- but not a cloud in the sky overhead. This is the sort of day she wished for when they were fighting the Freys, when they were fighting her father’s men, instead of wind and sleet and hail. All the battles she’s witnessed, they’ve all been cold and dark and wet. And now, today, near perfect weather. The hunter’s gate, the one behind the kennels, facing east to the wolfswood, is wide open. 

The ramparts and stairs are full of men, not just the garrison, but near every lord and lady in Winterfell, every one of Stannis’ red-faced knights, shivering against the wind. There’s a throng of common people too, at her back- old men, hardened women, gaunt children. People have been flocking here since word got out that Winterfell had been retaken, but some of these people did not come in the hopes of a secure shelter or heartier food or a warm bed. They came to see justice done. 

Every so often the breeze stirs the immaculate top of the snow, sending flurries dusting across the ground. Wolves were howling in the wood last night, but in this hour of the bright and clear morning, the forest is silent. There is still a good distance between the castle’s towering walls and the edge of the wood. A long, undisturbed, perfect stretch of open ground, and mostly flat, at that, not sudden hills or drop-offs. Perhaps a leftover pit trap or too, but that was an Umber’s work, not hers. One could not ask for better conditions. The crowds gathered here are murmuring and chattering to one another, but there is no yelling, no screaming, no curses or shouts, as much as she suspects they’d like to. They are all just… watching. 

Nell glances towards the rookery and the maester’s turret to the left, above her. The turret is still mostly a burned out shell with half the roof missing, but Dana and Marianne have braved the climb nonetheless, and Arya is all but perched in a windowsill- she is very lucky her mother cannot see her from this angle, or Catelyn would have her head. Catelyn stands in one of the rookery’s large windows; the glass is missing, but no matter, she will not be up there long. 

Lysara is bouncing up and down slightly in her arms, delighted at this new vantage point. Nell makes eye contact with her daughter and raises a hand in greeting. Lysara stares down at her in confusion, then babbles something to her grandmother. Grey Wind’s furry head appears in the frame; he does not look happy about being up there and not down here, but Nell knows he understands her by now, and she’s made her wishes clear. This is hers, and hers alone to bear. 

Most of the nobility present is stone-faced. Jeyne Poole is huddled under Alysane Mormont’s heavy fur cloak, clinging to the older woman, who has treated her as she might one of her own daughters for near a fortnight now. Maege and Lyra are just behind them, their hair still in mourning braids for Robb. Harry Karstark nods stiffly at her from an archway. Daryn Hornwood is missing, along with his bastard brother. She doesn’t see Howland Reed, either, but then again he is a rather small man, easily missed in a crowd. Lyessa Flint is shoulder to shoulder with a stone-faced Jonelle Cerwyn. The Umber men are in one large, grim huddle of furs and leather. Stannis is standing just outside the kennel doorway; his imposing frame takes up nearly all of it. Old Ben Bones and one of Ramsay’s grunts, Skinner, are hanging from the eaves; they have been for nearly a day now. Their corpses will be cut down and burned after this. Stannis thinks it unwise to have very many intact bodies lying about, given the wight problem. Nell has no desire to see a wight at any point in whatever remains of her life, but senses she may not have a choice in that matter, particularly if Jon Snow has left the Wall for some suicidal quest to Hardhome. 

Best not to think much on that at the moment. She checks her full quiver one last time. Her arrows are new goosefeathers, although her quiver is in need of some repair. This bow is tolerable. It was made for her at Riverrun; her third so far in her life, she believes. She’ll be due for a fourth sooner or later. She prefers the northern designs, likes to think the wood is stronger. Mayhaps she’ll have a weirwood bow someday. Small comfort. 

The hounds were forced into a makeshift pen just outside the gate early this morning. She heard the growling and barking then, but it’s mostly died down now due to the burlap slung over the top, to calm them, although they can still smell the people. They must be very hungry. She would be, had she not eaten in over a week. The bright sunlight is making her eyes ache; she rubs at them with the back of a gloved hand, listening to the clinking of shackles behind her. 

Her gown is an altered version of a much older one; she’s worn little but black and grey and the occasional dark blue since Robb’s death, but this one is a much paler shade of grey, trimmed with fox fur at the collar and sleeves, and the bodice is stitched with bright pink ribbons that match the red dyed leather belt. The iron belt frame is a snarling wolf’s head, however. She has accepted that it will be years before she is able to ever openly wear Bolton colors beyond this without it provoking controversy. Her father and brother’s shame is not hers, but their legacy is. 

It is a miracle the Dreadfort was not razed to the ground. She is almost surprised Donella Hornwood obeyed the orders to leave it standing. Then again, it is only fair to the villagers. At least they might have someplace warm when the true depths of winter set in, before they can be snowed in to starve to death in their small cottages and cabins. If a beast’s carcass can give you warmth on a freezing night, do you care how bloody it is or how foul it smells?

Her hair is bound up in a widow’s knot under a fur hat with a connecting pale grey scarf, now looped under her chin and covering her ears. Her nose feels raw and bloody already, and her lips are cracking from the cold. Nell licks at them, then turns to face her brother. Ramsay, it is said, spent the first two days in his cell causing quite the fuss. Her grandfather was all for having his tongue cut out, even offered to do it himself, proving once and for all that there is a reason Rodrik Ryswell found enough affection for Roose to name his youngest son after him. She supposes he regrets that now. She supposes he regrets very many things now. 

Nell left Ramsay’s tongue, and had him fed. She didn’t want him weak and delirious from hunger, or unable to speak for himself. She wants him to be very much present for this. Looking past him, she can see they’ve even let the Greyjoys out for a little sunlight, although not Mance Rayder. Likely good thinking, that. Rayders name is mud among most in this castle. A knife would find its way through his ribs in a crowd like this. They say he hasn’t led a raid south of the Wall himself in years now- and she can believe it, for his queen was a wildling woman, not a stolen village daughter- but that hardly matters to anyone here. 

They whisper he allied himself with some warg warlord called Sixskins and the Weeper. There is not a soul in the North that has not heard of the Weeper. They used to use him to scare children to bed, along with all the other terrors. The Weeper and his scythe, plucking children’s eyes out with his talon-like fingers. Perhaps that is exaggeration. But the rumors about Ramsay were seldom exaggerated. And she is not a child anymore, cowering under the covers and dreading some monster lurking in the corner. It is broad daylight now, no dark wood or shadowed passageway, and she is looking at this monster head-on.

Ramsay’s thick hair is matted to his scalp with grease and grime. His cheeks are sunken and his lips pale, an unusual sight. Devoid of his finery and jewels- she can even see the tear in his ear where someone ripped the earring out, straight through the fleshy lobe- he does not look their father’s son, apart from the eyes. He must be freezing, and she can see him shivering, his teeth chattering in his skull every few moments, but he does not huddle or cower. 

Nell recalls reading something once about the value of acknowledging bravery in one’s enemies. Is this bravery? He must be afraid. He is not made of stone, he may be incapable of compassion or mercy, but he is not immune to fear. What should she call it, then? She feels no stab of pity or remorse. He conveyed himself here. It would be another matter entirely had their father coerced or forced him into his crimes. But he has no one to blame but himself. To the end, Ramsay is his own man. She suspects he hates that, hates that they still call him Snow, hates that he is out here in a commoner’s rags and not their house colors, hates that he is dying like this, not on the battlefield under his red helm, atop his warhorse.

“I thought you might give me a proper death,” he says, lips stretching back to reveal his yellowed teeth. “But you’ve not the guts for it, sister. Couldn’t bring yourself to pick up the knife, now? Not prettily done, flaying. It takes patience. Determination. I never lacked for those. Just like our father.”

Nell is silent. He has a right to speak before she passes judgment upon him, despite the wound in her still throbbing, screaming to end it now, kill him, let not another word pass those foul lips. But if she wanted to kill him like that, she would have done in the dungeons, down in the dark, without an audience. That would have been pure revenge. This is not. She is mother to a Stark. She is wife to a Stark, will always be wife to a Stark. Mayhaps she could have killed him like that, alone, private, an exercise in contempt and hatred, and they would have not condemned her for it, but there is a way to things, and if she presumes to serve as lady regent of the North then she must do it this way. 

Robb would sometimes talk about his father putting on Lord Stark’s face, replacing the tender affection or impulse to rage with cold severity. Is she wearing the face of a Lady Stark now, or just that of an angry, frightened girl? She can’t be sure. Ramsay would be leering and spitting either way. “You think yourself my better,” he says, “the purest bitch in the litter. I know it. You know it. But you’re just another whinging, weepy cunt. Crying like a bitch in heat when they gave you back your little whelp. I heard you.”

“You were on the ground with an arrow in your shoulder,” she says with quiet loathing. “One I put there.” His wounds have been treated. She doubts he can move his left arm much, but he doesn’t need that anymore. 

He ignores her. “You will never be worthy of our name,” Ramsay’s breath mists in the air betwixt them. He shakes the shackles at his filthy wrists. “Never. You don’t have the stomach for it, nor the courage. You’ve never taken a man’s skin. You’ve never been up to your elbows in entrails, never tasted a man’s fear on the tip of your blade. Tell me, Donella, what were you good for? Squirming around under Robb Stark so you could breed another useless little cunt for him? Did he change into a wolf while he was fucking you?” He looks round, raises his voice, “Tell me, how rough does my sweet sister like it? Surely you’ve all had a turn by now!”

Several swords rasp out of their sheaths. “BASTARD!” someone bellows. “GUT HIM!” one of the Wulls urges. 

Nell simply looks at him with a wretched sort of morbid curiosity. “Your mother,” she says. “Did she ever remarry, after our father hung her husband?”

He seems momentarily confused, then spits out, “Of course not. She had no need to. He always provided for us. He gave her everything.” He adds, almost as in in a rush to tack it on, “He had more care for her than yours, whore. I’ve heard tell of Bethany Ryswell,” his voice goes high and mocking. “She did her duties in his bed rather poorly, didn’t she, that he had to go hunting for a proper woman to please him? He cared for my mother, in his way. Else he would have never brought me into his home.”

“He brought you home because it amused him,” Nell says. “Just as he raped your mother, and mine, because it amused him to hurt them, and face no punishment for it.”

“He never raped her!” Ramsay is genuinely infuriated; he lunges forward, but his ankles are shackled as well, and while several guards come closer in alarm, she easily evades him, snow crunching underfoot. “He wanted her. He fought for her. She gave herself eagerly to him. He was her lord and master!”

Nell still cannot bring herself to pity him. She hates him so, it is difficult to breathe at times. Or perhaps that is just this oppressive cold. “He raped her,” she says. “He murdered her husband under false pretenses, made a mockery of justice, and raped her in the same turn. Just as you raped and murdered those girls.”

“What girls?” he jeers, pretending at ignorance.

Nell has no documents; she does not need them. She has committed their names to memory. She used to see them in her dreams, after all. Perhaps a few of their kin are here today, in the crowd, doubtful though that may be. Most of them were from Bolton lands. Their bones will never be returned for proper burial. Their names might be lost to time, lest someone sets them to stone. She has a mind to. She will put the stone wherever he falls. That’s up to him, and the hounds. 

“Helicent,” she says. “She was five-and-ten when you killed her, you and Reek. You were just a boy yourself. Ben Bones remembered. He told me, before he hung, Ramsay. It was that or the stake, and men will do anything to avoid an open flame. You tried to kiss her, and she pushed you away and threatened to tell her brothers. So you rode her down.” She swallows. “Willow, the next year. She was three-and-twenty. A woman wed, with a babe on the way. Skinner claimed you promised to let her live when you’d had your pleasure, for the sake of the child. Then you opened her belly with a spear.”

“She was no chaste wife,” Ramsay hisses. “You should have seen how she smiled, when Damon reined up to speak with her. All blushes, that cow. She would have gladly had us all in turn, ‘til she heard the dogs.”

Nell ignores him. “Maude, a few moons later. A whore from The Ruddy Heart. She was eight-and-ten. You had Damon Dance-for-Me lure her out to a glen with the promise of better coin than she’d seen in all her life. Then Jez, the next year,” she says. “She was just five-and-ten as well. You were at the Dreadfort by then. She was a serving girl who caught your fancy. You told her if she screamed, you’d kill her sister next.”

“The slut enjoyed it,” he snarls. “She all but told me so, she was so desperate for it-,”

“Jeyne of Red Creek, in the same year,” Nell continues, undeterred. “She was seven-and-ten, walking home with her young brother. You let him go, but hunted her until sundown. Skinner said she nearly made it home.” 

“Would that she had,” Ramsay spits. “Then her brother could have watched.”

“The following year,” Nell says, “you raped and murdered Sara Snow, daughter of Mark Ryswell, a learned governess of five-and-twenty.” Her teeth hurt, now, as if the cold were tugging on them. “And a woman with more courage and honor in her littlest finger than you could ever hope to possess in two lifetimes. You had her dragged from her bed in the middle of the night and set out to run for your amusement.”

His eyes gleam. “She was too old and shrewish, for my liking,” Ramsay says so lowly she knows only she can hear him, “but I made an exception for your sake, sister. I knew you’d weep for the withered little bitch. And it did please me so to see it.” 

Nell has been the picture of cold restraint and Northern formality thus far, but she will pray for forgiveness later. Her hand shoots out, claps him on his injured shoulder, and squeezes, hard, anything to shut him up. He gasps with pain and nearly staggers. She lets go, fights back the bile, and continues. 

“Alison, that same year,” she says, “while you were castellan of the Dreadfort. Her family sent her to serve as a laundress. She did not work four moons before you murdered her. She was four-and-ten.”

He just spits at her. It misses, landing in the snow betwixt their muddied feet. 

“Jeyne of Grey Heath, last year,” she says. “She was eight-and-ten. She ran a brewery with her widowed aunt. When her aunt tried to stop you from taking her, your men set it alight.”

He has no responses anymore. Just stares, almost incredulously, through his shivers, as if he cannot quite believe she is still saying their names. “And your last who I can name,” she says, “Kyra of the Winter Town. You took her for a bedslave from Theon Greyjoy when you captured Winterfell, and when you tired of her, let her escape with him, only to hunt her down.”

“Reek crushed that one’s spirit long before I did,” he says spitefully. “He taught her how to please a man properly, didn’t you, Reek? Didn’t you!”

Nell does not look in the direction of the Greyjoy siblings. It is not necessary. “There are many more, I’m sure,” she says. “Ones whose names no one bothered to recall. Who have never known justice. They will now. Rodrik Cassel will know justice. You came to him under false banners of alliance, and cut him down with a smile. Cley Cerwyn will know justice. You butchered him while he tried to defend his men. The people of Winterfell, who you sacked and slaughtered and left to starve or took as prisoners, will know justice. Sarra Frey, who you murdered, who gave her life to save my daughter’s, will know justice. Lord Locke, who you cut down in this very castle, who died for his loyalty to House Stark, will know justice. Robard and Jenny Slate, who you imprisoned and tortured on false pretenses, mine own aunt Barbrey Dustin, the spearwives- every soul you have wronged. In the name of my daughter’s house, and mine own, you will have your justice now.” 

She steps back, taking her bow from her back.

“Going to put an arrow through me?” Ramsay rasps, spittle flying, baring his teeth. 

She knew she would not cow him, no matter how pointed her words or eloquent her speeches. He doesn’t know shame. She could berate, accuse, and insult him until dusk, and none of it would reach him. He is utterly convinced he is right. Not morally right, but worthy of all he has done, entitled to every single body he has butchered and maimed, every kill. He believes it his natural right. He believes himself superior to them all, for the sake of her father’s blood in his veins. It is what he clings to, and he has clung to that belief for so long that she doubts he could let go it, even if he tried. 

He might as well have branded their house words on his chest. He is willing to die for his twisted sense of self, his perverse little identity. He doesn’t know what he is, if not a Bolton, if not Roose’s son. She ought to feel sorry for him, ever so slightly. She does not. She cannot. He hurt Sara. He hurt her and he left her bones for the crows, lying in some gulch. Nell knows where Robb is buried, can visit him twice a day if she pleases. She can only visit Sara in her dreams. 

“You should have killed me a week past, if this was your grand design, bitch,” he says. “Did finishing off Father whet your appetite? You should thank me for that, Donella. I did most of your work for you, didn’t I?”

“I am giving you the choice you offered those girls,” she says. “And so I do sentence you to die, but it will be your making, Ramsay Snow.” She raises her voice slightly. “Escort him past the gates, and unshackle him.”

He laughs, hard and shrill, almost. “I’ve beaten worse odds than yours, whore.”

“They are your odds, not mine.” She nods to the pen; the burlap is pulled free, and the dogs come alive at the sights and sounds; throwing their thin bodies up against the wood and wire. Ramsay glances at them, and for the first time, she sees a brief flash of fear in his pale eyes. Two are all but foaming at the mouth. Nell picks out the grey bitch he named for Sara, and has to tear her gaze away from those dark, glossy eyes, fixated on Ramsay. 

“You know nothing of dogs,” he says, over his shoulder, as the guards lead him to the gate at spear-point. “I am their master. I fed them. I trained them. I broke them in. You think they’ll hurt me? You stupid bitch.”

“Ben Bones fed and trained them,” she says. “He comforted them when they were sick. He nursed them as puppies. He let them out every day. He showed your hounds more compassion than he’d ever shown another man or woman in his wretched life. You beat them. You drove them through the woods. You taunted and goaded them. And when you wanted them savage, you starved them.” 

“You’ll have an arrow through me either way,” he retorts, although he is shivering all the more just outside the walls, as the shackles on his ankles and wrists are removed. He might try to grab one of the guards’ spears, but she doesn’t like his chances of that with only one functioning arm, and suspects he does not either. He’ll run. It is his only, meager chance of survival, and he is not so proud to abandon it. 

Nell selects an arrow from her quiver. “If I put another arrow in you,” she says, clearly, because the wind is picking up, “it will be to put you out of your misery, Ramsay.” 

It would not be out of respect or mercy for him, in particular, but she understands now, she thinks, at least a little, why Ned Stark killed the condemned quickly, why Robb did not linger or delight on deaths, even those of his enemies, men he had every reason to hate. It’s not about a respect for the guilty man, or to excuse his crimes. It’s a respect for life. It’s not a question of what someone deserves. It’s an acknowledgement that life has meaning. Men can use or misuse it as they wish, but if you are going to take it, you had best treat the killing itself as you would any weapon, with respect. Ramsay will not get far. If he does, or if the dogs toy with him, fight over his wounded body, she will end it.

The pen is unlatched. Ramsay takes a few steps back, slipping slightly on the ice, watching, as his dogs burst forth, barking and tossing their heads, snow crunching underfoot. Blood is trickling down her brother’s face, from an opened scab on his forehead. He backs up further, shushing them under his breath, calling to one or the other. Red Jeyne eyes him first, and darts forward, sniffing at the air. Then she growls. Helicent joins in. Alison snarls. Grey Jeyne begins to bark, savage and clear. 

Jez streaks forward, rushing him, starving, and Ramsay turns and runs. For the first few moments he seems to easily outpace them- weakened and injured as he is, he is still a young, strong man and he bounds across the snowy landscape without loosing his footing. Then the cold catches up to him. A man can’t run long in cold like this. It will burst his lungs. Kyra gains on him first, panting, Willow hard on her heels. Maude rushes ahead to cut him off; like any group of dogs raised more or less together, they operate as a pack. 

But Sara makes the first contact; her wiry wolfhound’s frame collides with his legs, and he staggers, attempts a kick, but is quickly bowled over by her sheer speed and strength. Nell nocks her arrow, does not hold her breath at all, is somehow certain this one will land exactly where she wants it. But she never needs to loose it. Sara is quick; despite his shouts and struggles, her long, shaggy jaws find the thick flesh of his unprotected throat, and grip, shake, and tear. Grip, shake, and tear. Nell lowers her bow; she has no need of it. A crow lands in the snow nearby, watching as the hounds close in for their first meal in days. 

300 AC - WHITE HARBOR

Jory was raised on an island whose primary source of income was fishing and logging, so she refined her sea legs long ago. However, never before has she spent more than a few days out on the water; Bear Island is not so far from the mainland, and there was scant elsewhere to go. Certainly no one was taking a scenic voyage south to Ironman’s Bay. All that considered, while she is a fine swimmer and has always loved the smells and the sights of the sea, five weeks aboard a cramped vessel was more than enough for her. 

There’s no space on a ship to do much but walk the deck, read, eat, or pray, none of which much interested her. Her last attempt at sparring with Pod was immediately denounced by the panicked crew when they skewed a little too close to some important piece of rigging. Watching the waves always enchanted her as a child, but sailing in winter is another thing altogether, and most days they were faced with lashing winds and rains, forcing everyone but the crew back indoors. 

Sailing north in winter is not the same as sailing north in the flush of summer, as it would turn out, and the storms came again and again, although thankfully none of the ships were lost. Not to mention the near constant roiling and tilting from the battering waves. Jory and Brienne were fine, islanders through and through, but Hyle and Pod were sick as dogs for the first week, and Hyle a little longer than that.

Jory still feels a little guilty about the time when Hyle, in the midst of yet another attempt to reel Myranda Royce in with some amusing tale, turned an awful shade of grey and had to vomit over the side. Myranda jumped back in shock, then muffled her giggles with a hand. Jory didn’t think to muffle her own laughter, and Pod was smirking away and trying to get Brienne to laugh as well. Brienne did almost chuckle once, although she hastily tried to disguise it as a cough, Jory had observed with satisfaction. 

Still, she had her fill of sleeping in a cramped cot every night and listening to the waves slam against the hull of the ship, over and over again, by the time they’d passed around the Fingers and the Three Sisters, and the North, had finally, finally, come into view. Truth be told, Jory had almost felt like crying, but maybe that sting in her eyes was just from the sea salt and the sleeting rains as the Vale fleet passed Oldcastle and the easten side of the Neck, and approached the bay of White Harbor. She supposes the city is not all that impressive to the Valemen- but it is to her. 

Jory has never been to White Harbor before, never had cause to go there. Her sisters and mother sometimes complained (in jest or not) that it was ‘infested with knights and septons’. That may be true, but it is still dear to her now, if only because it is part of her homeland, albeit a part she is not very familiar with. She knows she should feel triumphant- they’re not just bringing Sansa home, but an army, and a large one at that. But mostly she just feels nervous, and worried, and overwhelmed. This is what she wanted. This is what she’s been waiting for, the grand return. 

But what has she done to earn it? Aye, she saved Sansa’s life, but it was Brienne who got them to the Gates of the Moon in the first place. And it was Baelish who arranged the match with Harry Hardyng and won them the North. It was the Royces and the Waynwoods and the Gull-Arryns and the Redforts who helped organize all this, summon the banners, pay for their travel. Jory is just a small piece on a very large, sprawling board, and really, what power does she have beyond her sword and shield and her honest word? She is not a member of a great house or even a very powerful one. She is not even heir to Bear Island. Not even the strongest of her sisters. She’s not battle-tested, unless you count that skirmish with the outlaws or her shameful defeat with the Freys. She doesn’t command any men or bear any great accolades. 

She is a lady of Sansa’s court, now, but what does that even mean? Jory has no idea; she saw very little of Sansa during their voyage, and it felt rude and unwise to demand an audience in such close confines. You never know who is listening on a ship, and the last thing she needs is to arouse Littlefinger’s suspicions. Hyle thinks he had Lyn Corbray, the one found dead outside a brothel just before their departure, killed. Why? Well, Hyle’s cynical, not a seer, as he constantly remarks. Perhaps Baelish had Corbray in his pocket for some scheme or another, then had him killed when he’d served his purpose. And he was arguing with Corbray the night of that feast, that’s true enough.

But as Brienne would say, just because Littlefinger had harsh words with Corbray doesn’t mean he had anything to do with his death. The Valemen might not like Petyr Baelish, but there is a begrudging sort of respect amongst them, and his wit and canny observations are often complimented. But for all that Sansa has not denied that he rescued her from King’s Landing and brought her to safety in the Vale, Jory thinks Sansa is afraid of him. It may not show in his presence, when he is playing the part of the doting father-figure, kissing her on the cheek and showering her in compliments, praising her beauty and her intelligence and her kind heart, but it shows when no one is looking. 

It certainly showed in the aftermath of Robert Arryn’s death. Sansa blames herself for that. But if the sweetsleep is what caused the bleeding, and the maester had been supplying it to him… on whose orders? Petyr Baelish’s certainly. But is that evidence that he… forced along the boy’s untimely death? Jory’s not sure. Does it even bear thinking about? Littlefinger may no longer be Protector of the Vale, but he seems to have slated himself to be one of Harrold Arryn’s first and foremost advisors, and that is not a position what can speak out against lightly. 

If anyone were to accuse the man of something, Jory thinks, it could not be her, or Brienne, and certainly not Hyle or Pod. It would have to be Sansa or one of the Vale lords or ladies. She somehow doubts it would be coming from Harry. He’s… genial enough but she does think that translates to, well, a keen and calculating mind. By and large he seems mostly interested in pageantry and appearances, the adoration his people have for him, than anything else. Well, and women too, she supposes. There’s rumors he slept with the captain’s daughter during their voyage north. That could be the work of a jealous Myranda, who obviously has eyes for Sansa’s betrothed, or it could be the truth. They say Ned Stark sired his bastard on some fisherman’s daughter who helped him cross the Bite, after all. 

White Harbor’s bustling port is the largest in the North, but it is absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer number of ships, and there is an untenably long wait to find somewhere, anywhere, to dock. Lucky for Jory, then, that she is aboard the ‘first’ vessel, the one containing Harry and Sansa’s court and much of the Vale’s nobility, or at least the ones who elected to accompany their king in this endeavor. They’re given priority, and when Jory sets foot on dry land for the first time in weeks, snowflakes eddying around her, smelling and feeling and seeing the North for the first time in a year and a half… 

“Don’t cry,” Pod says, patting her only a little awkwardly on the arm. He’s in the middle of a growth spurt and is nearly to her shoulder, now. If he continues at this rate he’ll be past it by the end of the year, and perhaps as tall or taller than her by this time next year. 

Jory knocks her elbow against his side in mild reproach. “Not crying.”

“You looked a bit weepy,” Hyle counters; he’s a bit too happy for her liking, likely due to not being sick to his stomach for once. “Just a little.” He indicates with two fingers. “I thought I saw a single, womanly tear, threatening to fall-,”

“I’m going to secure us some horses, unless you’d rather walk,” Brienne intones, shouldering past Hyle, and Jory brightens at the thought of being back in the saddle, and hurries after her, long cloak whispering across the slushy cobblestones underfoot. 

She has no idea what the rest of the North looks like at the moment, but White Harbor seems peaceful enough, although it’s apparent that the city guard has been increased; they’re not all wearing the green cloaks of House Manderly, but the blue and yellow of Widowsflint and the faded orange of Hornwood as well. Jory doesn’t fear much Bolton influence here; there’s not a chance Roose or his bastard could ever command the numbers required to seize White Harbor by force, even with the aid of the Freys. The city’s never fallen in battle, and while once the same could be said of Winterfell, here at least it still rings true. 

White Harbor is as clean as Gulltown was; Jory is almost oddly proud- let anyone try to sneer over this first taste of the North, then. If anything, the buildings are even more uniform- white walls, grey roofs, white walls, grey roofs. The Wolf’s Den is much darker and imposing in contrast, looking as if it dragged itself from the sea to huddle here, a massive fortress casting its shadow across the city’s walls, thronged by houses, shops, and its own market square, doing good business off the prison guards and servants. Jory can smell the fish and oysters from here; her stomach growls loudly, but it’s drowned out by the hum of the city.

Everywhere, people stop and stare; it is not as if the Vale is marching their entire army right up to the Manderlys’ gates, but there is the honor guard and then some surrounding the nobles on horseback, and the baggage train, she supposes since they are counting on the Manderlys not having the nerve to refuse them, and the gleaming armor and foreign sigils of the Vale stand out here, even in a city very used to seeing knights go riding past and septons preach on corners and in squares. “BEAR ISLAND!” someone shouts to Jory when they identify the bear embroidered on the back of her new cloak- another gift rom Sansa- and she freezes for an instant, before raising her hand, shamed by her own shame. No. She is proving herself in this. She is earning her honor back. She is still a proud Mormont. She cannot let herself think otherwise. 

It is a short ride up to the New Castle; Jory has heard of the Manderlys’ keep, which compared to many of the ancient castles of the North is practically recent. The castle itself is not very large or particularly eye-catching, aside from the pale white stone used to build it, matching perfectly with the rest of the city. What does draw the eye is the Stark banners proudly flying alongside the Manderly greens. A few scattered cheers break out from the Valemen, to see this show of defiance, and Jory lets out a faint whoop herself. Good. Is it not for the best, that the Manderlys seem firmly aligned with their cause? And it must be a relief to Sansa, although Jory is behind her in the procession and cannot see her face, only the distant auburn of her hair, shining in the pale sunlight.

Once they’ve summited the hill, one can see straight across White Harbor’s rooftops to the grey harbor and the cloudy horizon beyond it. Jory can scarcely believe she is here at all. It feels like a dream, only her dreams never seem to make much sense. 

Twice during the voyage she dreamed of Gendry; lulled to sleep by the rocking of the waves. In the first, she was back in the forge, watching him work on a new sword, and the silver of the blade rippled and roiled like the waves itself, and she smelled sea salt in his hair when she draped her arms around his tense shoulders to peer down at his work. They’d spoken of something, but she can’t remember what. In the second, they were not in the forge at all, but walking through the woods outside the inn together, snow spiraling down around them. When he’d put a finely carved hunting horn to his lips and blew, her family had come bursting out of the brush, crying out her name, whether in joy or anger, she can’t be sure. 

She wonders if they might only admit Sansa and Harry, or just them and the Waynwoods and Royces, perhaps, but Jory finds herself dismounting with Brienne, who of course must come along as Sansa’s shield. Along with perhaps two dozen guards and a good number of the ale nobility, they are escorted into the keep, which seems oddly quiet despite the clamor of the city outside. Brienne nudges her in genuine surprise, “Look at their guards,” she murmurs under her breath. Not a spear betwixt them, just silver tridents, like the odd statue or tapestry here and there, all depicting the merman, over and over again.

They say twice the Merman’s Court hosted Targaryens- once Queen Alysanne and her Silverwing, and once Prince Jacaerys and his Vermax, each on their way to Winterfell to treat with the Starks on dragonback, and Jory can believe it. The Vale is known for its beautiful architecture and elaborate decorations and trappings, but even the Waynwoods seem impressed. It feels as though they’d walked into a treasure chest, straight out of a story. 

The hall may be wood-paneled, but the wood is finely oiled to a sheen and what is not oiled has been painted in vivid colors, even the floorboards. What is not painted is carved; sea creatures grin and leer down like gargoyles from every corner, even the rafters, and murals illustrate every inch of the large hall. Jory scarcely knows where to look. Light filters in through the tall, arched windows even spacely on either side of them, and the massive window behind the dais is sea-glass, by the looks of it, shining blue and green and casting a strange, otherworldly hue across the young woman sitting the lord’s seat. 

Well, the lady’s seat, it would seem.

Jory has seen Wynafryd Manderly before, spoken to her and her sister once or twice at Winterfell, but her memories are vague and she finds it difficult to reconcile the soft-spoken, demure girl with the one before her. Wynafryd’s long, light brown hair is in an embellished mourning plait, festooned with what seems like silvery nets spun with tiny shells, and silver earrings dangle from her small ears. Her face is soft and rounded, and her eyes are blue green, near the same color as the fine, fur-lined mantle she wears across her shoulders, over her muted grey gown. The belt is also festooned with seashells and from it hangs a silver chain, which Wynafryd continuously loops round and round one pale fist. 

Once they are close enough, though, she stands at once and comes down from the dais willingly to greet them. Jory watches her eyes widen as she takes in the sight of Sansa, and Harry’s crown, before she dips into a perfect curtsy. 

“My lady,” she says, and then, questioningly, “and you must be an Arryn, my good ser, but not the son of Jon Arryn, I should think- you are far too old.”

“Lady Wynafryd,” Sansa replies after a moment’s hesitation, “we thank you for your hospitality. I come to you accompanied by my betrothed, Ser Harrold Arryn, newly crowned King of the Vale. His people have thrown off the Lannisters’ yoke, and we mean to fight alongside you, to reclaim my home.” Her tone grows slightly bolder towards the end. “Do you sit the high seat in your grandsire’s stead, my lady?”

“No,” says Wynafryd simply, “although I wish I did. My grandfather was murdered by Boltons… just like my father.” She is careful to keep her expression composed, but Jory can hear the tinge of anger in her voice, soft though it may be. “I am now the Lady of White Harbor. It saddens me to treat with you alone, but my mother and sister are at Widow’s Watch on my request, making the acquaintance of my own betrothed. You are not the only maid who will be wed before the year is out, you see.” She smiles slightly.

“And who is the lord, so we may congratulate him on his fine choice in a wife?” Harry asks brazenly, which surprises no one, Jory thinks. She does not think he is even being sarcastic, but it is almost amusing- Sansa is always guarding her tongue, carefully selecting every word, while her future husband simply says whatever is on his mind. She’s heard him compared to Robert Baratheon, who was famously a ward of House Arryn for years, more than once. She wonders if Baelish makes that same comparison to himself. 

“Lyall Flint, a son of Lady Lyessa,” Wynafryd replies evenly. “You see, his house and mine own worked closely together as of late, to seize the Dreadfort from the Bolton’s garrison.”

There are ripples of shock, which turn into waves when she wastes no time in adding, “It was captured scarcely a day or two after Winterfell was reclaimed by House Stark.”

“Winterfell has been reclaimed?” Sansa bursts out, a high note of shock creeping into her voice, spots of color appearing in her pale cheeks. “By- by Robb and my mother?”

Littlefinger looks incensed, if only for an instant. 

Wynafryd folds her hands together, bows her head slightly. “The northmen took it back with the aid of Stannis Baratheon, who rallied the mountain clans to his side after driving out hundreds of Ironborn from the mountains. He proceeded to free Deepwood Motte from Asha Greyjoy and her reavers, and joined with your brother’s men to take back Winterfell. In exchange, House Stark has declared for Baratheon, and much of the North has followed suit.” She pauses, exhales. “It grieves me to tell you like this, my lady, but I cannot delay such news. Your brother Robb fell in battle, although his cause was victorious.”

Sansa makes no noise, but Jory can see her swallowing hard. Harry murmurs some comfort and pulls her close; she stiffens but lets him, then extricates herself from his embrace. 

“My dear girl,” Baelish is saying. “I am so very sorry.”

There are murmurs and whispers all around. This changes much. They thought they were coming to save the North, to save House Stark, but if Winterfell has been taken from the Boltons, then what? Did they sail forty thousand men here for naught? If the Starks have declared for Stannis, and there is no longer a King in the North, now what? The Vale can hardly yank the crown from Harry’s head and pretend it never happened. Why should they? Does Stannis have forty thousand men? Likely less than half that.

Jory has a sudden moment of plunging terror. What if there is more war, only between Arryn and Baratheon, now? Did she accompany their would-be conquerors here? She never meant for this. She only wanted to help bring Sansa home. Not watch new conflicts erupt. At least she must have hope that Mother and Lyra survived the battle. She can’t face losing them, too, on top of everything else. 

“Are the Boltons dead?” Sansa finally asks, loud and clear. “Have those who betrayed us been punished?”

“Roose and his bastard are both dead,” Wynafryd acknowledges, “and the North rejoices for it. Their castle is seized, their men captured or killed. The only Boltons left living are your brother’s widow, Lady Donella, and the babe Roose sired on his Frey wife, an infant girl.”

Jory exhales in relief herself. That is something, then. She need never fear Roose Bolton again… nor hate him. He’s gone. He’s been gone, they were just too late to see it. How she wishes she could have. Mayhaps her mother will tell her how he breathed his last. If her mother cares to see her like this.

“That is something, then,” Harry says curtly, shifting in his fine new white plated armor. “Has House Manderly also declared for Stannis?”

“I am duty bound to follow House Stark in such decisions,” Wynafryd lets go of as her clasped hands, as if to console them. “But perhaps more importantly, to take heed from my late grandfather. He may have died at the hands of Boltons and Freys, but while he lived he vowed to fight them to his last breath- and in doing so sought to restore House Stark. Before Baratheon even reached the Wall, he sent an emissary here in his name. A man of House Seaworth.”

“I confess, I do not know that family,” Sansa says warily.

“You would not,” Baelish mutters. The introduction of Stannis Baratheon’s name to the conversation seems to have kindled more than sour feelings in Lord Mockingbird. “They are very new to the lordship.”

“Lord Davos was met with great hostility here, I’m afraid,” Wynafryd says, “and doubtless rumors abound that we had him imprisoned or even killed. But that was a ruse to keep the Frey traitors in our presence from suspecting our true intentions. Lord Seaworth was not killed. My grandsire entrusted him with a mission instead, in return for our allegiance to House Baratheon of Dragonstone. He sent him to Skagos.”

There is a note of silence. Most of the Valemen likely do not even know what Skagos is. Jory does. She grew up hearing tales of its madness and savagery. “Skagos is a death sentence,” she blurts out without thinking. For a moment, all eyes turn to her. 

Wynafryd seems to take stock of her for the first time, and smiles. Jory cannot tell if it is genuine or not. “Lady Jorelle, how good to see you again.”

Jory nods her head, but says, almost lamely. “Excuse me, my lady, but sending this man to Skagos… They don’t take kindly to outsiders. Especially not southern lords. He won’t come back.” They say they still practice the old ways on Skagos, and not just sacrificing animals to their heart trees. Much more and much bloodier than that, as Dacey would have said. Time has no meaning to the Skagosi. They don’t care who the Stark in Winterfell is or who sits the Iron Throne. They pay their tithes and never come to the mainland. 

“I once thought the same,” says Wynafryd, mildly. “But Lord Davos has indeed come back, and with the object of all our hopes.” 

She moves away from the crowd, towards one of the guarded doors in the hall; the trident-bearing men instantly let her past, as she throws the doors open, leading out into a small, snowy courtyard just outside the grand hall. The wind whistles in, brimming with the smell of sea and fish… and something else. Wet dog? Jory frowns, craning her neck to try to peer outside, then glancing up at Brienne, who has a much better vantage point due to her to height. She watches Brienne’s blue eyes narrow, then widen. “My lady, get back!” she cries out at once, a hand falling to Oathkeeper.

Jory doesn’t understand, but pulls her shield, and there is a tremendous uproar; Littlefinger goes white, Harry plants himself squarely in front of Sansa- a snarling bark, the sound of running feet, and the great black direwolf that emerges, shaking snow from its shaggy fur, barely fits through the doorway. There’s a few screams, despite Wynafryd’s unruffled state, and then Sansa gasps out, “Shaggydog?” just as a small figure scrambles down from the wolf’s massive back, of all places.

Jory stares at the boy in confusion; he is perhaps five or six years old, tall for his age, long limbs and a face in the midst of losing baby fat; he is covered in freckles, and his head is shaved save for a stripe of copper curls down the middle. He’s dressed oddly, in layered vests over a woolen shirt and thick, heavily embellished and fringed trousers tucked into his furry boots, and the bones of some animal- it looks like a nearly intact mandible- hang around his neck. She’s not sure whether to be amused or a little alarmed by the boy’s appearance. He looks like a wildling. He does not look like- 

Well, he scarcely resembles-

“Rickon!” Sansa doesn’t gasp or whisper this; she all but shouts it, and darts forward, around Harry, slipping on the wet floor, then falls raggedly to her knees before the boy and his wolf, ignoring Myranda’s cries for her to be careful, Harry’s exclamations that it’s not safe, Littlefinger’s urgings for her to come back, the wolf does not know her-

Shaggydog, although he looks more bear than anything else at the moment, sniffs at Sansa’s outstretched, shaking gloved hand, then rumbles in his throat. The boy- can it be Rickon?- steps forward. The look on his face is an odd one. Not quite anger, not quite fear. He says something, and Jory doesn’t quite catch it, then realizes no one else did, either. The Old Tongue. They still speak it on Skagos. Sansa whispers something, and then he says, in the common tongue, a little louder, “Shaggy knows you.”

Sansa sniffs. “Do you know me, too?” Her voice sounds slightly strangled, as if she hardly believe her own eyes. Neither can Jory. They said Rickon was dead, murdered by Greyjoy alongside Brandon Stark. But the direwolf is proof enough of his identity. Shaggydog is the largest beast she has ever seen, save a few particularly fat bears. His eyes all but glow emerald green again the dark of his fur. Who else would he let on his back but a Starkling? 

Rickon gives a small, jerky nod, then steps forward a little more, and tentatively takes her gloved hand in his bare one. His grip seems more curious than anything else; he doesn’t spare the onlooking crowd a second glance, despite the weapons brandished and the panicked mutters. Sansa sniffs again, shaking her head, and then suddenly pulls her to him. Shaggydog barks as if in surprise but makes no moves towards her as Sansa holds her brother close, heedless of the snow melting off him and onto her fine gown. Jory feels a lump in her own throat, watching them huddle together on the painted sea floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. I initially intended to cover way more in this chapter but I think it ended up balancing okay with two big scenes- Ramsay's execution and the Vale's arrival at White Harbor. Next chapter will also be divided between Nell and Jory and we will be hearing a lot more from Harry Karstark, Harry Arryn, Wynafryd Manderly, Rickon, Sansa, Brienne, etc. Timeline wise it has been about five weeks since we last heard from Jory. If GRRM is allowed to speed travel times up to suit the plot, I feel like I'm allowed to slow them down a little to suit the plot- plus moving that many men in stormy winter weather by sea is a lot! 
> 
> 2\. I debated over Ramsay's execution for a long time. I have seen the scene from the TV show where he is executed and I personally believe that GRRM reminds us that Ramsay's dogs are named after his victims multiple times... for a reason. We don't know what his fate will be in canon, but I suspect it is not going to be a very peaceful end. That said, I did not want this to be a purely revenge driven, over the top gore and torture type of scene. Of course Nell still hates Ramsay. She feels no sympathy for him at all. She wants him dead just as much as she wanted Roose dead. But she is also not just acting as Nell the person but Nell the ruler. She's in charge of the execution, Stannis has made it clear he won't take that from her, so how Ramsay dies is in her hands. 
> 
> 3\. What I think is interesting about this is Nell's evolving definitions of mercy and justice. Ramsay's death is terrible, albeit perhaps quicker than burning at the stake. But Nell makes the conscious choice not to draw it out or torture her half-brother, as much as she despises him. She reasons that you can have respect for someone's life, even if you have no respect for them as a person. She is prepared to mercy-kill Ramsay with an arrow if he is not immediately killed by his hounds, similar to how Jon has Rattleshirt killed with an arrow to save him from an agonizing death by fire. I think this is a sign of maturity on her part. While Ramsay continuously insults and goads her, she finds it within her to not give him the reaction he wants, and she doesn't rise to his bait of her not being a 'true Bolton' by attempting to flay or otherwise mutilate him first. 
> 
> 4\. Ultimately I wanted this to be Nell's cross to bear, so to speak, so no one else is really involved- even Grey Wind is in a spectator position, and Stannis and other powerful people are just part of the crowd of onlookers. It's not about her forgiving Ramsay or excusing his actions, but I think this is her first step towards starting to forgive herself for what happened to Sara Snow. It wasn't her fault, and if it hadn't been Sara it would have just been another innocent woman. Nell is able to start to see that now, which I think is a sign of her continued development from an angry and vengeful young girl to an adult woman with some more wisdom and experience. 
> 
> 5\. I think White Harbor and New Castle are cool locations, and the Merman's Court is especially interesting. I hope we see more of them and House Manderly in canon. Despite the Manderlys being constantly derided or dismissed as a very 'southern' house for the North, I find it interesting that they are among the most ruthless and 'bloody' families in terms of their taking part in revenge against the Freys (the cannibal pies, etc). I like to headcanon Wynafryd as being pretty savvy and relying on her image as a 'demure, well-mannered lady' to soften the look of her overall power. Right now she has a lot- she controls the largest settlement in the North and has allied herself with the Widowflints through a betrothal. 
> 
> 6\. Obviously the Vale is not going to be thrilled that they were a week or two too late to help take back Winterfell. Fortunately, they are not too late to help fight some Others, so long as they don't get sucked into a civil war against Stannis' forces first. I think Harrold Hardyng, now Arryn, is a pretty deliberate parallel to a young Robert Baratheon and I'm interested to explore his development as a character beyond him just being a trigger happy womanizer. Plus, Petyr Baelish just about shit himself when he realized Stannis has actually amassed support beyond just at the Wall, so that's always fun.
> 
> 7\. I'm really excited to see Skagos in canon, sinister unicorns and all. There is a lot of debate over what Rickon's fate will be. Some people believe he will be killed off before or shortly after Davos finds him. To that I say 'why have a dead five year old... when you could have a five year old riding a direwolf into battle?'. I also just wanted Sansa to have a win, okay? Let the poor girl finally reunite with a sibling. And I headcanon Shaggydog as growing up into the largest of the remaining Stark direwolves. 
> 
> 8\. As always, you can find me on my blog at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/).


	82. Donella LV - Jorelle X

300 AC - WINTERFELL

Nell had not considered, in the direct aftermath of their reclaiming Winterfell, the matter of privacy. Before the war, during those months when it was just she and Dana and Robb and his brothers, the keep seemed cavernous, enormous. It still does, but that doesn’t mean she’s suddenly used to the constant flow of people, streaming in and out of halls, up and down stairs, and past her rooms. Winterfell is still not at full capacity, true, it is a damn sight closer to it than it has been in years. Even when Robert visited with a household of three hundred, it was not this crowded. Nell almost found it difficult to fall asleep for the first week, for on top of her grief over Robb, she could constantly hear distant voices and footfall outside.

It should be reassuring, and it is. Everywhere she looks she can find men loyal to House Stark, can find men rebuilding, restoring, repairing the stables, the library, the kitchens, the maester’s turret. But as comforting as that ought to be, it is also overwhelming. She’s not quite sure why. When they were at Riverrun it was even more cramped quarters, and she was pregnant and worrying over Robb besides. This should be nothing, compared to that, compared to the Twins. It is not that she is afraid or concerned for her or Lysara’s safety, it is just… She wants to be alone, often, she finds, and that is not so easily accomplished anymore. Either someone is requesting or demanding to meet with her or there is some matter to attend to immediately or someone to greet or questions to answer or Lysara is crying or Arya has run off somewhere and is worrying her mother-

Why, even just last night, when Nell had finally settled in her bedchamber with Lysara tucked into her cradle, in the rooms that were once her and Robb’s… She’d been half-asleep, drifting off, slumped against Grey Wind’s solid frame, head lolling against his soft fur, when a sharp, distant scream from Arya’s room, at the end of the hall, had jerked her awake. Grey Wind had growled in concern, leaped from her bed, and all but rushed the door, and Nell had gone dashing in her dressing gown down the hall, barefoot and freezing on the stone floors, to find a nearly hyperventilating Catelyn and Sandor Clegane in the process of breaking down Arya’s door. At least until it had swung open to reveal Arya herself, pale and rumpled but otherwise unharmed. 

“A nightmare,” she’d said, when she could speak without it being smothered by Catelyn’s relieved embrace. “It was just a nightmare, I- I didn’t mean to worry anyone, I’m sorry.” She’d sounded older and a sadder then, for an instant, shifting from foot to foot in the shadows, her hair sticking out of its thin braid- it is finally long enough that it can even be braided again. Dana and Marianne had appeared then, equally concerned, until Nell sent them back to bed. Catelyn had gone into Arya’s room, then, and shut the door behind her, leaving Nell outside with the Hound, who’d given her one of his uncomfortable looks, as if expecting her to suddenly tear into him- not frightened, she doubts a man like him fears anything other than a slow death- but wary. 

“Do you know what her nightmare was about?” she’d asked him, for no particular reason.

“I can guess,” he’d grunted, and moved off to continue his patrol. He can guess. She supposes they all could guess. Pick a terror and stick with it. Murder, rape, torture, running, hiding, fighting. There’s very little Arya has not seen, and quite a few things she’s done, Nell suspects, that she wishes she’d never had to. Nell thinks she would be dead, if it had been her. She was not half so hardy at eleven as Arya is, and was even less hardy at nine. But surviving does not mean you’ve conquered your fears. It just means you continue to endure them. Nell knows that much. 

She’d asked Catelyn about it this morning, after breakfast, and Catelyn had only said, expression stiff, that it was about Bran. Nell hopes her goodmother does not take that as some sort of ill omen. Arya may be a warg, but she’s not a- she’s hardly a greenseer, and dreams, no matter how vivid, are not fated to come true. Nell knows that much as well. Sometimes a nightmare is just that, a nightmare, and perhaps it is even harder now for Arya, knowing Bran is alive but alone out there, without his family to protect him. Nell fears for him too. Even if he has… powers of a sort, it does not change the fact that he is still a crippled little boy who cannot physically defend himself. And he was ever her favorite of Robb’s siblings. She thinks he would like Lysara; he always seemed the sort who’d make a sweet-natured uncle. 

Lysara is eight months old now, and just this past week- and it has been even less than a week since the execution- is no longer half as content to be held. All at once she wants to crawl… well, all the time, not just on the occasion when she is left to her own devices. She despises the sling, loathes Nell’s tight embrace, wants to roam free, which is a terrifying prospect. Castles are hardly the safest place for a babe to be crawling about. Never mind a castle in winter that is still partially ruined. The sensible thing to do would be to leave Lysara in a nursery under the watchful eye of a few nursemaids, or even with Dana and Marianne supervising- they love her as though she were their own niece. 

Nell is not so sensible. She doesn’t want to fall into the habit of leaving Lysara in the nursery, and while Stannis looks as though he were being subjected to some fresh torture every time Nell comes in to meet with a babe in her arms or on her hip, she cannot bring herself to leave her daughter for more than an hour at a time, if that. Besides, it is not as if Lysara spent the entire time shrieking her head off, although she sometimes gets very excited when she sees Grey Wind and tries to make wolfish sounds at him, and once she did come perilously close to grabbing Stannis’ cloak while he walked by. She wonders how he coped with his own child as a babe. Perhaps he inspected the princess Shireen once a month or so… from a safe distance. 

And because she is not so sensible, and because she would just like some scant time alone with her daughter, she has brought her to the First Keep, for no amount of flaming arrows or axe-fall could have brought down the great drum tower. It is drafty- near all the windows are shattered, and they’ve only recently cleared out all the broken glass and furniture- but the base of the tower is a rare, enclosed space with no sudden drop-offs, no stairwells for Lysara to tumble down, no treacherous patches of ice, and most of the time, no people. Nell is not a fool and has brought a guard- two, if you count Grey Wind. She almost enjoys the walk over with Beron, who was ordered quite stridently by Barbrey herself from her bedside. 

The maester says Barbrey should be back on her feet by next week, but as of right now Beron has been all but sleeping beside her aunt’s bed, although of course that is far too scandalous to ever discuss. Nell was never really aware of the nature of their relationship as a girl, she supposes due to Barbrey seeming incapable of- well- that sort of thing, her icy aunt- and due to her own self-absorption. But now it does seem to make sense, looking back, how many times she would find them speaking in private, perhaps a bit closer than would be typical for a lady and her loyal serjeant. 

Nell thinks he must love her, in his way, and she him. Perhaps it is not even really a strictly romantic love, not like that between a husband and wife, but it is a love all the same. He would die for her. Her honor is akin to his own. And when she looks at him, Barbrey, especially now in her more vulnerable condition, the lines around her dark eyes seem to soften slightly. Beron blames himself for Ramsay reaching her at all, but Barbrey is only alive because of him. Nell hopes the guilt does not come betwixt them. Her aunt deserves to be happy, in her cold sort of way, and if Beron makes her happy, then they should be together, and never part.

And now she sounds like a romantic fool, gushing over Florian and Jonquil. 

Her moon’s blood has returned. She’ll blame it on that, this sentimentality, this painful tenderness. Nell was not sure whether to be relieved or disturbed by it. Of course she had not bled again right away after Lysara’s birth, and then she had been nursing her, and the midwife had said that would delay its return even further, and then- and then everything happened, and she just… did not bleed. Not like that, anyways. She’d been happy for it. Good. Maybe she was barren. Maybe she would never breed again. She’d welcomed it as some sort of armor, a shield. And then with everything after that, all that chaos and travel and fear- well, it made sense that it still would not come. 

Now it has. She does not feel disgust when she examines her body in the looking glass. Does not feel much pride or vanity, either. Her hips were wide to begin with, and they are wider now for having a babe. Her breasts are different, don’t look as they once did, look like a mother’s, not a maiden’s. The stretchmarks across her belly and thighs have faded a little, but are still there, silvery against her pale skin. She thinks there is a fleshier quality to her overall, although she lost most of the weight she put on from the pregnancy, due to the constant stress. It doesn’t really matter, she supposes. Mother always said she took after Roose’s Redfort mother, and the Redfort women were reportedly shapely and plump in youth, then stout and thick-waisted in middle age. 

“At least you have my height,” Bethany would say. 

Aye, her height, and some other things as well. Nell doesn’t take it as some crushing loss of youthful beauty; she’s never struggled much with insecurity over her looks. She is still particular about her clothing and how she presents herself, but if her hair went grey tomorrow, she does not think she’d much care. Catelyn would tell her she is only nine-and-ten and that she is still in the full bloom of her youth. Well, perhaps a full bloom that someone crushed in their fist and then trod underfoot a few times. She has her health. She is grateful for that. This would all be that much more difficult were she sickly or frail, if she struggled to walk and ride and to physically assert herself, to slam in and out of rooms and raise her voice from deep within her chest and roar men down. 

And it would be much more difficult to play with her daughter, who it seems can no longer be called an infant at all. Nell watches with no small amount of horror as Lysara, beaming, pulls herself to her feet by gripping tufts of Grey Wind’s furry leg, and then leans her small head against him, tired out by the exertion. He pants happily, looking at Nell, who suddenly realizes that Lysara’s first name day is not so very far away, after all. She may be walking by then. Walking. It seems impossible. Perhaps it was their long separation, but how could she be growing so quickly? It doesn’t feel like eight months. Not at all. 

Lysara sits back down in a heap on the dusty floor, clapping her mittened hands together. Her hair is mostly hidden by her tasseled cap, but her cheeks are red as cherries and her thick woolen smock, nearly triple layered and lined with fur since she can hardly wear a cloak just yet, is a forest green that brings out the grey of her big eyes. She will be very beautiful someday, Nell is sure of it. Just not someday soon. She already seems too much a child. Trying to imagine her daughter as a young woman is overwhelming, at best. 

Nell crouches down, ignoring Beron’s distant chuckle. “Come here, Sara.”

Lysara has stopped screeching whenever Nell holds her, at least, and the other day she did smile in recognition, to see her come into the room. “Come here,” Nell says, holding out her gloved hands patiently. “You are a big strong girl now, and I know you can do it.” Grey Wind prods at Lysara’s back with a wet snout; she squeals, craning her neck to grin up at him; he licks her cheek with a rasping pink tongue. 

That seems to spur her onwards; Lysara crawls across the stone floor towards Nell, brow furrowed in concentration, and butts her head into Nell’s knees. “There you are,” Nell says, scooping her up in her arms. “That was very good. You are such a brave thing.”

Lysara jerks in her grasp, and then shrieks happily when Nell raises her above her head, kicking her legs. “Up!” she tries to command again, or at least it sounds like ‘up’ to Nell, although it could just be ‘uh’ or maybe ‘uck’. Nell kisses her forehead instead, and sets her back down on the floor. “Go get Grey Wind!” 

Grey Wind whines appreciatively, bowing his head as if to coax Lysara to approach; she crawls towards him, cooing, only to stop between him and Nell at the sound of a door opening and closing. Stannis is down in the winter town, overseeing the reconstruction of the inn, but Nell supposes he could be back early, and none too pleased to see that they’ve infiltrated the First Keep in his absence. But it is not Stannis, who would have had to duck to come in through that particular low doorway. It is Harry Karstark, who does not quite have to duck his head, but stoop slightly all the same- men were shorter, apparently, when the original Stark fortress of the First Keep was constructed. Perhaps the summers and winters were shorter then, too. 

Nell picks Lysara back up, not out of concern but propriety; she is the future Warden of the North, and it would not do for her bannermen- even one who is to be her stepfather- to see her crawling about on the floor like the child that she is. They must respect her, not patronize her. She will have to deal with enough condescension on account of her sex. Beron does not move from his position against the wall; but bows slightly out of the corner of her eye all the same. Harry has snowflakes in his prematurely greying hair; he’s spent more time outdoors than in, these past few days. He quickly crosses the floor to them, inclining his head to Lysara. 

“Lady Lysara.” 

Nell smiles thinly.

“Lady Donella.”

Grey Wind is sniffing at his cloak with interest. 

“Grey Wind.”

The wolf’s ease around Harry has always reassured Nell, more or less. Grey Wind has never been calm around enemies. She does not know what to make of his frequent staring contests with Stannis, only that she suspects Baratheon is not a man fond of dogs. Cats, she could see. He and them have a good deal in common. She can picture him distractedly scratching one behind the ears while furiously writing some pamphlet or another proclaiming Cersei’s children as bastards. 

She nods her own head, shifting Lysara from one hip to the other. “And where have you been?”

“Scouting,” he replies, somewhat distractedly, stamping mud off his boots. “With Reed and Daryn again.”

The scouting could perhaps be left to some smaller figures than the likes of Daryn Hornwood, but if it keeps him out of Winterfell and away from saying something they might all regret to Stannis, Nell is in favor of this. Of course Baratheon did not arrange Alys’ wildling match, that was the work of Jon Snow, but he certainly has not condemned it nor declared it ripe for annulment, as Daryn perhaps held out hope of. It will not be set aside at this point, Nell thinks. Doubtless it’s been consummated, Harry may not be pleased but he has not rebelled against it, and Daryn may love Alys, but there is naught any of them can do at this point unless Alys herself were to declare that she was forced into it or wed under false pretenses. 

Harry claims his sister will likely honor the match, whatever her personal feelings towards Sigorn of Thenn. Nell wonders what a Thenn looks like. She’s only met a few wildlings in her life. The Thenns are supposedly the most civilized of them. Still, to go from the usually mild-mannered Daryn Hornwood to a Magnar of Thenn must have been quite the shock. She doesn’t know Alys well at all, but Nell finds it impossible to imagine Harry with a sister any less stubborn and fierce-willed as himself. Is that not why he was always fond of Arya? It was not just because she looked a little like Alys. 

“So,” she says, “how many men at Torrhen’s Square, do you think?”

As it stands, the lake town is the only remaining Ironborn controlled territory in the North, unless you count a few ruined villages on the Stony Shore. 

Harry shrugs. “He’s had reinforcements… and stragglers from Moat Cailin and Deepwood, these past months… Still, less than five hundred, a little more than four hundred, by Reed’s estimate. He got quite close, the week past, on foot.”

“We can easily take four hundred Ironborn,” Nell scoffs.

“They’re well-fed and well guarded; they hold the fortress and they’ve reinforced the town’s defenses,” Harry says mildly. “We have more than twenty times their men, but they will make us work hard to take the Square back. And they have hostages. Daryn’s aunt Berena, her twin boys, and Lady Eddara.” 

Lady Eddara. Nell remembers Eddara Tallhart as a scrappy little girl of an age with Arya, always on the heels of her big brother. But Benfred was killed by Theon while he sacked the Stony Shore, and Helman was killed at the Twins, yet another casualty of Roose’s schemes. Eddara will be eleven now, perhaps flowered. Nell does not like to think what she may have endured at the hands of Cleftjaw’s men. If he has any sense about him, he’ll have kept her and the other Tallharts unharmed. Then again, most of the Ironborn she knows are not renowned for their sense, although they say Asha Greyjoy is eager to make peace. Aye, peace most of the northerners would like to spit on. Galbart Glover wants her head for what she did with his niece and nephew, packing them off to the Isles as hostages.

As if he’d read her mind, Harry adds, “and Asha Greyjoy’s men have made their camp at an abandoned holdfast. Hunting and fishing, Daryn’s scouts have seen them. Gods know why they haven’t made a run for the coast yet.”

“They’re loyal,” it feels odd to even say aloud. Ironborn, loyal? “To her,” Nell says. “Their lady Asha. Asha Queen, she might have been.” Her mouth twists. “As if the Ironborn would ever suffer a woman on their throne. They treat their axes better than their wives.”

“She is not one of their wives,” Harry says. “Well, to the Ironmaker, perhaps, but the marriage was not consummated and she is more than capable of widowing herself. She is a captain, blooded on the shores and blessed with salt, by their reckoning. Stannis does not dare execute her. She’s too valuable. And as of late, she’s been making noises about treating with Cleftjaw for our King.”

Beron guffaws quietly. Lysara squirms again in Nell’s arms, and she reluctantly sets her back down; her daughter promptly throws herself across Grey Wind’s back as he lies down beside her, babbling into his fur. Nell straightens back up. “She may make as many noises as she likes. He will not permit her to leave this castle; that would be madness.”

Harry exhales. “Cleftjaw will not surrender, and if we siege the town, once he knows we stand to take it, he will slaughter the Tallharts and burn it to the ground. It would offend his honor otherwise.”

Nell makes a derisive sound at that. “Then he will hang over the ashes.”

“Stannis is not interested in quick victories; he is interested in gathering as many men behind him as possible with which to confront the Others. And he knows what will be said of him if he takes Torrhen’s Square back at the cost of so many innocent lives. That settlement shelters two thousand men, women, and children. Near half of which fled there in the wake of the reaving on the coast and Winterfell’s fall. Most did not try to run when Cleftjaw took it, I think. They had nowhere left to go.”

Nell knows they would see the smoke from here; Torrhen’s Square is less than a week’s ride away. Smell it, too. The lake is the largest in the North, after Long Lake to the northeast. The town is the largest after White Harbor and Barrowton. The Tallharts are just a masterly house, many would say. To lose them would be no more than a footnote. Their history ‘only’ begins from the time of the Conquest; they named their town in honor of Torrhen the Kneeler. It might rouse spirits, an easy victory against the Ironborn, to be able to kill them all and drag their bones back to Winterfell. Along with the bones of young Eddara, and Daryn’s aunt, and those little boys. And the hundreds of townspeople who would be slaughtered during the siege. 

“And Lady Asha thinks she can convince him… to what? Surrender it peacefully to us?”

Harry inclines his head. “Visit her yourself. She has a story of Torgon Greyiron that she has been telling anyone who will listen. And Stannis is listening.”

The idea of visiting either Greyjoy in their cell is not an appealing one. Nell scowls. “Perhaps I will, when I can stomach it. I’ve a mind to send for Sybelle Glover and let her take a whip to her. She left poor woman’s children at bloody Ten Towers.”

“She says she feared the babe would not survive the journey back to Deepwood.”

“She has a lying tongue, as much as Theon ever did,” Nell snaps. “What, she thinks we ought to show her mercy, because she took but one small castle? She stopped at Deepwood because she had not the men for any further conquest.”

“She did not brutalize the people of Deepwood as her brother did Winterfell.”

“And you would be so neutral, had she or Cleftjaw taken the Karhold?”

“No,” says Harry, through his teeth, as is often his habit when they are conversing, “she would be dead. But she is not my prisoner. Nor yours.”

“If Sybelle Glover’s children have so much as a scrape on them,” Nell snaps, “I will lead men to that hovel of a holdfast where Asha’s remaining men are camped, and I will burn it to the ground.”

Harry makes a sighing sort of exhale, as he usually does when about to change the subject. “I’ve recommended Galbart Glover, Alysane Mormont, and Daryn to lead any march on Torrhen’s Square, should it happen soon. Daryn could use the distraction. He’s been… not himself, as of late. Thank the gods for Larence Snow; to have his brother with him has been some solace, at least.”

“Half-brother,” Nell says, under her breath, although as far as Snows go, Larence is an unoffensive one, save perhaps to another Donella. Still, her stomach twists in sympathy. “I can speak with him, Daryn. Offer to- to find him a wife, if that is what he wishes, I… I am sorry that this has been his reward, truly.”

“Leave him be for now,” Harry says, but his tone softens slightly. “Though I know you mean well, Donella.” He stills, then, as if realizing he inadvertently addressed her by her first name, and not ‘my lady’. Their only audience is Beron, who has tactfully moved to the other side of the large room, and Lysara, tugging on Grey’s Wind ears while sitting on his back, which he is tolerating very well. 

Nell looks away, slightly, not in embarrassment, but- it just reminded her, is all. He will have ample opportunity to call her by her first name in the future, when they are wed. It will be his right to address her in such a familiar manner. It will be his right to many familiarities to which neither of them is accustomed. The most ‘familiar’ they’ve ever been with each was when they were enraged and having a shouting match deep in the Neck. A stable foundation for a marriage that does not exactly make. And it will be a marriage. There is no point in living in denial any longer. They had word from Queenscrown yesterday; Stannis’ wife and daughter and the wildling princess have made it that far safely. Sooner or later, they will arrive, and she will be wed again. 

“My lady,” he says again, in a quieter, almost- well, he is a Karstark and seldom truly chastened, they all have foul tempers, every single one- but he does not sound reproving or annoyed, either. Harrion takes half a step closer. “You should know,” he says, “that it was not… I do not know what my word on the matter is worth, but I did not go to Stannis seeking a match.”

Nell finds it easier to reply while not quite making eye contact, pretending she is just fussing over fixing Lysara’s crooked cap. “And should I rant and rave at you if you had? I made him our king, you are within your rights to go to him and ask him to make a marriage for you.”

“I would not-,” he sounds incensed, for a moment, then seems to restrain his tone again. “If I had been looking for a wife as of late, I would have made the… the correct overtures myself.”

“Well,” Nell says, “there is hardly a wide selection of women to choose from who are not already widows or ruling in their own right, unless you seek a clanswoman… or a spearwife.” She straightens back up, no longer having the excuse of Lysara’s clothing. 

He looks… well, he looks, for once, less the hardened man of two-and-twenty, and more the boy he perhaps once was, for however short a time. “I don’t hold it against you,” she says, firmly. “I gave my word I would consent to the match, that it was the price I would pay to remain Lysara’s regent and to see her come into her rightful seat.”

He steps away, slightly, from Grey Wind and her daughter, and after a moment’s reluctance, she follows him a short distance away. Perhaps he feels awkward having a conversation of this nature in front of her dead husband’s wolf and her dead husband’s child. She certainly does. She feels as though Robb were in the room with them; it makes her chest hurt.

“Have you seen your sister?” he asks, surprising her.

Her sister. That feels so odd, too. For so long the only ones she counted as sisters were Sara and Dana. Now she has one by blood, a fat little pink-faced infant with a shock of dark brown hair. Like her father. Like her. Like Ramsay. “I have,” she says. “And her mother. Walda knows the chances of Mariya ever being named heir to the Dreadfort are slim, unless it is with a husband of Karstark blood attached to the offer.”

“What do you intend for them?”

Nell sighs. “I mean to write to Daryn Hornwood’s mother, the reigning conqueror of the Dreadfort, and bid her travel here at her earliest convenience, so she might behold her only child again. And then I mean to send her back to Hornwood with Mariya Bolton and Walda Frey.”

“As a ward.”

“Of a sort. They will be safe there; Walda says she does not care where she goes, so long as the child is not taken from her. Our king thinks I am being too merciful by half, but it is not up to him. It is my birthright and she is my blood. They cannot stay here or I will look a soft-hearted fool, playing second mother to the last of my father’s seed.”

“You could send the babe to a motherhouse in White Harbor, send Walda back south.”

“I could,” Nell says. “Mayhaps I should. But I owe Walda my child’s life. Had it not been for her quick thinking, Lysara might be dead. And I think Hornwood a pleasant enough place for a child to be raised, secluded though it may be.”

Harry inclines his head. 

“And what of your sister?” she presses, lowering her voice even further.

“A letter from Last Hearth, on their way to take back the Karhold, her and her wilding husband,” he recounts slowly. “Alys claims she is well enough, and that he treats her as a husband should. It was in her hand, and she would have found a way to message me if she were being forced to write untruths.”

“Can he even read and write? Her Thenn, that is,” Nell mutters. 

“In the Old Tongue. She says she is trying to teach him our language, and that he is a quick learner.”

“Eager to please, I’m sure.” She regrets her tart words a moment later. “I’m sorry. I know you must be… this is not what you wanted for her.”

“She is safe,” says Harry. “And she is wed to a man who seems to be worthy of her. That is all I can ask for, at this point. That, and our home restored. But Daryn has been like a brother to me for years now. He always will be, even if he is not my sister’s husband.”

“Ever pragmatic,” she tells him, almost lightly. 

“A man needs change with his circumstances, or he dies,” he retorts. “Alys is no different.”

“She’s a strong woman,” Nell says. “I will be honored to have her as a goodsister.”

There is a very long silence, then, only punctuated by Lysara’s distant chatter to Grey Wind and his answering snuffles or playful growls. 

“There is the matter of heirs,” Harry says. “I know you do not- I am aware it is likely the last thing you want to discuss with me, but I think we must, while we have the privacy.”

“It would not do to leave it until we are at the heart tree,” Nell agrees grimly. It is her turn to exhale ponderously. Better to say it quickly and be done with it. “You will need a son for the Karhold. I may need a son someday for the Dreadfort.” 

“You have my word,” he says, “and we can go to the godswood now, if we must- that I will never seek to supplant Lysara with mine own. I vowed it to Stannis. He should have had me vow it directly to you.”

“His Grace does not think much of vows made to women,” Nell comments. “Save marital vows, I suppose, given his distaste for brothels.”

Harry is looking right at her, with those piercing grey blue eyes. She returns his gaze, after another moment. “I trust you,” Nell says, pointedly. “If I did not-,”

“If you did not, Grey Wind would be much closer at present,” he replies drolly. “I know. But I am telling you anyways. I am also- I am telling you now, I’ve no intention of getting a child on you anytime soon.”

Nell waits, skeptical. It is not exactly what she expected to hear from him, nevermind so bluntly.

“It has not even been a full year since you gave birth,” he almost winces on the last two words, and she supposes he does still have that childish squeamishness for discussing a woman’s nature, given his lack of a wife. Robb would not have winced to say it. “I do not- I don’t think it wise to be getting a woman with child again so soon. Nor do I think this the time to be…”

“You have no interest in producing an heir for House Karstark?”

“At present, we could all be wights by this time next year,” he snaps. “And even if it were not- we are not at peace, not yet, the winter has only barely begun, and I think it foolish to begin a marriage with a wife dead in the birthing bed and an infant dying from a chill.”

“It will likely still be winter in three years. In five.” She swallows. “In ten.”

His brow furrows. “I am not- I am of a mind to wait. It is enough for us to be wed, for now. My sister and her husband can hold the Karhold, we can appoint castellans and stewards for the Dreadfort, I had rather-,” he shakes his head, then eyes her almost warily. “You’ve been honest enough with me before.”

Nell bites the inside of her cheek for a moment, then releases it. “Then I’ll be honest now. I think you a good man and a sensible man and I am grateful that it is you and not some ingrate or some greedy fool who’d have me shut up in a nursery while he larked about driving us all to ruin. The idea of bearing- of any child at the moment, save Lysara, disgusts me. It is- I know it is not what I should say, but you asked for my honesty, and you should have it. I don’t mean it to insult you, or deride you, but that is the truth of the matter. I will wed you and I will try my best to be a good wife to you and I pray we do not throttle each other before the first week is out, because frankly your temper is near as bad as mine own and I’ll not have my daughter hearing us snarl and roar at each other for the next decade.” 

“And I know it is no longer my place to command you, and I am not your queen, but I must warn you now that I find my opinions difficult to keep to myself and if you do something I disagree with we will have words behind closed doors. It is… it is how it was with Robb, we spoke of things, we told each other when we disagreed. So there you have it. I cannot- I will not be treated as your lesser just because we spoke words before a heart tree and it is my understanding that my rights as Lysara’s lady regent as equal to those of yours as lord regent.”

“I see,” he says. That is all. Snow is still melting in his hair.

Nell resists the urge to throw up her hands. “You see?”

“Well,” Harry says, “I can certainly rest easy, knowing you will never hide things from me.” She would not say his look is affectionate, but it is almost friendly, in a sense. Or however friendly it may ever be between them. She has insulted him on multiple occasions, after all, and they have both dragged one another’s family names through the mud, albeit only to one another. 

She misses Robb terribly for a few moments, a keening sharpness in her heart. She misses speaking with him, their easy familiarity, his warm tones, the way he’d reach out and take her hands in his as he spoke earnestly. How sometimes he’d turn to go, then turn back around and kiss her cheek, making her blush. She misses lying in bed beside him and feeling so safe and contented, listening to the faint crackle of his voice in his chest when she laid her head upon it. She will likely never have that again. She will never have him again. 

Still, Harry’s dry tone makes her crack half a smile. “You can be confident in that, at least.”

Lysara is loudly demanding to be picked back up. Nell does so, and watches her daughter warily watch Harry, her face pressed against Nell’s chest. Grey Wind barks suddenly, just as Arden Greengood comes slipping through the doorway, scattering slush across the floor from his boots, entirely out of breath. “Letter- White Harbor- Vale- Maester said to come quickly,” he pants. “Baratheon’s riding in from town.”

“Then let’s see if we can’t beat him to it,” Nell says, settling Lysara on her hip and striding forward, Grey Wind loping after her. 

300 AC - WHITE HARBOR

Jory closes her eyes and lets the warmth of the sunlight cradle her upturned face. If she keeps her eyes closed, she can pretend it is summer once again on Bear Island. She can pretend she is a little girl once more, ten or eleven, sitting at the base of a tree near some babbling tree, listening to her sisters chatter and roughhouse with one another. Could almost imagine Lyra is about to sneak up on her and jam her fingers into her ribs, demanding she get up and spar instead of lounging about like the bloody bear princess. Lyra was never one for sitting still; she made Jory look practically indolent in comparison. 

She misses Lyra very much; Lyra is four years her elder but still the closest sister in age to her- Lyanna is seven years younger. Besides, Lyra was never much good at acting the part of the refined elder sister. Jory doubts that much has changed. She’s sent word to Winterfell, but supposes it was likely drowned out in favor of the flurry of letters from Lady Manderly herself. The Mormont women were never ones for letters. She will see them soon. Lyra likely has all such of tall tales to tell her, and Mother… Mother will be as she always was, if not a little greyer. 

A cloud momentarily blots out the sunlight, and Jory opens her eyes, blinking in the hazy, humid warmth of New Castle’s grand glass garden. The light is a queer greenish yellow, casting a strange pallor on everything and everyone, but it is the closest thing one might get to a taste of summer in the midst of winter. The glass garden here is not so large as Winterfell’s was, but she supposes they will be sending glaziers up from the city to help reconstruct it. Jory does not see how everyone might be fed through the winter otherwise. They cannot just rely on the harvest stores and trade with the South. gods know not the South, for if the North is momentarily free of war, then the South is only further embroiled in it.

The news has come spilling out of every alleyway and corner of the city, and what she hasn't heard from Wynafryd Manderly herself, Jory has heard from servants and merchants filtering in and out of New Castle’s always bustling keep. Where to even begin? Reportedly ‘both’ queens have won their trials against the Faith- Cersei Lannister, whom everyone seems to agree was likely guilty of at least half of it, if not more, and Margaery Tyrell, who is reportedly so beautiful and pure of heart that even White Harbor seems inclined to think favorably of the girl, aside from her being wed to a bastard born of incest, of course. 

However, it doesn’t seem to matter much, for they say both queens, free of the confines of the High Sparrow, have gone right back to plotting against each other. The Lannisters at court are certain the Tyrells had Kevan Lannister killed. The Tyrells are certain Cersei had him murdered herself, fearing his influence on her precious little king. Really, if that was all the news- that the powerful alliance between the West and the Reach was rapidly deteriorating, hastened on by Genna Lannister’s imprisonment at Riverrun, the chokehold the Faith has on the city, and grievous injuries to Loras Tyrell, who they say was burned near as badly as the Hound himself while reclaiming Dragonstone-

Well, if it was just that, Jory would want to laugh. Good. Let them turn on each other, and choke on their just rewards, after the past two years of profiting off war and treachery. Is it not what they deserve? But of course it is not. Euron Greyjoy has launched a full-scale assault on Oldtown. Hyle swears it was the talk of one of the taverns he was in two nights past, that sailors, drunk on ale and frightening rumors of witchcraft and sea monsters, claimed that Greyjoy and his fleet had not just destroyed the Redwynes’ defense of the harbor, but had summoned all sorts of terrors from the depths, turned the waves black as night and even now were fighting to breach Oldtown’s defenses with the dead men, Reacher and Ironborn alike, paddling after them with the bones of their comrades. 

That sounds like a load of nonsense to Jory- Euron Greyjoy is a very persuasive madman, she can believe that, but claiming he is some sort of powerful sorcerer who can command creatures of the depths and raise the dead is another thing entirely. Mayhaps he blew them all to bits with wildfire or some sort of exotic weaponry he’d collected on his travels. She doesn’t see much point in dwelling on it. Oldtown is nowhere near the North, and all she can think about is that sort of force descending on small Bear Island, the people she knows and loves laying slaughtered on the beaches. House Hightower is very powerful, and the Citadel surely has more than enough coin to hire mercenaries to defend them. Perhaps they will call on Dorne for aid, as laughable as a thought that may be. 

What sounds slightly more plausible are the claims that the Golden Company and this supposed Targaryen boy king have conquered much of the Stormlands, their sights reportedly locked on Storm’s End. Perhaps Mace Tyrell and his bannermen will put them down and it will be nothing more than a brief footnote, yet another Blackfyre uprising, but perhaps not. Jory does not have very strong opinions on the Targaryens. Rhaegar was a vile raper like his father before him, but as Lyanna was named for Lyanna Stark, so Alysane was named, like a thousand other girls, for Alysanne Targaryen. Whether this Aegon has any shred of a true claim to the Iron Throne is of little interest to her. He will never be able to conquer the North in winter, not unless he suddenly resurrects a dragon or two from the dungeons of the Red Keep. And that thought is truly funny. 

Jory just hopes the Riverlands stays out of the fighting. She wants Gendry and the orphans at the Crossroads to be safe. At least give them a peaceful winter. It will be hard enough to survive without them needing to fear invading armies, too.Truthfully, she fears Gendry being pressed into service as a soldier-smith, too. Any commander would be idiotic to kill him. He has great skill and he’s stronger than most men twice his age. She doesn’t want him to die forging swords for some Targaryen or swinging a hammer for some Tyrell. Mayhaps she should have tried to entice him to come with her, when he tried to convince her to stay behind. But he never would have agreed to that. Gendry is too stubborn. Once he sets his mind to something, he can’t be shaken from it. 

There is news of the North as well, beyond just the retaking of Winterfell and the scourging of the Ironborn from the mountains and Sea Dragon Point. They say Jon Snow laid dead for hours after being betrayed by his own men at the Wall, only to be revived by witchcraft. They also say that is a filthy lie and that no Red Woman’s magic would work at a place so connected to the old gods and the old magic of the Children of the Forest. Whether he was brought back to life or simply stitched back up by a very capable healer, no one is pleased that Snow has apparently left the Wall to rescue some wildlings at Hardhome. They say there are Others beyond the Wall, and wights, that it’s why Baratheon came here in the first place.

Jory supposes if there was ever a place for monsters to roam freely, it would be in the Lands of Always Winter, but the Others are a distant sort of terror, as if someone said an army of grumpkins had descended on the Bay of Seals. They will never cross the Wall; if even the wildlings could not manage it until Snow negotiated lands for them in the New Gift, she does not see how wights could. But this Osha woman, the one who Lord Seaworth brought back from Skagos with little Rickon- gods, it is near all she will speak of, the Others and the wights. Jory does not have the same contempt for wildlings as others, perhaps because she never met one before Osha. Wildlings were not exactly washing up regularly on the shores of Bear Island, after all, although fishing boats often claimed to have seen and sometimes traded with them along the Frozen Shore.

Jory watches Osha now, who keeps one skinny, long-fingered hand rooted in Shaggydog’s thick black fur as she speaks quietly with Brienne. Wiry and scarred, she wears her thick, shaggy brown hair in a rough braid to her waist, parted on the left side. The right side of her head is shaved and tattooed with some Skagosi markings in dark red ink. She is not nearly as tall as Brienne, but she is tall enough to make Jory feel short and scrawny in comparison. She carries a spear, although she does not have it on her now, instead favoring a long knife tucked into the belt of her patterned dark yellow and brown tunic. Like Rickon, she dresses in the fashion of the Skagosi, although she admits she is still not entirely fluent in the Old Tongue. 

Brienne notices Jory staring across the grass-and-gravel center of the circular glass garden, and waves her over. Osha looks round, spots her, and gives a thin half-smile, before she is distracted by Rickon shouting, “Osha, look!” He is hanging from an apple tree, his legs held by a bemused Mya Stone. Sansa is watching a few feet away, looking a little worried he might fall, but overall as thrilled as she always looks to be in the company of her brother. Jory had never seen her true smile before this; it shows much more tooth and lip, and it makes her look very much like Robb. Harry Arryn often looks as though he is constantly perplexed as to Sansa’s true identity- coy bastard daughter Alayne Stone, gracious and demure Sansa Stark, or Rickon’s giggly older sister, grinning down at her brother and chasing him about.

Littlefinger often looks as though someone had repeatedly kicked him in the gut whenever he so much as glances at Rickon, and Jory is very much relieved that Osha never seems to let Rickon out of her reach when in the presence of Baelish. That one has a mother’s instincts, even if he is not a child of her body. She suspects Rickon feels the same way; he runs to her when he scrapes a knee, holds her hand when he is tired, and listens to her and no one else when Osha tells him to eat slowly or to sit on his bottom, not his feet, during dinners. 

Jory walks over to her and Brienne, pebbles crunching underfoot, squinting as the sun emerges once more to pour through the watery glass ceiling, full of constantly melting layers of ice and snow. It is warm enough in here that she can wear one of the lighter gowns gifted to her by Sansa, one that makes her look a proper lady again, although she has modified it slightly with a sturdier belt and adjusted the skirt so that it resembles more a riding gown. It always feels awkward to go from trousers to having to take much smaller steps, and gods know she is not about to wear slippers. 

Shaggydog growls and lopes over to Rickon at her approach.

“M’lady Mormont,” Osha nods her head, causing Jory to blink.

“That’s my mother; I’m just Jorelle.”

“M’lady Jorelle,” Osha mutters with a sly grin directed at Brienne, who suppresses a smile. 

Jory looks between the two of them in bemusement. “Fast friends, are we?”

“Certain as hells I don’t want this beast for an enemy,” Osha scoffs; despite her harsh words her voice is warm and almost admiring; she looks at Brienne not with disgust or discomfort but with genuine appreciation. “Gods, any man would have a time trying to steal you, he would, Maid of Tarth!”

Jory supposes that passes for a very flattering compliment, north of the Wall. Brienne shifts from foot to foot but says only, “Osha was telling me of Skagos, and House Crowl, who hosted her and Rickon in their keep.”

All Jory has ever heard of the Crowls is that one of them was once a Lord Commander of the Night Watch. The Skagosi rarely, if ever, make marriages outside their mountainous island, and they never travel to the mainland. The Umbers and the Watch itself are the only ones who’ve done passing trade with them, and no one, not even the Starks, have visited Skagos in centuries. Until Rickon came to them, that is. He doesn’t have the Stark look- although he may grow into Ned Stark’s long face- but the direwolf must have made all the difference. Shaggydog couldn’t have been half so big as he is now; she has no idea how they’d fit him on a boat.

“Who helped you cross the Bay of Seals?” she asks with interest. Surely it was not so simple as finding a fishing village and making the rounds. Most would refuse outright to go anywhere near Skagos, if they hadn’t already balked at taking a spearwife anywhere, whether she was with a child she claimed was a Stark or not. 

“The same who helped me cross it to get past the Wall,” Osha snorts. “Free folk.”

Brienne seems accepting of this, but she doesn’t know about wildlings as Jory does, she’s still a southron. 

“Wildlings helped you take Rickon to Skagos?” Jory demands incredulously. “They didn’t try to bring him to Mance Rayder as a hostage?” To be sure, there were no Starks left in Winterfell at the time for Rickon to be a hostage against, but it had to be known by then that Jon Snow was at the Wall. Once he became Lord Commander, Rayder could have easily threatened Rickon’s life to force a crossing of his people.

Osha scowls. “I gave the Starks my loyalty when Lord Robb spared my life. You think because I am free, my word means nothing?”

You’re not free if you swore an oath of loyalty to House Stark, Jory wants to argue, but she doesn’t want to go in circles, either. “You’re more honorable than most, then,” she says instead. “Rickon would be dead were it not for you. The North owes you a debt.”

“I don’t want their bloody debt,” Osha says impatiently, “I want the pup back home with his kin.” Still, the look in her dark eyes belie her words as she glances towards Rickon again, now safely back on the ground, playing a game with Shaggydog that mostly involves sliding down his back and into a pile of dead leaves and branches left out by the gardeners. There is more to that look than loyalty. Osha clears her throat. “Still, you’re not the only ones with nasty tales of the stonefolk. I only brought him because there was nowhere else to run, save north of the Wall again, and the wights might have snatched him up, dinner for some Other.”

“The Others eat children, then?” Jory asks, unable to keep a hint of dryness from her tone. Brienne gives her an almost admonishing look; she huffs. 

“The Others,” Osha says slowly, “do things to the littlest of babes and oldest of crones that’d made your insides turn to slush, bear maid. They hunt anything warm-blooded for sport. The wights are just their tools, their fodder.” Her flat, cold look gives Jory a bit of a start. She wonders if Osha’s had children before; she’s certainly old enough, perhaps of an age with Alysane or Dacey. Wonders what might have happened to them. To the rest of the North, the women of her house are wild and half-savage, but they still birth their children in the safety of well-guarded keeps on a peaceful land. Jory cannot imagine what it must be like to not have that certainty of food and shelter. 

“What were the Crowls like?” Brienne asks, perhaps to break the tension.

Osha relaxes slightly. “Not like your people. Northern or southern. Familiar to me, in a way. Not free, mind you, they’ve always knelt,” her lip curls slightly, “but they haven’t stayed long on their knees, either, have they? They’ve kept their customs, their traditions. You leave them be, they leave you be.”

“Do they speak the common tongue?” Jory presses. 

“Aye,” Osha nods, “but they don’t like to. They call it the… the…” She says something in the Old Tongue, frowning to herself. “Stick words? Brittle tongue,” she shrugs. “Something like that. They say it’s not the stone’s way to speak in sticks. They don’t call themselves lords, either, not like your people. Agmund Crowl is the Crowl, and his wife is the Crowlmother- Crowlmar? Crowlmor,” she decides, sounding out the words on her tongue. “They’ve three sons, three daughters at Deepdown. Their keep, you kneelers would say. They don’t build their homes as you do. Much lower to the ground, and more buildings.” She smiles then, crookedly. “You should see them milking unicorns, and breeding them for meat.”

“No,” Jory declares, “no, you’re japing-,”

Osha gives a twisting shrug, smirking.

“You can’t be serious-,”

“How big are they?” Brienne asks, seriously. “The unicorns.”

“The ones they bred, no bigger than goats. The wild ones?” Osha raises a dark eyebrow. “Big enough to give Shaggy a chase. And mean as boars.”

Brienne looks suitably impressed, and squeezes Jory’s shoulder in an almost affectionate gesture when Jory opens her mouth to protest that Osha must be lying. Unicorns died out with the giants. Any horns the Skagosi trade are old ones they dug up. Everyone knows that. Still, the simple act of Brienne touching her like that surprises her. Brienne is always so careful to keep a little apart, to keep to herself, as if worried she is taking up too much room. Less so, as of late, since they reached the Vale, since they joined Sansa’s household. Jory doesn’t think it a direct result of Sansa herself wholeheartedly accepting Brienne as a sword. She thinks it may have more to do with Brienne beginning to accept herself, exactly as she is, not as a flawed woman or a flawed warrior. 

She moves off, still shaking her head a little in disbelief, just as Myranda Royce enters the godswood, along with another of Sansa’s ladies, Ysilla Redfort. Where Myranda is short and buxom, her brown curls tumbling past her giggly shoulders, Ysilla is taller and blonde, her face and frame much thinner, with a pinched short of nose and mouth. Jory is inclined to dislike her because she now considers Mya a good friend, and Mya loved Mychel, and Mychel was married off to Ysilla, but Jory is also not a child, and capable of understanding that Ysilla had as little choice in the matter as Mychel, if not less. 

Still, she does think Ysilla a bit of a priss. 

“Princess!” Ysilla calls eagerly, letting go of Myranda’s plump arm and lifting her skirts to hurry over to Sansa. The Valemen still refer to Harry as King and Sansa as Princess, and Jory doubts that is going to stop anytime soon. They did not make such a big show of it to simply discard the notion because Stannis has secured the North in name. The feelings are obvious that he may not have secured the North in terms of swords. The Vale is far too proud to go scraping at his feet now, and far too confident in their forty thousand men, who have all but overrun White Harbor. You can find Valemen on every street corner and in every alehouse. 

Mya, who was playing with Rickon, moves off, no matter that Sansa has insisted, over and over again, that she is every bit a suitable lady in waiting, for ‘they were once Stones together’. You were never a Stone like me, Mya likely thinks. It is not that Sansa did not suffer then, but she was not being treated as a mere servant, either. Jory is well aware that the only reason Mya’s presence among Sansa’s court of women is collectively tolerated is because it seems to be common, unspoken knowledge that Mya’s father was a king. And if they do not think her father was Robert, they surely think it was some very grand nobleman. A daughter of the smallfolk would never be invited to join in with their conversation and activities, never dressed so finely nor addressed in such respectful terms. 

It’s not fair. Jory doesn’t think herself so naive as to be blind to the distinctions between classes. Mormont Hall has servants, of course it does, and she and her sisters were always addressed by their titles. Still, things were much more… flexible there than at most other keeps. Jory played with the common children of the household, greeted maids and serving boys warmly, knew all the stablemen and guards by name. They were respectful, but there was still a sort of cordialness and warmth. Her mother treated them with respect as well, thought nothing of seating tradesmen and merchants alike at her high table. 

Jory has heard Ned Stark often did similarly, but Ned Stark is not here now, and they say Sansa is to be queen in the Vale, not the North.

“Lady Wynafryd has invited us to dine with her tonight,” Ysilla is telling Sansa eagerly, in between casting nervous glances at Shaggydog, Osha, and Rickon. “Just the ladies, this time. Isn’t that kind of her? I know I shall enjoy a dinner without listening to the prattle of the menfolk.”

There’s some truth to that- Mychel Redfort is handsome enough, but he eats very noisily, like he’s trying to make music with his dinner knife, and Jory still gets the odd mournful look from poor Wallace Waynwood. It certainly did not help matters that at their last dinner together, Hyle kept asking very pointed questions about her ‘betrothed in the Riverlands’ after he’d had a few cups of wine in him. He’s made it clear he thinks it incredibly foolish of her to throw away the potential match with such a house. Jory thinks it some misplaced jealousy on his part- the noblewomen of the Vale were hardly throwing themselves at his feet, and Myranda thinks him a passing amusement, nothing more. 

Sansa frowns briefly. “Rickon and I always take our meals together.” For the past few days, they’ve shared every single one. Jory has watched Sansa look as though she is expecting to wake up from a strange dream, staring at her little brother as he scarfs down bread rolls and scatters crumbs and jam and bits of egg everywhere, or tries to save some to give to his wolf later. Sansa has also insisted Osha and Lord Davos eat with her and Rickon, on occasion, ignoring the incredulous stares levied her way. 

Jory rather likes Seaworth. He seems a sensible sort, even if he’s in knee deep with Stannis, who is spoken of in less than flattering tones by the Valemen. They say he comes from nothing and has risen high to be Stannis’ Hand of the King. You would think that might invite some sort of camaraderie with Baelish, who must see the resemblances, but Littlefinger looks mildly repulsed whenever Ser Davos enters the room. Sansa has nothing but praise for him, though, and whoever Sansa praises, Harry tends to follow suit with- the once he spoke of Seaworth in dismissive tones, Sansa had given him a stung sort of look, and he’d gone red as a beet as if shamed by her. 

“Just the one night will not hurt him,” Myranda says in a wheedling tone, taking Sansa’s hand. “Come now, we’ve spent hours in this garden, and it’s growing late, my lady. We should bathe and dress for dinner.”

Sansa nods after a moment, but breaks away from Myranda’s grasp to address Rickon directly, crouching down so she might speak with him on his level. He pads over to her, barefoot and bedraggled, leaves and twigs in his wild coppery curls. “Will you be alright just eating with Mistress Osha tonight?” she asks quietly. “I promise I shall come to say goodnight.”

Rickon chews on his lower lip, then nods. “S’alright. Don’t wanna dress for dinner anyways.”

It’s a regular pattern. Rickon is dressed ‘as befitting a proper little prince’, and then either ruins or rips off the clothes. He despises silk, satin, and velvet, hates anything with a hint of lace, will shout himself red in the face until he’s allowed to put back on his furs and leathers. He was gifted a fine new sash and promptly used to it to help pull himself up onto the top of a teetering statue of some Manderly ancestor. There is no confining him, either. He clambers out of windows, ducks under arms, hides under beds and behind doors, popping out when you least expect it. Sansa seems to embrace him exactly as he is, riling whenever the boy is scolded or chastened, but Jory can tell what the rest of them think. More wildling than Stark. 

“My lady, I would be happy to accompany Rickon to his dinner,” Brienne says, but Sansa straightens back up, looking vaguely exasperated.

“Lady Brienne, you are my sworn sword, and while I know you would guard Rickon just as ably as you do me, he has Shaggydog and Mistress Osha.”

“You have us,” Mya calls out gamely, only to glance away at the haughty look Ysilla gives her. 

“I do,” Sansa reddens slightly. “But I would have all my ladies present with me tonight. If there is more news, best to hear it among those I trust.”

Myranda giggles at that, but her brown eyes are deadly serious. Something is afoot, Jory thinks. She just can’t be sure what. 

Jory takes her time returning to her rooms to change for dinner. She is not dreading it; she doesn’t dislike Wynafryd, and perhaps there will be more news of Winterfell, of her family- but she is not looking forward to it, either. Somehow things were simpler when it was just her and Brienne and Pod… and even Hyle, too. Everything was uncertain then, but at least she felt- it just seemed to make sense. She was on a quest to rescue a princess. It would be hard and dangerous but there was always a sense of forward momentum. Now they’ve washed up at White Harbor, and while she is sure they will not be here longer than another week, it’s not so simple as just escorting Sansa through Winterfell’s gates and calling it a job well done. 

New Castle doesn’t really have a godswood, unless you count the glass garden itself, but it has a very elaborate sept. Jory has no intention of going inside, but it is a little nice to sit outside a quiet and peaceful place, on a stone bench underneath yet another sea glass window. She studies her scarred and calloused hands, plays with her hair yet again, which is now nearly to her chest again in length. It seems thinner than it once was. Thinks of Gendry, praying to his red god before the fire of the forge, his brow shining with seat, and the light reflected in his pretty eyes. 

Footfall disturbs her. Jory looks up just in time to see Seaworth coming out. He stops when he sees her, bows. “Lady Jorelle.”

“Lord Davos,” she replies, with a slight smile. “How was your prayer?”

He looks almost embarrassed. “It was… good to be alone with them, the Seven.” She doesn’t think he is devout, from the awkward way he speaks. Jory wonders if prayers from the less-than-devoted count all the more, since they are so infrequent. “I was praying for my family,” he adds. Honest, too. She wonders how old he is. Younger than her mother, but at least forty, she would think. His wife must be of similar birth to him, or from a merchant family. Her father is younger than her mother; she thinks briefly of his bearded face. Does he think she’s dead? She should send a letter to the Island, too, no matter how long it will take the raven to get there. She should tell him she misses him very much and that she is sorry to have been away for so long. He deserved a more attentive daughter. 

“Are you worried for them?” she asks, curiously. “Where in the Stormlands is your home, my lord?”

“Cape Wrath,” he replies, his weathered brow creased. “You… may not be familiar with it. It is central to the rainwood, my lady. My wife remains there, with our two youngest boys. Stannis and Steffon.” He smiles briefly as if at the thought of them, and then it is gone, and the worry remains. “Cape Wrath has been entirely taken by the Golden Company. I have written to Marya- my wife- but there has been no word back.”

Jory feels a pang in her chest, imagining Bear Island captured, Lyanna and her little niece and nephew’s fates uncertain. “How old are your sons, Ser Davos?”

“Stannis is ten,” he replies. “Steffon is just seven. I had- my older boys- there is just Devan,” he settles for. The older ones are dead, then. Killed at the Blackwater or some other battle. 

Jory lowers her head slightly. “Devan is at Winterfell?”

“I do not know,” Davos confesses. “There or the Wall. I pray it is Winterfell.” 

She could ask why he still follows the Seven, when Baratheon so espouses the Lord of Light, but that would be rude, and she feels for the poor man. They are silent for a moment. Davos nods stiffly to her again, until she rises to her feet. 

“I will pray he is safe as well,” Jory says. “Not to the same gods, but- well, mayhaps mine may protect him where yours cannot, if he is at the Wall.”

His lined face is still for a moment, and she wonders if he might take offensive, but then he just inclines his head. “Thank you, my lady.”

“And I would be honored if you would escort me back to my rooms,” Jory says, “for I’ve been here but a few days, and spent more time lost than not, Ser.”

He chuckles a little at that, and agrees. 

Much as she would like to simply wear the exact same outfit to dinner tonight, Jory reluctantly rouses herself after a thrillingly hot bath to dress in something a little more fine. This gown requires a maid, something she’s only ever had to make use of before very formal feasts, such as the wedding of Donella and Robb. Jory wrinkles her nose in tolerance as her stays are tightened, then examines herself in the looking glass; the gown is a dark, deep green, meant to reflect her house colors, and the bodice is embroidered with tiny light green trees. She supposes bears would be a bit difficult to sew; Jory can’t remember the last time she’s done any needlework. Lyanna was always better at it than her, her stitches every bit as neat as Dacey’s. Alysane preferred knitting, and Lyra usually got blood all over her sampler, she’d prick her thumbs so much. 

She wishes she was going to dinner with them instead. 

Brienne is not wearing a gown, but her doublet is well-padded and well-fitted, and the cerulean brings out her brilliant eyes, as does the silver stitching around the collar and down her legs. 

They are dining in Wynafryd’s private chambers, for she now commands the largest rooms in the keep, as the reigning lady. They are draped with tapestries, silks, and thick, plush rugs and carpets, all varying shades of sea green and blue. Her tower windows overlook the faint lights of the city underneath, and the table is set elaborately and exquisitely, nearly buckling under the weight of all the dishes and foods. Jory will give the Manderlys this; they have very, very good cooks. Better than home, better than Winterfell. She supposes that explains quite a bit about the men’s girth. 

Wynafryd sits herself at one head of the table, Sansa at the other, their assorted ladies in between them. One of them is a Widowsflint, a younger daughter of Lady Lyessa- Lynara, she thinks the girl is called, whose father was apparently a Woolfield and a cousin of Wynafryd’s own Woolfield mother. There are very many oysters. Jory has to show Mya how to neatly crack them open with a knife, while the others titter behind their hands. Brienne looks as though she’d like to fling herself out a window. Jory misses listening to Rickon slop food everywhere and talk with his mouth full. Sansa, despite her gracious demeanor, looks a little as though she wishes for the same thing. 

Wynafryd waits patiently until the first course is through before making her announcement. “I have received a letter,” she says, “not from Winterfell nor King’s Landing, but from Storm’s End.”

“What do the Tyrells want with us?” Myranda asks wryly. “Allies against the Lannisters?”

Sansa has gone stiff as a board.

“The letter was not from the hand of Mace Tyrell,” Wynafryd says. “But from Aegon Targaryen.”

“Aegon Blackfyre, you mean,” Ysilla snickers.

Mya has frozen mid-bite. 

Jory grasps it immediately. “Storm’s End has been taken?” she asks.

Sansa sets down her cup of mulled cider, her face set like stone. “Tell me,” she all but commands Wynafryd, who nods. 

“It would seem Lord Mace’s trust was misplaced,” Wynafryd recounts. Her face betrays nothing, but her eyes have a certain gleam to them. Do the Manderlys still take such issue with the Reacher lords? “Tarly and Rowan betrayed him for the Golden Company. Tyrell is dead, his forces in the Stormlands entirely broken by Jon Connington and his sellswords. They are flying Targaryen banners at nearly every keep. Dornishmen are marching up to join them in the tens of thousands. The Martells have completely broken with the Iron Throne. This... Ser Aegon writes that he has arranged a betrothal betwixt himself and Princess Arianne, who has joined him at Storm’s End. Their wedding will be celebrated along with his coronation once they have taken King’s Landing.”

“Then they had best make haste,” Brienne says suddenly, “for the snows must be coming south, by now.” Her tone is hard and flat. Thinking of Tarth, no doubt, and her father.

Jory reaches over and takes Brienne’s big hand in her own. 

“He declares himself the trueborn son of Prince Rhaegar and Princess Elia, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. He claims he is the blood of Old Valyria and that with his kingship we shall have a new era of true kings in Westeros. He vows no retaliation against the North and the Vale’s past betrayal if we join him now, send men to fight with his army of loyalists, and help him claim his rightful throne.”

There is a very fragile sort of silence. Sansa swallows. Myranda gives a put-upon sigh. 

“Harry- King Harrold will not be pleased to hear of this,” Ysilla murmurs under her breath.

Mya is staring down at the table, shoulders tensed. 

“He will never breach the Bloody Gates,” Sansa says suddenly, “and I should like to see him try to take the North in winter. Let him come, once he is through with them. We will be waiting.” She doesn’t sound like a nervous girl or a demure princess. She sounds as though she’d like to saddle up Shaggydog herself and call for Osha’s spear. Sansa exhales, and then takes a quick sip of her wine.

Myranda smirks. “Spoken like a soon to be queen.”

The Riverlands, Jory thinks. Gendry. Willow. Septon Meribald. The Quiet Isle and the Elder Brother. Lord Edmure and Lady Roslin at Riverrun. The Riverlands has no such natural defenses. If they take the city, the Riverlands will be next. And even if they cannot reach the North and the Vale on foot, they certainly have ships. They will soon have more. She feels sick, and not just from all the oysters.

“I can see one potential boon to come of this,” Wynafryd says lightly enough. “It would seem House Stark, House Arryn, and House Baratheon once again share a common enemy.”

A few of the women laugh, but Jory just glances at Mya, whose cold look speaks to all those who will have nothing to smile over from further war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. I apologize for all the exposition dumping in this chapter and I am trying to think of better ways to reveal stuff without letters constantly being read aloud, etc. That said, the plot continues to move along and next chapter will probably also be divided between Nell and Jory, and we'll likely see Sansa and company leaving White Harbor for Winterfell, Nell having a chat with the Greyjoys, etc. 
> 
> 2\. Nell and Harry K. had had a much needed chat regarding expectations for their marriage. It's kind of sad that in Westeros the bar for being a not-shitty husband is set at 'unwilling to let wife die in childbirth so he can have more kids'. Neither Nell nor Harry has any delusions that is about to turn into some sweeping romance. Nell is grieving Robb, Harry is in a very uncomfortable position himself. Harry is also not keen on the idea of immediately trying to have children, not just out of concern for Nell's emotional state but the fact that it's been less than a year since she had Lysara, and pregnancies spaced so closely together, in a world where the maternal mortality rate is already... shockingly high... is a pretty dangerous game to play. Harry has no desire to see Nell dead in childbirth or any infants fail to thrive as the brutal winter sets in around them. 
> 
> 3\. Ironborn stuff: Dagmar Cleftjaw still holds Torrhen's Square. The concern is not that they can't take it back, but that he will see that his chances of beating them back are slim to none, torch the place to the ground, and kill his hostages. Asha is yelling "Put me in, Coach!" from the dungeons at Stannis. She keeps referencing Torgon Greyiron and the story of his rise to kingship for a reason. Due to her own trauma, Nell is very much upset on behalf of poor Sybelle Glover, whose children have been taken from her, and is very reluctant to risk the whole-scale slaughter of what remains of House Tallhart. 
> 
> 4\. Nell wants to send Walda and baby Mariya to ward at Hornwood for now, seeing this as an immediate solution to what is probably going to become a long-term problem with Mariya's Bolton and Frey blood. In the realm of sister issues, Alys and Sigorn are on their way to take back the Karhold with Sigorn's men. Daryn is rightfully very distraught over all of this, and Harry has been trying to play interference to keep it from developing into a conflict with Stannis and/or Jon Snow in the future. 
> 
> 5\. White Harbor is crawling with news from across Westeros, and probably from across the Narrow Sea, too, but Jory has selective hearing right now. Cersei and Margaery have both made it through their trials and the High Sparrow is feeling smug about now having the power to make the nobility quake in their boots. "Where the fuck is Jaime?" Back in the city, and very, very angry that his sister has just publicly denied any relations with him and the nature of their children, I would imagine. The Lannister-Tyrell alliance, or whatever is left of it, is known to be fracturing as both sides scrabble over Tommen. Mace is dead. If the Golden Company was not referring to House Tarly and/or House Rowan as their "friends in the Reach", and I'm proven wrong whenever TWOW comes out, feel free to come on here and roast me. For all his talk about 'hard justice' I 100% believe Randyll Tarly would have zero qualms about turning on Mace, especially with the Reach already distracted by Euron's big invasion of Oldtown. 
> 
> 6\. Osha + Brienne mutual respect FTW. I have a soft spot for Osha. I think she's come to see Rickon as her adoptive son and it's commendable of her to have even agreed to bring him back to this political shitshow in the first place, when they could have remained safe and isolated on Skagos. Jory thinks of herself as being more accepting of wildlings than her peers, but she's hardly immune from the prejudices against them. I'm not a linguist and I'm not going to try to create a language for the Old Tongue anymore than GRRM would. I still find it interesting, though. 
> 
> 7\. Sansa has been able to use Rickon's surprise return as a convenient excuse to stay the hell away from Littlefinger as of late. Poor Davos is not just concerned about the Vale's animosity towards Stannis but the fates of his own family in the Stormlands. The Martells have declared for Aegon, and the Vale is still pretty upset about the deaths of Elbert and Denys Arryn. Aegon and Arianne have announced themselves as engaged to be wed once he's crowned, in a Targ-Martell alliance 2.0. Jon Conn is on top of the world. King's Landing is not having a great year. In the realm of small positives, Jory and Davos get along great. 
> 
> 8\. Thank you all for continuing to stick with this fic, and you can find me on my blog at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/).


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